 Hi and welcome to People's Dispatch, we're here reporting from the International People's Assembly in Solidarity with the Bolivarian Revolution and against imperialism. We're here with Victoria. Can you tell us what your organization is? Yeah, hello. My name is Victoria Cines. I am here in Caracas today representing LAG, which is the Committee of Solidarity with Latin America in Norway. Apart from that, I'm also a member of the Red Party in Norway, RET. So right now in Europe, as many of us have seen, there's now a refugee crisis that has been happening for the past 10 years. What is the situation like in Europe? How are the grassroots movements mobilizing to support the refugees? What's happening with the right-wing governments that are responding to this? Can you talk a little about this situation? Yes, indeed. In a situation where there are over 65 million refugees in the world, Norway are having one of the strictest politics in Europe. Well, first of all, we have a right-wing politics, which is in power in Norway. But also, with the so-called left, which were in power a couple of years ago, some years ago, we also have one of the strictest politics regarding the refugees in the whole Europe. And also, I'm really concerned about, well, me and the Red Party, we also had a manifestation two weeks ago in Norway. We wanted to say stop to the revocation of citizenship, because a big problem in Norway is not only, well, one problem is how that we close our borders, we almost don't receive any refugees any longer. And also, another issue is that there are a lot of miners who used to come to Norway from Afghanistan. The miners, we just give them the possibility to stay in Norway. We just gave them two years at a time. So the moment that they turn 18, we throw them out of the country. So a lot of people are living with a lot of insecurity in Norway, knowing that the day they will turn 18, they might get kicked out of the country. So that creates a lot of insecurity and a lot of the Afghans, especially, which, well, are the ones who really are suffering this. A lot of the Afghans, they have been suicide attempts. But according to Norwegian experts, Afghanistan is safe. We just say that two provinces are not safe. So person, which are from one of the two provinces that Norway think is too dangerous, we just send them to Kabul, because Kabul is safe, right? So that's one of the big problems. Another issue is how we treat Norwegian citizens. The right-wing government, Norway, have started, well, we have over 200 people working in the Norwegian state trying to identify Norwegian citizens, but they're trying to identify whom of them might lie when they came to Norway 20 years ago. So there are like around 800 family or over 1000 people who might lose their citizenship right now. There's a one family, a Palestinian family, they've been living in Norway for 27 years. Three generations of Palestinians got a message from Norway saying, hey, we think that you lied when you came. We don't believe you're Palestinians anymore, we believe that you're from Jordan. So they have revoked their citizenship. And this is three generations, kicked out of Norway. Another really famous case, which I've been a lot in the Norwegian news, is the case of Mahad. Mahad, he's from Somalia. He came to Norway when he was 14 years old. Mahad, well, he's really good integrated. He was a bio engineer. He was walking in one of the biggest hospitals in Oslo, you know, really perfect story. Until some years ago, he also got the post from the Norwegian government saying that they got tips from other people saying that he was not from Somalia, but from Djibouti. So what happened? Well, he lost his job. He lost all of his paper, his passport. He lost his life. Now he's in Norway without any right. He's a person without paper, a person who literally don't exist. Now we just have to live without being able to work. If he have trouble with healthcare, well, he don't get any help. Or if it's emergency, then there's a lot of people like him in Norway. And he even asked to be transported to Somalia, because Somalia has said they want him. So he even asked Norway to, okay, send me back to Somalia then if you don't want me here after 17 years in Norway. But Norway refuses to send him back because then they don't want to admit that he's from Somalia. So he can't leave Norway and he can't live in Norway. And yeah, he's just a famous example, but a lot of people are in his situation. So this is also, this is what's happening to Norwegian citizens and what's happening and how we treat immigrants is also a part of, well, the rise of the right, the extreme right. We have the right and extreme right, which is in power in Norway. We could also see other places in Europe where we have fascist governments, the extreme right who are closing the border. A big problem in Europe is the Dublin deals, right? Because after 2015, when a lot of people came to Europe, Europe tried to close the border and we have this Dublin deal which says that the first country you come to is the country that you should treat your asylum. And so all of the refugees are just being stuck together in Greece and Italy. And this is because of geography. So it's not fair. Like Norway being one of the richest countries in Europe are the one receiving less. Well, Greece which had a lot of economical problems are the country who receives all of them almost. And I was in Greece also volunteering this summer and they are living the conditions where the refugees are living. It's terrifying. It's in Moria, in the Moria camp. It's supposed to be two, three thousand refugees there and it's about 10,000. And children are also hurting themselves. They're suicide attempts there. They're freezing to death almost. And they have to stay in a line four hours a day to get food. And this is just not worth, worthy at all. Now I want to kind of touch on the aspect of the Latin American solidarity that you do with your movement. When was this movement started? Kind of like what are the relationships they have with movements in Latin America? And why from Norway is it important to be in solidarity with what's happening in Latin America? LAG is a movement, well it's an organization with solidarity with Latin America which started mostly after Chileans refugees came after flying the dictatorship of Pinochet. So it's an organization which is solidarity but it's an organization on the left. So we are collaborating with different countries in Latin America, especially the social movement. A lot of people have been in the Zapatista movement. We're also with Conriga in Guatemala, with the MST, the Movimiento sin Tierra in Brazil. So we're also sending groups of Norwegian people to Brazil and also to those other countries which we are having collaboration with. And those are also coming to Norway so we have this exchange. Another important thing of our work is to create alternative information about Latin America or information at all because Norwegian media, they don't have any correspondence in Latin America. So they just copy and reproduce what Western media says about Latin America or there's nothing about Latin America or there are a lot of lies about Latin America. And of course for my organization it's important to show solidarity with Latin America and it's important for us to show solidarity with an anti-imperialistic fight. And it's also important for us to be here to see for ourselves what are going on because we can't just reproduce what the mass media tells us because the mass media are controlled by the economical powers and they don't really tell us the truth about what's going on in Venezuela. So it's really important and I think it's a really important thing for us to be here now to make a good network to be able to talk and understand what we can do to stand against this truth because this is a truth to Venezuela but what's going on now in Venezuela is not just a threat to Venezuela, it's a threat to social movements in a lot of countries because what are going on now with the coup de tite that they are doing, it's colonialism. It's imperialism and it's colonialism that Europe and the United States think that they can decide the politics of Venezuela or any other country in the south. It's colonialism. Thank you so much for speaking with us and we'll see you in the struggle.