The national coordinator of the Venezuelan Human Rights Action Education Program (Provea), Marino Alvarado, expressed, through his Twitter account, that the alleged “defamation” against Governor Lacava “is for demanding the determination of responsibilities”
The Chavista governor of Carabobo state, Rafael Lacava, sued the national coordinator of the Venezuelan Program for Education and Action on Human Rights (Provea), Marino Alvarado, for alleged “aggravated and continued defamation”; and the Jesuit priest Alfredo Infante, director of the Gumilla Center.
This was announced on Monday by Marino Alvarado himself, through his account on the Twitter social network.
The regional president’s demand comes after these human rights defenders denounced extrajudicial executions committed by the entity’s police, which they described as one of the deadliest in Venezuela with 221 victims of documented extrajudicial executions during the year 2021, for which they requested that Governor Rafael Lacava be investigated.
Last Friday, May 13, the Court of First Instance based on the trial of the state of Carabobo issued the ballots through which it notifies Alvarado and Infante that it admitted the private accusation presented by the lawyers Eliezer Miguel Guacuto Ríos and Carlos Alberto Bonilla Álvarez on behalf of the governor.
Human rights defenders are accused of “the commission of the crime of aggravated and continued defamation, foreseen and punished” in the Penal Code.
“Today, May 16, we have received notification from a criminal court in the state of Carabobo, of a lawsuit for defamation filed by the governor of the state of Carabobo, Rafael Lacava. An accusation against Alfredo Infante, director of Human Rights of the Gumilla Foundation, and another against me,” Alvarado said, through a video posted on Twitter.
“Supposedly we have defamed him”
For his part, the national coordinator of the Venezuelan Human Rights Action Education Program (Provea), Marino Alvarado, expressed, through his Twitter social network account, that the alleged “defamation” against Governor Lacava “is due to demand the determination of responsibilities”.
“Supposedly we have defamed him because we have demanded that the presumed responsibility that the governor may have with the extrajudicial executions that have occurred in the state of Carabobo be investigated. The state police of Carabobo is the deadliest in 2021 according to the investigation carried out by Lupa por la Vida. What we have done as human rights activists is what corresponds to us. There is a serious violation of human rights, and the material authors and the chains of command must be investigated,” Alvarado reacted.
ATTENTION | Rafael Lacava, Governor of Carabobo, sues for “defamation” to the Coord. Legal of PROVEA, Marino Alvarado, and Father Alfredo Infante Sj (@centrogumilla); after demanding an investigation of Lacava for alleged responsibility in reports of extrajudicial executions. pic.twitter.com/5fG8sff4RN
— PROVE (@_Provea) May 16, 2022
Alvarado pointed out that Lacava’s complaint seemed like a State policy “of not investigating who might have the greatest responsibility,” he added, while clarifying that they never pointed to the Governor as responsible, but rather the request to investigate his alleged responsibility.
In this sense, Marino Alvarado asks the Ombudsman’s Office to collaborate with the Public Ministry to investigate these cases that, according to the aforementioned investigation, register 1,414 alleged executions in 2021 and 3,034 in 2020.
Likewise, he specified that this new threat “is the consequence of being demanding in matters of human rights.”
“It is the risk that human rights defenders run for demanding that the chains of command in Venezuela be investigated, because it seems that there is a State policy of not investigating those who could have the greatest responsibility,” he said.
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“At peace with my conscience”
On the other hand, the father Alfredo Infante He stated that he was “at peace with his conscience,” to which he added that both defendants “have done nothing other than defend the right to life.”
“Especially of the young people in our neighborhoods who are victims of high lethality by police operations (…) Mr. Marino Alvarado and myself have demanded that the high number of alleged extrajudicial executions be investigated, 1,414 in 2021, all of young people of popular sectors. If we silenced this injustice and the pain of so many mothers, we would be in mortal sin. It is, therefore, also, for me, a matter of conscience and faith », he expressed.
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