Two months after furiously expelling the team of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Nicolás Maduro has asked him to return to the country. “I accept, let's turn the page and rebuild the communication bridges,” the president said on television during a meeting with International Criminal Court prosecutor Karim Khan, who during his fourth visit to the country has asked Maduro to reopen the office after the crisis that led to his expulsion last February. “I am prepared to receive Volker Türk's envoys. As always, the doors of the Miraflores Palace are open for us to talk about the differences we have, the conflict we have and overcome it.”
The differences between Maduro and the High Commissioner arose in the midst of the arrest of the activist and lawyer Rocío San Miguel, who was missing and held incommunicado for several hours before she was presented to court and charged with crimes of conspiracy and terrorism. homeland without evidence having yet been presented. UN officials raised alarm about what happened and expressed concern about the possible human rights violations that were being committed in this case. What the defense of San Miguel and the NGOs described as a forced disappearance, a pattern that has become common in arrests of opponents of the Government, according to the Center for Defenders and Justice, for the Prosecutor's Office has been part of a due process. The Public Ministry has implicated her in one of a series of alleged conspiracies to assassinate Maduro that they are investigating.
The team of thirteen UN officials, installed in Venezuela since 2019 by order of the then High Commissioner Michelle Bachelet, was expelled from the country accusing them of having fulfilled “an improper role.” Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yván Gil accused them of “becoming the private law firm of the coup plotters and terrorist groups that constantly conspire against the country.”
Khan arrived in Venezuela this Monday to finally set up an ICC prosecutor's office in the country with the intention of launching a technical cooperation plan on justice agreed upon this week and which has not yet been made public. His team will return in three months to continue with the agreed tasks to improve the justice system. On Monday, Khan was received in Parliament by Jorge Rodríguez and was also taken to meet community organizations allied to Chavismo. “My job is not to be popular and I'm sure I won't be. “My job is to apply the law,” he told parliamentarians.
![Nicolás Maduro, together with the head of the prosecution of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan](https://imagenes.elpais.com/resizer/jvr77T2qwAnafzuWhYyJvfXo2lo=/414x0/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/prisa/OC7TTFURS4LLWAFCBTIH377DJE.jpg)
This visit is independent of the investigation being carried out in The Hague into the commission of crimes against humanity. Last March, after several attempts by the Government to stop it, the process was reactivated. Venezuela is the only country in the region in which a case in this instance has reached this point. The ICC judges have concluded that the Venezuelan State does not investigate the alleged crimes that occurred about which at least 8,900 victims have presented their testimonies before the international court, nor has it sanctioned the alleged perpetrators and the entire chain of command involved in systematic and widespread violations. from the human rights. For Venezuela, they have not occurred, since they are not even classified as crimes in Venezuelan legislation. Regarding this, Maduro also made commitments to Prosecutor Khan to incorporate the principles of the Rome Statute, of which Venezuela is a party, into the national legal system.
The return of the High Commissioner's team to human rights organizations in the country that denounced a situation of greater lack of protection after their expulsion is good news. In recent months, the arrests of political leaders, activists such as journalist Carlos Julio Rojas, and even citizens for criticizing the Government on social networks have been part of a new repressive balance for Chavismo. In the case of San Miguel, which caused the crisis that forced UN officials to leave the country in 72 hours, in that of the leaders of Vente Venezuela—the party of María Corina Machado, the opposition leader to whom He has not been allowed to go to elections—and Rojas's violations of the process continue. None have been allowed to receive the assistance of their lawyers.
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