Curaçao refused Machado flight after request “from higher up”

Curaçao’s aviation authority refused landing permission for a plane carrying Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado on her way back to Venezuela last week after a “request from higher up”, the authority’s director told broadcaster NOS.

Peter Steinmetz, head of the Curaçao Civil Aviation Authority (CCAA), did not say who made the request. Ministers in Willemstad and The Hague have also not commented on who made it.

The private plane was due to fly from Panama, where Machado is living, to Curaçao on September 22. An attempt to fly her to Aruba the same day also fell through. Journalists travelling with Machado said at the time that the flights had been cancelled because of problems with paperwork.

Machado won the Nobel peace prize last year for her efforts in opposing Venezuela’s former president Nicolás Maduro, who was captured by US forces in January. US policy is officially neutral on whether she should return, Axios reported in July, adding that her repeated attempts had angered senior officials in the Trump administration.

Who made the request?
The island’s prime minister Gilmar Pisas declined to comment, and the national transport minister Charles Cooper said the request did not come from him.

Curaçao controls its own civil aviation, but foreign policy is a joint matter for the whole Kingdom of the Netherlands.

Eric van der Burg, the Dutch junior minister for kingdom relations, told Caribbean media that foreign minister Tom Berendsen would speak on the issue, calling it “a very delicate situation.”

According to NOS, the decision was taken by the kingdom council of ministers, which brings together the Dutch cabinet and ministers from Aruba, Curaçao and Sint Maarten.

Berendsen attended a meeting of the council on September 25, three days after the flights were refused. Prime minister Rob Jetten declined to rule out Dutch involvement at his weekly press conference last week.

Unanswered questions
It remains unclear whether the request came from Curaçao, the Netherlands or another government.

Earlier this week, Leiden university professor Wouter Veenendaal, who specialises in relations between the nations in the Kingdom of the Netherlands, told Dutch News: “I can’t prove it, but it sounds to me like The Hague has been put under pressure by the Americans.”

“Although the Americans formally take a positive view of Machado, her arrival is seen as potentially threatening the relative stability that they’ve been able to create with the interim president.”

Machado’s team says she has made at least seven attempts to return to Venezuela.

Dutch News has asked the foreign affairs ministry who made the request and whether the Netherlands was involved. The ministry had not responded at the time of publication.