Video of a demonstration for the release of political prisoners in Venezuela during a visit to Caracas by the then UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, in 2019. VOA/NI
The response of “excessive force” by the security forces to repress protests demanding economic and social rights, including the right to water, as well as “impunity” for continuous extrajudicial executions in Venezuela, are some of the concerns that appear in Amnesty International’s 2022-2023 annual report.
“The intelligence services and other security forces, with the acquiescence of the judicial system, continued to arbitrarily detain, torture, and inflict other types of ill-treatment on people considered to be opponents of the government of Nicolás Maduro,” says the report released on Monday. .
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The organization that defends fundamental rights refers to the “patterns of crimes against humanity” exposed by the UN Mission to Determine the Facts on Venezuela (FFM) and questioned by the Venezuelan government for considering them an “instrument of attack”.
“So obvious is the intention that mobilizes this pseudo mission that the expensive reports that are prepared against my country within the framework of this mandate are initially presented in premeditated press conferences to international media corporations even before being presented in this Council” , said Héctor Constant, Venezuela’s representative to the Human Rights Council, last week.
Amnesty maintains that, despite the approval of legal reforms related to the administration of justice, “victims continued to have difficulties in accessing the right to truth and reparation.”
In addition, as the FFM explained last week in its oral update before the Council, in 2022, the State directed its “repressive” policies against journalists, independent media outlets, and human rights defenders.
The organization highlights how hyperinflation and the “alarming lack of purchasing power” to buy basic products caused the majority of the population to suffer a “deep” humanitarian crisis and, in this sense, highlights the government’s attempt to “control” the private sector with “arbitrary inspections and administrative sanctions.”
In addition, it presents an account of the most relevant events that marked the past year, among them the absence of an agreement at the negotiating table between the government and the Unitary Platform of the opposition in Mexico, the reestablishment of relations with Colombia, the renewal of the mandate of the FFM, as well as the request of the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to resume the investigation into crimes against humanity in Venezuela.
Last month, the Venezuelan government accused the ICC prosecutor of committing “irregularities and violations” of due process and presented a brief to deny the “fallacies of media and geopolitical aggression” to accuse Venezuela of “supposed” crimes against humanity that, they say, “have never happened”.
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Amnesty points out that the number of massive demonstrations to demand civil and political rights decreased compared to previous years and attributes this to the fact that the authorities reacted with “more selective repressive tactics”, but even so “systematic”, and gives as an example the use of the judicial system to “quiet” dissent.
