Foro Penal affirmed this Saturday that in Venezuela there are 240 detainees whom it considers political prisoners, one more than in its last report published on March 29.
Among those considered political prisoners, there are 226 men and 14 women and one minor, the organization dedicated to the defense of human rights detailed on Twitter.
He also indicated that 110 are civilians and 130 are military.
“Since 2014, 15,758 political arrests have been registered in Venezuela,” added the Penal Forum.
He added that currently more than 9,000 people are still subject, “arbitrarily”, to measures restricting their freedom.
On February 10, an investigation by Amnesty International (AI), in conjunction with the Criminal Forum and the Center for Defenders and Justice (CDJ), revealed the correlation between arbitrary arrests for political reasons in the country and the “stigmatizations” created from various media.
“This analysis showed that, while in 2019, the general correlation between both variables (arbitrary arrests and stigmatization) was 29%, in 2020 it increased to 42% and in the first half of 2021 it reached 77%,” AI detailed in a Press release.
The study showed that the correlations between arbitrary arrests and stigmatization also vary by year, depending on the different security forces involved.
In this sense, AI reported that during 2019 there was a “closer correlation”, of 74%, with the arrests made by intelligence agencies such as the General Directorate of Military Counterintelligence (DGCIM) and the Bolivarian National Intelligence Service ( Sebin).
In 2020, the connection is “closer” between the stigmatization and the arrests carried out by the dependent bodies of the Bolivarian National Police (PNB), including the Special Action Forces (FAES), its elite unit, whose dissolution has requested the UN, which rises to 92%, the same figure recorded in 2021.
The director of the Penal Forum, Gonzalo Himiob, added that “there is no doubt about the close relationship between agents of the Venezuelan State; that is, public officials, public and private media, and attacks against human rights defenders”, which, in his opinion, “should not go unpunished”.
