By Bongiwe Dlamini

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• MBABANE:Four United Nations human rights experts have condemned the partial naval blockade of Venezuela by the United States, finding it an illegal armed aggression and calling on the US Congress to intervene, Aljazeera reported on Wednesday.
• “There is no right to enforce unilateral sanctions through an armed blockade,” the UN experts said in a joint statement on Wednesday.
• It has been reported that, the US has deployed a major military force in the Caribbean and intercepted oil tankers as part of a naval blockade against Venezuelan vessels it considers to be under sanctions.
• A blockade is a prohibited use of military force against another country under the UN Charter, they added. 
• US President Donald Trump accuses Venezuela of using oil, the South American country’s main resource, to finance “narcoterrorism, human trafficking, murders and kidnappings”.
• Caracas denies any involvement in drug trafficking, it says Washington is seeking to overthrow its President Nicolas Maduro to seize Venezuela’s oil reserves, the largest in the world.
• But since September, US forces have launched dozens of air strikes on boats that Washington alleges were transporting drugs, no evidence has been provided for those accusations but than 100 people have been killed.
• “It is such a serious use of force that it is also expressly recognised as illegal armed aggression under the General Assembly’s 1974 Definition of Aggression.The illegal use of force, and threats to use further force at sea and on land, gravely endanger the human right to life and other rights in Venezuela and the region,” said the UN experts.