The Government of Venezuela rejected this Monday the accusations of the Independent International Mission of the UN, which points out in a new report presented that the country’s civil and military intelligence commits crimes against humanity to repress political dissent, through abuses dictated “from the highest level.”
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The report, presented this Monday before the UN Human Rights Council by the president of the mission, the Portuguese Marta Valiñas, highlights the “violations” of human rights in Venezuela committed by the Bolivarian National Intelligence Service (Sebin) and the General Directorate of Military Counterintelligence (Dgcim).
In this sense, the Government expressed, through a statement, “its most categorical rejection of the false and baseless accusations made by the alleged International Mission to Determine the Facts in a new pamphlet presented on September 26, 2022.”
According to the Executive, with this mechanism created in 2019 “based on a disputed resolution, promoted by a small group of governments with serious internal situations of human rights violations, the double standards, selectivity and politicized use of human rights as a tool to undermine the sovereignty” of States that “do not submit” to the control “desired by some powers”.
The report, which was already published and presented at a press conference last week, documented at least – says the mission – 77 cases of torture and abuse of detainees in La Boleíta and other military prisons – some clandestine – of the Dgcim, as well like 51 in Sebin detention centers.
Although Valiñas did not cite names in his appearance before the Council, the report points to the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, as ultimately responsible for the abuses, and the first vice president of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) Diosdado Cabello, for his “influence” at Sebin.
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The document also indicates the current director general of Sebin, Gustavo Enrique González, the previous one (2014-2018), Carlos Alberto Calderón, as well as the number two in that period, Ronny González.
In the case of the Dgcim, he mentions the director general Iván Rafael Hernández and former heads of different levels of the organization: Rafael Antonio Franco, Hannover Esteban Guerrero and Alexander Enrique Granko.
It has no methodological support or direct contact with the reality of the country
For the Executive, the report, which “has no methodological support or direct contact with the reality of the country”, intends to “continue attacking” Venezuela as part of the “criminal strategy of regime change promoted by the Government of the United States , with the complicity of its satellite governments in the world”.
In addition, he considered that these “parallel, barbaric and interfering mechanisms” encourage “extremist” sectors to repeat the “massive” violation of human rights and the destabilization of the country.
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The Maduro Administration warned that it will take “the pertinent political and diplomatic measures” against any attempt to prolong the mandate of this mechanism “against the legitimate Venezuelan institutions” in what it considered a “violation of the Charter of the United Nations” and UN resolutions.
For his part, the Venezuelan ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Héctor Constant, assured that the mission “has once again surpassed itself in the fiction that it builds on the reality of my country.”
“We categorically reject the alleged reports in substance and form,” he stressed in his speech after the presentation of the document.
The diplomat gave as an example of the mission’s “aggressive and slanderous procedure” the fact that the reports were presented at a press conference six days before being taken to the Council, “to please the transnational media scoundrel, whose vultures can only be pleased with high-sounding headlines.”
Constant concluded by rejecting the very existence of the mission, “a type of parallel mechanism that only encourages repeat attempts to destabilize my country”, for which he asked the 47 member countries of the Council (including the
Venezuela) to take measures “against the prolongation of this interventionist mechanism”.
*With information from EFE
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