Venezuelan journalist Luis Gonzalo Pérez, a member of opposition leader María Corina Machado’s press team, said on Thursday (19) that he left Venezuela due to the persecution of Nicolás Maduro’s dictatorship against him and his family.
Pérez, who has 824,000 followers on Instagram, posted a video on the social network explaining his decision. He said he had been hiding from Chavista authorities since reporting on the protests on July 29, the day after the disputed presidential election that the National Electoral Council (CNE), controlled by Maduro, says the dictator won.
“From this day on [29 de julho]I received multiple threats and alerts, in which the Venezuelan State was looking for me to carry out my capture and, I regret very much, this was a situation that impacted me as a human being and a professional. And we had to first make the decision to be under protection and to stop all our communications, as you have already seen”, said the journalist.
“I had to make the decision to leave Venezuela. I am in exile like millions of Venezuelans. It was never in my life or work plans to have to leave my own country by force,” Pérez lamented.
In the video, the journalist recalled that the post-electoral repression unleashed by Chavismo has already led to the exile of 18 press professionals.
“We are going through a situation where our rights are not respected, where journalists in Venezuela are currently imprisoned and accused of terrorism. Our job and our weapons are a camera and a pen, to be able to document, show the world and raise the voice of those who cannot,” added Pérez.
Since the presidential campaign, several members of María Corina Machado’s team have been persecuted and arrested by Maduro’s dictatorship, and six of them have been taking refuge in the Argentine Embassy in Caracas since March.
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