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'No more camps,' Colombia tells Venezuelans not to settle in tent city
Source: Reuters
WORLD NEWS NOVEMBER 22, 2018 / 11:44 AM / UPDATED AN HOUR AGO
'No more camps,' Colombia tells Venezuelans not to settle in tent city
Helen Murphy, Luis Jaime Acosta
5 MIN READ
BOGOTA (Reuters) - Francis Montano sits on a cold pavement with her three children, all their worldly possessions stuffed into plastic bags, as she pleads to be let into a new camp for Venezuelan migrants in the Colombian capital, Bogota.
Behind Montano, smoke snakes from woodfires set amid the bright yellow tents which are now home to hundreds of Venezuelans, erected on a former soccer pitch in a middle-class residential area in the west of the city.
The penniless migrants, some of the millions who have fled Venezuela’s economic and social crisis, have been here more than a week, forced by city authorities to vacate a makeshift slum of plastic tarps a few miles away.
The tent city is the first of its kind in Bogota. While authorities have established camps at the Venezuelan border, they have resisted doing so in Colombia’s interior, wary of encouraging migrants to settle instead of moving to neighboring countries or returning home.
Its gates are guarded by police and officials from the mayor’s office and only those registered from the old slum are allowed access.
-snip-
'No more camps,' Colombia tells Venezuelans not to settle in tent city
Helen Murphy, Luis Jaime Acosta
5 MIN READ
BOGOTA (Reuters) - Francis Montano sits on a cold pavement with her three children, all their worldly possessions stuffed into plastic bags, as she pleads to be let into a new camp for Venezuelan migrants in the Colombian capital, Bogota.
Behind Montano, smoke snakes from woodfires set amid the bright yellow tents which are now home to hundreds of Venezuelans, erected on a former soccer pitch in a middle-class residential area in the west of the city.
The penniless migrants, some of the millions who have fled Venezuela’s economic and social crisis, have been here more than a week, forced by city authorities to vacate a makeshift slum of plastic tarps a few miles away.
The tent city is the first of its kind in Bogota. While authorities have established camps at the Venezuelan border, they have resisted doing so in Colombia’s interior, wary of encouraging migrants to settle instead of moving to neighboring countries or returning home.
Its gates are guarded by police and officials from the mayor’s office and only those registered from the old slum are allowed access.
-snip-
Read more: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-migration-colombia/no-more-camps-colombia-tells-venezuelans-not-to-settle-in-tent-city-idUSKCN1NR1XT