BOGOTA, Colombia — The YouTube account of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro was offline Saturday, with Venezuelan state-run channel Telesur claiming in a message on X that it was “eradicated” late the earlier night time with out justification.
YouTube’s father or mother firm Google didn’t instantly reply to questions on the obvious termination of the Venezuelan president’s account. It comes amid rising tensions between Venezuela and america over the deployment of American warships and fighter jets within the southern Caribbean.
Maduro’s YouTube account had greater than 200,000 followers earlier than it grew to become unavailable Friday and was used to publish the Venezuelan president’s speeches, in addition to clips from his weekly present on Venezuelan state TV.
On its web site, YouTube says it eliminates accounts that commit “repeated violations of neighborhood tips” that embody publishing misinformation, hate speech and content material that “interferes with democratic processes.”
Maduro has been broadly accused of stealing final yr’s presidential election in Venezuela, which he misplaced by a landslide in response to tally sheets gathered by a whole lot of Venezuelan opposition activists. Venezuela’s elections company, which is managed by the ruling socialist celebration, by no means revealed tally sheets to help its declare that Maduro received the vote.
In 2020, Maduro was indicted by a federal court docket in New York the place he has been charged with conspiring to visitors cocaine to america. Just lately, the U.S. doubled a bounty cost for Maduro’s seize to $50 million, with White Home officers typically referring to Maduro as a drug cartel chief who should be dropped at justice.
Whereas Venezuela continues to promote oil to america and take deportation flights, relations between the 2 nations have worsened with the deployment of eight U.S. warships final month to an space of the southern Caribbean close to Venezuela’s coast.
The Trump administration says the ships, that are fitted with long-range missiles and are additionally transporting a touchdown power of two,000 Marines, are on an anti-drug trafficking mission.
However Venezuela’s authorities has described the deployment as an assault on the nation’s sovereignty and a part of an effort to overthrow Maduro’s authorities.
The U.S. flotilla has destroyed three speedboats allegedly carrying medicine to date, in response to the White Home, killing greater than a dozen individuals on board the small vessels.
