They were being followed on their trail. The tracks of their hooves had been left on the road. The baqueana was the Independent International Mission to Determine the Facts about the Republic of Venezuela, which, in 2019, was commissioned by the Human Rights Council of the United Nations Organization (UN) to investigate the commission of crimes against humanity in our country. In the First Report, published in 2020, the Mission affirms that these crimes had indeed taken place, with the knowledge of “high-level authorities”, but that they “took no measures to prevent or repress them.” The Second Report, presented in 2021, points out the lack of judicial independence that contributes to absolute impunity for crimes and prevents victims from exercising legal and judicial remedies.
It is in the Third Report, published on September 20 of this year, 2022, where the hidden part of the iceberg comes to the surface – or the cat climbs into the punt, it would be said in popular language – by indicating Nicolás Maduro with his first and last name. , members of the leadership of Chavismo and directors of the intelligence services, as the main perpetrators of these crimes against humanity. This is confirmed by the president of the UN Mission, Marta Valiñas, when she declared: “This plan was orchestrated at the highest political level headed by President Nicolás Maduro and supported by other high authorities.” And as she comments Washington Post -a liberal-style newspaper- were the General Directorate of Military Counterintelligence (Dgcim) and the Bolivarian National Intelligence Service (Sebin) which received, with the support of agents from Castro’s Cuba, the task of systematic repression and torture that he qualifies as “appalling punishments”. The Third Report of the UN Mission, quoted by that newspaper, details the torture applied: “Strong beatings with bats and sharp objects; electric shocks to sensitive parts of the body; suffocation with toxic substances and water; cuts and mutilations including on the soles of the feet and under the nails… rape with objects; beatings and electric shocks to the genitals; constant lighting or constant darkness; extreme heat or extreme cold; forced feeding of feces and vomit; and death threats and threats of rape against the victims and their families.” The height of horror, of unimaginable atrocities. A professor of international law and political analyst as weighty as Adolfo P. Salgueiro, reflects: “…The daunting and proven torture in the dungeons of the security agencies with the particularity that for the first time in an international report it is mentioned by name and surname to those responsible for the chain of command whose apex is precisely Maduro and his immediate echelons, Generals Padrino, Hernández Dala and others who are thus identified as possible candidates for the bench of the accused in the International Criminal Court when the time comes timely procedure”. The size of the complaints that have been made is so serious that friends of the Venezuelan regime, such as the Argentine government and Chilean President Gabriel Boric, have asked that “experts continue to investigate in situ” and that “the problem of Venezuela needs attention” .
But there is a second issue raised in the Third Report of the UN Mission, which was not touched on in the previous two: the situation of human rights in the Orinoco Mining Arc and other areas of Bolívar state. In this regard, the forum Human rights and accountability in Venezuela was held: findings of the third report of the International Independent Fact-Finding Mission on Venezuela, in which renowned and recognized human rights defenders participated worldwide. .
Marta Valiñas, president of the Fact-Finding Mission, stated that “serious human rights violations committed by both state agents and criminal armed groups…there is coexistence or tolerance by state authorities in relation to acts committed by armed groups” criminals who exercise de facto control over the mines and local populations…we have been able to document some cases that demonstrate dynamics of violence not only within the criminal armed groups and the type of violence they exercise against local populations, but also the dynamics between these groups and state agents and members at the state level.”
Eumelys Moya, coordinator of the Human Rights Center of the Andrés Bello Catholic University, said that there is a kind of modern slavery translated into labor exploitation and sexual exploitation. The first – the labor one – is achieved in working days of up to 14 hours a day in sometimes subhuman conditions; the second –sexual- is like an escape route for families to achieve survival.
Mercedes de Freitas, director of Transparencia Venezuela, affirmed that, in the Mining Arc and nearby towns, the immense network that operates in that area has “close connections” with international criminals and many high-ranking government officials, if the presence of of the Venezuelan Mining Corporation, companies in which the State has a majority shareholding, the National Armed Forces, the Dgcim, the Sebin, etc.
Tamara Taraciuk, deputy director for the Americas at Human Rights Watch, expressed the opinion that “preventive monitoring will also have to be carried out before the presidential elections scheduled for 2024”, in which she agrees with Marta Valiñas who, in her presentation, had said that the period of the presidential pre-election, freedom of expression and association, would be “issues that the Mission would surely focus on.”
As is known, crimes against humanity do not prescribe, and therefore, as the title of these lines says, in the dictatorial regime that prevails in Venezuela there is the presence of these emulators of the Nazis, awaiting their Nuremberg.
