The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) presented this Wednesday to the Organization of American States (OAS) a request to visit Venezuela and directly evaluate the human rights situation in the country. The petition seeks especially access to the El Helicoide detention centerone of the most feared and questioned places in the Venezuelan prison system.
“The Commission’s last visit to Venezuela took place in 2002, more than twenty years ago. Since then, each new request, in 2017 and 2020, has been rejected,” recalled the IACHR rapporteur for Venezuela, Gloria de Mees, during her speech before the OAS Permanent Council.
De Mees said that El Helicoide functions as the main detention center for political dissidents in the countryand noted that the Commission has received “alarming information” about what is happening in its facilities, where serious human rights violations have been documented.
The Secretary General of the OAS, Albert Ramdin, supported the initiative and the need to allow the visit.
“An on-site visit would represent a significant and concrete step towards transparency, accountability and the protection of human dignity,” he stated on social networks.
Increase in repression after presidential elections
In a recent report, De Mees denounced the increase in repression in Venezuela after the presidential elections of July 2024, in which Nicolás Maduro was proclaimed the winner. The opposition, which presented its own voting records, maintains that these results give victory to Edmundo González Urrutia and denounced fraud in the electoral process.
Venezuela abandoned the Inter-American Human Rights System in 2013. That system is made up of the IACHR, based in Washington, and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, in San José, Costa Rica.
The country withdrew after the denunciation of the American Convention on Human Rights (ACHR), presented by the government of Hugo Chávez in 2012. The disengagement took place on September 10, 2013, when Venezuela stopped assuming the obligations derived from the treaty.
Despite this, the IACHR insists that it maintains jurisdiction to analyze the human rights situation in the country, arguing that the complaint presented by the Venezuelan State lacks legal validity.
With information from Efe.
