“Venezuelans have voted, the results are clear and their will must be respected,” insists the US State Department, one month after the elections in Venezuela, in which President Nicolás Maduro claims to have won and in which Washington, the European Union and Latin American governments, among others, have supported the opposition and consider Edmundo González Urrutia the winner.
In a statement issued to mark the month of impasse Following the July 28 elections, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller stressed that the refusal of the Venezuelan National Electoral Council (CNE) to uphold international and Venezuelan standards of transparency and to respect the will of the Venezuelan people as expressed at the polls represents “an unacceptable violation” of the law in the Andean country. Venezuelan authorities are refusing to show the data that they claim gives them victory, despite the fact that the minutes collected and published by the opposition support the contrary thesis.
“Despite repeated calls from Venezuelans and the international community, the Maduro-controlled CNE has not been able to corroborate the announced results by presenting original minutes, as it did after the 2013 and 2018 elections,” US diplomacy recalls. On the other hand, the Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ), “controlled by Maduro,” has tried to “silence the voices of voters by ratifying the CNE’s unfounded announcement of a victory” by the Venezuelan president.
Over the past month, the State Department adds, the Venezuelan government “has manipulated election results, falsely claimed victory, and carried out widespread repression in an effort to stay in power.” Through its spokesperson, it applauds the courage and resilience of the millions of Venezuelan voters who “voted and continue to peacefully demand that Maduro recognize that the majority of votes were for Edmundo González Urrutia.”
The United States reiterates its call, made repeatedly since the elections, for respect for human rights and democratic norms in Venezuela, “the release of all political prisoners, and an end to arbitrary arrests and other acts of repression against members of the democratic opposition, the media, and civil society.”
The administration of President Joe Biden is one of the twenty governments that signed a joint declaration on July 16 that calls for transparency and an impartial review of the electoral process of July 28 and the resulting minutes.
Washington also joined ten other partners in the region in condemning, on the 23rd, the decision of the TSJ to give credibility to the CNE’s statement on Maduro’s victory. This Wednesday, it was one of the countries that convened an extraordinary session of the General Assembly of the Organization of American States (OAS) in Washington to address the human rights situation in the Caribbean country after the elections. A report by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights concluded that this situation has deteriorated over the last month, in which more than twenty people have died in the repression of protests in favor of the opposition and more than 1,600 people have been arrested, including more than a hundred minors.
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