In less than 72 hours, seven people were arrested in Venezuela, all linked to the defense of human rights, unions and political parties. They were taken from their homes and the whereabouts of some of those detained are unknown. The reasons for the arrests are also unknown.
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“We are facing a new wave of repression,” said Lissette González, research coordinator for the Human Rights Action Education Program (Provea), which has documented the arrests described as arbitrary and carried out by the Special Action Forces (Faes), the Directorate of Military Counterintelligence (Dgcim) and the Bolivarian Intelligence Service Sebin.
Most of the procedures have occurred at night or at dawn, like the last one, where Reynaldo Cortés was taken prisoner. At 2:00 am armed men took him out of his home in Guárico state, about two hours from Caracas. Cortés is a member of the Bandera Roja (BR) party.
To the arrest of Cortés is added that of his fellow party membersAlcides Bracho, Néstor Astudillo , Alonso Meléndez, Yeny Zorelis Pérez, wife of the Red Flag militant, José Castro.
Gabriel Blanco, a humanitarian worker, and Emilio Negrín, president of the Federation of Judicial Branch Workers, were also arrested.
Provea also denounced that the Sebin raided the homes of José Castro, in Ocumare del Tuy, Miranda state, without a court order; Alonso Meléndez in Falcón state; John Kelbim Daniel Álvarez, in the San Martín sector of Caracas and Yecenia Heredia in Yaracuy state.
Union leader and humanitarian worker Gabriel Blanco requests the presence of a prosecutor from the Public Ministry and a representative from the Ombudsman https://t.co/DRZKbnhyJl
— PROVE (@_Provea) July 7, 2022
These people also belong to the Bandera Roja party and also participated in the protests against the government of Nicolás Maduro in 2014 and 2017. Several of the detainees are being accused of being terrorists.
It is noteworthy that the detainees are union leaders and members of political parties. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) concluded in its 2021 report that “serious human rights violations persisted in Venezuela, including extrajudicial executions -especially of young people living in poverty-, forced disappearances and torture, and arbitrary arrests of people who express their dissent with the government of Nicolás Maduro, among others.”
Provea has turned on the alerts in the face of these latest arrests, which it has described as recurrent against people who are in charge of defending their rights “in the midst of a severe crisis that has exacerbated inequality, poverty and the precariousness of living conditions. life”. ANA RODRIGUEZ BRAZON
WEATHER CORRESPONDENT
CARACAS
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