The news of Alexei Navalny's death did not surprise the world too much. The fate of the Russian opponent had been cast since he returned to his country from exile in London, and this was confirmed when the judicial system sentenced him to 19 years of severe prison for alleged extremism, among other charges. Since January 2021, he was serving his sentence in the prison known as 'Polar Wolf', under extreme conditions in a place in the Russian Arctic.
Like everything that surrounds the government of President Vladimir Putin, mystery and doubt surround this case, and even more so after it was revealed that there were advanced negotiations for an exchange of a Russian espionage hitman, Vadim Krasikov, for Navalny and two Americans.
But cases like Navalny's are not the exception, they are present in many countries around the world, from Belarus, where President Alexander Lukashenko, with more than 30 years in power and 1,400 political prisoners, announced that he will go for a new mandate, to Latin America, where dictatorships and the growth of authoritarianism reveal the purest deterioration of the rule of law.
The phenomenon of the political prisoner is difficult to quantify, because there are several ways to define it, as explained by the director of the Americas Division of Human Rights Watch, Juanita Goebertus. “We work on the basis of international law, first of all, by analyzing that there has been a persecution of opponents, that is, the right to participate in free and fair elections, the possibility of not electing and being elected being restricted in some way. Also, with violations related to arbitrary detentions.”
In a recent article, Miguel Ángel Martínez, analyst and professor of Political Studies, counted approximately 1,700 political prisoners in the region, based on reports from international organizations that verified the cases of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela. And this figure includes, surprisingly, Bolivia, where the Global Human Rights League identified some 279 prisoners, as of October 31, 2023.
The Cuba case
The NGO Prisoners Defenders It carefully studies the situation in Cuba and updates the list of political prisoners daily. It supports its analysis on “notorious legal and testimonial evidence, first-hand, where the total absence of violence and criminal offenses prevails in their acts” and establishes three categories: convicted of conscience, convicted of conscience and other political prisoners.
Although the NGO clarifies that the list is very restricted, as it only includes those who have been claimed by organized human rights groups, there are “thousands of prisoners of conscience and politicians who, anonymously, are not claimed by any organization.”
In Cuba, the unprecedented anti-government protests of 2021 put popular causes back on the map. They couldn't change conditions on the island greatly, but they did cause an increase in political prisoners, which after the repression went from 150 to 955 in December of that year.
The Nicaragua case
In Nicaragua, repressive patterns have not given way. After the release and subsequent banishment of 222 political prisoners in February 2023, human rights organizations have continued to report illegal raids, forced disappearances and captures. According to the Recognition Mechanism for Detained Persons, there are currently 121 people recognized as political prisoners: 19 women and 102 men and only between January 1 and 31, 2024, “six arbitrary detentions were recorded for possible motivations of political persecutionas well as the exile of 17 religious.”
This list is supported by information from human rights organizations, relatives of politically imprisoned and released people, defense lawyers, as well as documentation spaces and networks of territorial and digital activists, although the organization clarifies that only “it includes those “people from whom access and authorization from their relatives were obtained for publication.”
The Venezuela case
In Venezuela, the Penal Forum counts some 264 prisoners as of February 2024. In addition, this organization, through its directors Alfredo Romero and Gonzalo Himiob, provides the 'Strategic Litigation Manual. The fight against political repression': a text designed for lawyers and activists that “works not only for Venezuela, but for all those countries with regimes that (such as Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Russia, China, etc.) use repression as a strategy of cpolitical control.”
In December 2023, the Nicolás Maduro regime completed a prisoner exchange as a result of a political negotiation with the United States. Washington released Álex Saab, an alleged figurehead of the Venezuelan president, and Caracas handed over 10 Americans. In addition, the release of at least 20 Venezuelans detained for political reasons was agreed.
In a more recent event, on February 9, the activist and director of the NGO Citizen Control, Rocío San Miguel, was arrested on accusations of conspiracy and until now her situation is uncertain, since she still does not have a private defense. Along with her, they also detained five of her relatives, who were later granted alternative freedom measures.
Arbitrary arrests, searches without a court order and delays in the process are common practices in countries under dictatorship. But they also occur, with some nuances, in countries with democratic governments although with a clear deterioration of the rule of law.
And also Bolivia
At the beginning of this year, the Bolivian justice system extended for the ninth time the preventive detention of the former interim president Jeanine Áñez, who, in the 2019 crisis and in the face of the resignation of Evo Morales, assumed power as an option in the order of succession established in the Magna Carta She is sentenced to 10 years for crimes such as “breach of duties” and “resolutions contrary to the Constitution,” and she has other active proceedings in the ordinary justice system for terrorism, sedition and conspiracy. She has been in jail since March 2021 and is considered a political prisoner of the government of the leftist Movement Towards Socialism, although both Morales and current President Luis Arce deny the accusation.
In its annual report, Human Rights Watch noted that the Bolivian government excessively applies preventive detention. In addition to the case of the former president, it points out the arrest of the opponent Luis Fernando Camacho, imprisoned since 2022and the coca leader César Apaza, recently released after undergoing an abbreviated trial in which he denounced the violation of his rights.
Franco Albarracín, a Bolivian lawyer specializing in human rights, notes that in countries with weakened democracies, greater restrictions on freedom of expression and reduction of civic space are identified. “There is a clear context of political persecution because arrests occur for denouncing or having different beliefs,” says this expert.
Goebertus adds that “not necessarily in all countries where we see restrictions on the separation of powers have we identified political prisoners, but in all countries where there are political prisoners there is no separation of powers.” And for the HRW representative it is an increasingly stronger phenomenon in Latin America.
Inhuman conditions
In Nicaragua, those imprisoned under Daniel Ortega's regime are in inhumane conditions because health conditions have even been reported due to a bedbug infestation in several prisons. And regarding the processes, the situation is equally worrying, since since mid-2023, the trials against political prisoners have been carried out through videoconferences and they witness them from their cells without the possibility of communicating with their lawyers, as reported by the Justice Unit. Legal Defense (UDJ). This organization also denounces that there is surveillance and persecution against the few defenders who risk taking on these cases. Tortured, many without formal accusations against them and held incommunicado, Nicaragua's political prisoners allow the Ortega regime to maintain constant intimidation against its opponents.
From his experience in the defense of political prisoners, the lawyer and member of the Vente Venezuela Organization Perkins Rocha denounces that in the Venezuelan case there is a difference in the system of repression of a year ago and that of now, which is much more “perversesophisticated and complex” because there is greater involvement of the judicial system and justice operators.
“The person or groups of people are chosen, the repression has become selective with an appearance of legality. And the source of the arrests now falls into the hands of lawyers from the Public Ministry so that the Prosecutor's Office can justify these matters publicly and internationally.”
Given the certainty that the judicial system does not respond because it is subject to the power in power, political prisoners and human rights defenders go to international bodies to make their cases visible, although they rarely succeed. “We must insist and not give up,” says Juanita Goebertus of HRW, although she also recognizes that “even democratic countries prefer not to have control of the inter-American system and have taken steps to erode its ability to make decisions.” And she emphasizes: “Today it may be one political sector that is the victim of this type of act, but tomorrow, another.”
Double torture
Lawyer Rocha, who has closely experienced the situation of the relatives of political prisoners, assures that the process at all times is painful and difficult to endure. “Over time we talk about adaptation, something that seems really Dantesque because what we experience are levels of psychological torture at the beginning and then physical. There is a lot of uncertainty at the beginning of the detention and then the prosecutor appears at a press conference to justify with plots like chapters of a novel, but at that moment the family members and lawyers breathe deeply with some relief because it means that they already publicly recognize that “the family member or the defendant exists and is not missing.”
Achieving release from prison has as its highest point the reunion of families. But getting out of jail does not necessarily guarantee freedom for political prisoners. “There is the constant fear of a new arrest and that person is not going to feel completely free. As long as the government that has detained him unjustly remains, he will not be able to exercise his rights, nor work, nor engage in activism with total freedom,” explains Albarracín.
Sentenced to exile, assimilating a fictitious freedom or behind bars, the political prisoners of Latin America symbolize resistance against time, abandonment and silence. Hundreds of Navalny, on the other side of the world.
FABIOLA CHAMBI
CONNECTS (**)
#Navalnys #Latin #America