The Venezuelan dictatorship is reactivating “the most violent modality of repression”, with a new wave of arrests of opponents accused of alleged conspiracies such as the so-called Operation White Bracelet, the UN Independent International Mission for Human Rights warned this Wednesday (20). Venezuela.
The president of the mission, the Portuguese Marta Valiñas, presented a new report to the United Nations Human Rights Council on the abuses committed by the Nicolás Maduro regime in Venezuela since 2023, in which she highlighted that “the authorities invoke real or fictitious conspiracies to intimidate , detain and prosecute people who oppose or criticize the government”.
During this period, he indicated, there was a transition from a less repressive phase of the opposition, in which the Nicolás Maduro regime limited itself to creating “a climate of fear and intimidation”, to a more violent period, “which is activated to silence the voices opposition at any price.”
Valiñas highlighted in this sense that, in January, Maduro asked to “activate the Bolivarian Fury”, after alleging that in the previous year four plots to assassinate him or organize coups d'état had been thwarted, and that the Attorney General's Office then said having knowledge of the aforementioned Operation White Bracelet, one of the alleged plots to end the life of the Venezuelan dictator.
In the context of the fight against this latest conspiracy, 33 soldiers were demoted and expelled and several critics of the regime were detained.
Among them, recalled the UN mission, are campaign leaders from the Vamos Venezuela party – owned by opposition leader María Corina Machado – and human rights defenders, such as Tamara Suju, Sebastiana Barráez and Rocío San Miguel.
Valiñas highlighted that San Miguel, detained on February 9 at Maiquetía airport without a court order, was missing for five days “until authorities reported that she was being held in El Helicoide, one of the torture centers documented by the mission.”
He also highlighted that last month, shortly after both the mission he presides over and the UN Office for Human Rights expressed their concern about Rocío San Miguel, the Venezuelan regime suspended the activities of the technical mission of that office and gave its employees a 72 hours to leave the country.
The head of the mission, completed by Chilean Francisco Cox and Argentinean Patricia Tappatá, added that, together with San Miguel, they documented cases of 18 other women who remain detained on charges of being associated with or involved in “conspiracies” to overthrow the government.
Mission questions elections in Venezuela
Marta Valiñas also recalled that in the six months analyzed by the mission, an agreement was signed in Barbados between the dictatorship and the opposition so that the latter could participate in the elections on July 28 this year, but subsequent actions revealed the difficulties in its implementation.
The president of the mission gave as an example the suspension, by the Supreme Court of Justice, of the opposition primaries of October 22 last year, won by a large majority by María Corina Machado, and the ratification by the same court of her political disqualification for 15 years, on January 26th.
“These actions highlight the serious difficulties that exist in ensuring that the next presidential elections are held in accordance with the right to participate in public affairs, provided for in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights”, highlighted Valiñas.
It also drew attention to the arrest warrants against 14 people, including prominent opposition leaders such as Juan Guaidó and Leopoldo López, for their alleged connection with a conspiracy against the consultative referendum on Guiana Essequiba, held on December 3.
Venezuelan dictatorship responds
In response, the Venezuelan delegation to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva once again rejected the mission's conclusions and even its legitimacy, created in 2019 by the council itself to investigate human rights abuses in the country.
“The United States, the biggest violator of rights in history, the European Union and the failed Lima Group designed this mechanism [a missão] with the purpose of applying maximum pressure on Venezuela, manipulating the instruments and purposes of this Council”, said a representative of the delegation.
“They intend to cover up as absolute truths all the atrocities manufactured against Venezuela, without verification or sustainable proof”, he added, referring to the work of a mission that, according to him, “appeals to anonymous and even invented sources”.
Later, in a statement, the Venezuelan government rejected, “in a forceful way”, the statements “issued by the false and shameful” mission in the presentation of the new report, with which, according to Caracas, the world “witnessed today one of the most shameful pages in terms of human rights.”
Nicolás Maduro's regime accused the mission of issuing “biased judgments for purely political purposes” and of being “accomplices of extremist sectors that promoted inhumane sanctions against Venezuela” and that “repeatedly made plans to assassinate” Maduro and “cause chaos and destruction to his people.”
The Chavista dictatorship asked the UN Human Rights Council to “reject any fraudulent argument from the aforementioned mission, which did not set foot” in the country and “uses unprofessional methods to present a partisan pamphlet that must be categorically rejected”.
“Venezuela does not and will not accept any measure arising from this affront, presented to a Council that did nothing to stop the genocide of the Palestinian people,” stated the regime, which claimed commitment to the “promotion, respect and protection” of human rights “as a supreme value”.
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