Nicolás Maduro's dictatorship arrests yet another activist critical of the regime

NGOs and opposition parties to the Venezuelan dictatorship denounced the arrest of lawyer and activist Rocío San Miguel, detained at Simón Bolivar airport, in the state of Vargas, when she was about to travel abroad this weekend.

This is the latest authoritarian action by the Chavista regime, led by Nicolás Maduro, who recently arrested dozens of government critics, accused of alleged plans to assassinate him. In these episodes, military personnel and civilians were detained, including human rights activists, journalists and military personnel in exile. The Public Prosecutor's Office confirmed the activist's arrest.

Rocío was involved in one of these “conspiracies” against Maduro, the “White Armband”, which consisted of an attack on a military base in Táchira, on the border with Colombia, to take weapons and assassinate Chavista leaders, as accused by the attorney general of the country, Tarek William Saab, political ally of the dictator. Maduro, who is running for re-election this year, frequently denounces plots to overthrow and assassinate him.

San Miguel's arrest generated a wave of demonstrations by NGOs and political parties across the country. According to the local press, social media users started using the hashtag “#Dónde EstáRocío” (Where is Rócio, in free translation) to demand the release of the activist, who has had precautionary measures from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) since 2018 after have suffered attacks and harassment from the regime.

At the time, she was president of the Venezuelan NGO Controle Cidadão, which won a case against the Chavista dictatorship before the international court for violating political and expression rights, after being fired from a public body for supporting in 2003 the call for a recall referendum against the country's then leader Hugo Chávez (1999-2013).

With the repercussion of the case, Amnesty International (AI) and the Center for Justice and Peace (Cepaz) also called for his “immediate and unconditional release”.