Several nations have issued travel alerts warning their citizens of the risk of gun violence in the U.S. in the wake of three mass shootings in one week, including two back-to-back that claimed 31 lives last weekend.
Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement over the weekend calling the U.S. a “gun society” and warning Japanese nationals to “be aware of the potential for gunfire incidents everywhere in the United States” and “continue to pay close attention to safety measures.”
{mosads}Uruguay, meanwhile, warned citizens to be wary of “growing indiscriminate violence, mostly for hate crimes … which cost more than 250 people their lives in the first seven months of the year.”
The South American nation’s alert added that due to “the indiscriminate possession of firearms by the population,” travelers were advised “to avoid areas with large concentrations of people like theme parks, shopping centers, art festivals, religious events, food festivals and any kind of cultural or sporting gathering.”
Hispanic nations are on particularly high alert after the El Paso, Texas, shooting, where suspect Patrick Wood Crusius allegedly drove eight hours to the predominantly-Hispanic border city and is said to have written a racist, anti-immigrant manifesto claiming the shooting was intended to counter a Hispanic “invasion.”
Venezuela became the second South American nation to issue such an alert on Monday.
“We warn Venezuelans, living in or aiming to travel to the U.S., to be extra careful or to postpone their travel, given the recent proliferation of violent acts and hate crimes,” Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro tweeted Monday.
Maduro’s warning also came on the heels of the Trump administration expanding sanctions against Venezuela to a full economic embargo. The Venezuelan statement also invoked the number of hate crimes in the U.S.
“These growing acts of violence have found echo and sustenance in the speeches and actions impregnated with racial discrimination and hatred against migrant populations, pronounced and executed from the supremacist elite who hold political power in Washington,” the nation’s foreign ministry wrote in a statement.
Venezuela warned of “the indiscriminate possession of firearms by the population” and the “impossibility of authorities to prevent these situations.”
China had issued one such warning before any of the three shootings had occurred, with the nation’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism issuing a travel alert noting the number of robberies, thefts and shootings in the U.S., after posting a similar alert last summer.
Nor were international governments the only institutions to issue warnings. On Wednesday, Amnesty International issued a travel advisory for the U.S. in the wake of the two massacres.
“The Amnesty International travel advisory for the country of the United States of America calls on people worldwide to exercise caution and have an emergency contingency plan when traveling throughout the USA,” the alert stated.
It specifically warns travelers about the risks of “places where large number of people gather, especially cultural events, places of worship, schools, and shopping malls” and to “exercise increased caution when visiting local bars, nightclubs, and casinos.”
“Under international human rights law, the United States has an obligation to enact a range of measures at the federal, state, and local levels to regulate access to firearms and to protect the rights of people to live and move freely without the threat of gun violence,” the non-governmental organization added.
However, it added that “the government has not take sufficient steps to meet this obligation.”