Political Persecution Persists in Maduro’s Venezuela
HAVANA TIMES – The Venezuelan government continues to carry out actions that constitute crimes against humanity including imprisonment or severe deprivation of physical liberty and other crimes, according to the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Venezuela.
Portuguese jurist Marta Valiñas, president of the mission, stated that the government “continues to carry out harsh repression against individuals perceived as political opponents or who simply express dissent or criticism of the authorities,” including human rights defenders and journalists.
“This is the same pattern of conduct that the mission has previously characterized as crimes against humanity in Venezuela,” Valiñas added, while presenting the mission’s update on the human rights situation in Venezuela to the United Nations Human Rights Council on Tuesday, March 18th, in Geneva.
She reported that non-governmental sources documented at least 42 arrests between September and December 2024, and 84 more during the first 15 days of January 2025. Some of these detentions may constitute short-term enforced disappearances.
The Venezuelan human rights organization Foro Penal reported that, as of March 17, there were 894 political prisoners in the country, including 167 military personnel, 88 women, and five adolescents.
The mission expressed concern over the detention of at least 150 foreigners accused of participating in conspiracies against the government. The whereabouts and fate of these individuals are unknown to both their families and the authorities of their home countries, it noted.
On this matter, mission expert Francisco Cox, a Chilean criminal lawyer, stated that diplomatic efforts to communicate with the detainees “are ignored by the government of (President) Nicolas Maduro, in violation of international law.”
“Those detained are held under strict conditions of incommunicado detention, which violates both national and international law,” Cox added.
The mission also provided further details to the Council regarding one of the post-election protests in July 2024 in Aragua state (north-central Venezuela), in which seven people died.
It confirmed that shots were fired without warning from inside a military facility at the protesters. Members of the Army and the Bolivarian National Guard, who were in charge of controlling the protest, were inside that facility.
“The mission identified three generals involved in the public order operation during that protest, as well as two high-ranking officers who were inside the military facility from which shots were fired at demonstrators,” said Argentine Patricia Tappata, also a member of the mission.
The Venezuelan state “must investigate this incident, bring those responsible to justice, and provide reparations to the victims,” Tappata said.
Repression in Venezuela intensified after late July of last year, when protests erupted following the official announcement of the results of the presidential election held on the 28th of that month.
President Maduro was declared the winner, without evidence, of a third six-year term with 53% of the vote, compared to 43% for his main rival, opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez.
The opposition, based on tallies gathered from 85% of voting centers, claimed that Gonzalez had actually won with 67% of the votes, compared to 30% for Maduro.
The mission’s report stated that “the National Electoral Council, disregarding what is established in Venezuelan law, never published the final vote count nor the individual tally sheets from each polling station (about 30,000).”
The mission “has received credible and corroborated testimony that members of the Council were given political instructions to announce a result different from what was obtained at the polls,” Valiñas read.
After two weeks of protests, there were at least 25 deaths, dozens injured, and around 2,200 people detained. These individuals were sent to prison under charges of terrorism, and later hundreds were released under certain conditions, but about twenty opposition leaders remain behind bars.
This past January, Maduro was sworn in again as president, while Gonzalez is in exile in Spain.
The mission called on the Human Rights Council to urge the government to immediately and unconditionally release all those arbitrarily detained, and to provide them with proper and timely medical care while they remain imprisoned.
First published in Spanish by IPS and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.