The Peruvian government was accused on Wednesday of “kidnapping” Venezuela’s national football team because it wouldn’t let the team’s plane refuel after a 1-1 draw in a 2026 World Cup qualifier.
After the game, Venezuelan players said that Peruvian cops beat them up when they went to meet fans on Tuesday night. This is when the international spat started.
It was a rough night for the South American playoffs because fans of the game between Brazil and Argentina in Rio de Janeiro got into fights.
“The Peruvian government has done another unfair thing to the Venezuelans by not letting the plane carrying the team back refuel,” Foreign Minister Yvan Gil wrote on social media.
“This is kidnapping as vengeance against our team which played an extraordinary match” in Lima, he said.
There was no direction from the Peruvian government to stop the plane from refilling, and the government said it was working to solve the problem as soon as possible.
“The aforementioned aircraft has been experiencing private commercial supply restrictions beyond the control of the Peruvian State,” he said.
Nahuel Ferraresi, a football player from Venezuela, showed wounds on his right hand and said that Peruvian cops “beat me” hours before.
“These things shouldn’t happen. “The game was over, and we went to thank our fans from Venezuela,” he said.
He said that another player had given his shirt to the fans, and he was about to do the same thing but was stopped by the cops.
After that, some people got mad. I don’t know what happened, but the cops hit us with their batons. They hit me twice, but I’m not seriously hurt.
People all over the world have seen videos of the police officers hitting the players with batons. These videos have gone popular on social media.
The football union of Venezuela spoke out against “acts of discrimination and xenophobia” against the team and their fans.
Ecuador is in last place in the qualifiers after the draw, and Venezuela is in an amazing fourth place, having never made it to a World Cup before.
Before the game, Peruvian police did an odd check of fans’ IDs, and they were accused of specifically looking for Venezuelans.
This comes a week after a controversial law was passed that let the government kick out foreigners.
About 1.5 million Venezuelans have moved to Peru. Many of them left their home country because of a terrible economic disaster.