These new reports by the UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Venezuela highlight how high-ranking Venezuelan officials are connected to repression by government security forces against political dissidents.
By Caracas Chronicles – Kaoru Yonekura
Sep 22, 2022
Despite the Venezuelan government trying to avoid international scrutiny, two reports by the UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Venezuela (FFMV), under the framework of the 51st Session of the Human Rights Council, showing that the human rights crisis in the country persists, or that, pretty much the same, no advances parrotted by the government are credible.
According to the Mission, the human rights situation in Venezuela “is still serious.” The reports confirm that crimes against humanity are still being committed and one of the reports points at the people responsible for the crimes and their chains of command, for the first time.
What are the reports and what do they add to previous reports?
The first one is Crimes against humanity committed through the State’s intelligence services: structures and individuals involved in the implementation of the plan to repress opposition to the Government. It dives deep into the repression mechanism perpetrated by state security bodies: how they select and train officers to commit abuses and torture in different ways; where they take place and in what conditions are those spaces, even in clandestine torture houses; what chains of command are involved, how they operate and who gives the orders that are executed.
The names that are signaled out confirm that in Venezuela there’s a system designed and deployed to repress and used to cement the regime’s control. Marta Valiñas, the president of the Mission, says that the people involved “showed that violent acts were disconnected and weren’t perpetrated by individuals at random.”
The people who were directly responsibilized for this were Nicolás Maduro, Diosdado Cabello, Delcy Rodríguez, and Tareck El Aissami. The chains of command that were confirmed include seven chiefs of intelligence at Sebin and Dgcim: Rafael Franco Quintero, Hannover Guerrero, Alexander Granko Arteaga, Iván Hernández Dala, Ronny González Montesinos, Carlos Calderón Chirinos and Gustavo González López.
For lawyer Alí Daniels, the director of NGO Acceso a la Justicia, this report shows how in Venezuela chains of command are not investigated and how mechanisms to achieve impunity for repression are established, since the highest instances of the State are involved:
“The report reveals all the official propaganda about the improvement of justice, and it shows that there is no independent and impartial judiciary that judges these crimes.”
Clara del Campo, in charge of Amnesty International for Venezuela, warns that the reforms of laws and regulations that may point to a more functional justice system cannot be credible, because according to the report: “the perpetrators of crimes are the same authorities.”
With this report, it is becoming quite clear that repression is not a thing of the past, but that it is a systematic and generalized State policy that survives because it is protected by a judicial system more similar to a mechanism of persecution.
The second report, The human rights situation in the Arco Minero del Orinoco region and other areas of the Bolívar state, covers the systematization of violations and crimes against the populations in the gold extraction zones, both by state officials and irregular groups. The report offers more data on the repression of indigenous people in 2019.
Where did they find the information, considering that the Mission doesn’t have access to Venezuelan territory?
This is not a compilation of news or comments on social media. Both reports add up to 246 confidential interviews with victims and relatives, and former officials, through telephone calls or video calls with a secure connection, and during visits to the Venezuelan borders. Likewise, related files and documents were analyzed. One of the key testimonies was that of the former director of Sebin, Manuel Cristopher Figuera.
How do these reports help renew the Mission’s Mandate?
The Mission was created in 2019 to help victims seek and obtain justice, as well as to dissuade the Venezuelan State from committing further human rights violations. The 2022 reports, as well as the oral updates, gather evidence that violations continue to be committed, that the structural flaws that facilitate such violations persist, and that there is no internal mechanism capable of dispensing justice. So as long as the reasons for the creation of the Mission persist, it must continue its mandate, despite the permanent evasions of the government to avoid international scrutiny.
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Read More: Caracas Chronicles – How Can the UN Reports Linking Venezuelan High-Ranking Officials to State Repression Be Useful
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