The decision not to report, even if it is taken to protect the victim, has serious consequences for both the detainee, their families and the processes of memory and collective registration
Venezuela’s time
Although cases of arrests and forced disappearances in the country have been visible in recent weeks, such as the family, such as the family Guillén or the activist Pedro Hernándezthere is an indeterminate number of people and families who choose to remain silent and not report.
While in some people weigh the fear of publicly denouncing these cases, deciding to travel by silence does not help; On the contrary, human rights defenders warn that it has serious repercussions for both victims and society in general.
To understand the dimension of this problem, Venezuela’s time She talked via telephone with the journalist and human rights defender Gabriela Buada, coordinator of the Human Calestoscope NGO, who deepened what this silence implies and the consequences it brings to Venezuelan society.
Fear, censorship and control policy in the repression cycle
Buada explains that fear in the Venezuelan context is a state policy designed to censor those who disagree and arbitrary detention, which often becomes a forced disappearance, is a key tool to maintain control.
Those who hold power, says Buada, use these acts to prevent persecution patterns from visible and so that cases go unnoticed. The strategy does not only seek to silence the victims, but also to society as a whole; Since making families not report for fear of reprisals, fear is consolidated as an indispensable element in the repression cycle.
This makes it difficult for lawyers and organizations to identify a case as a forced disappearance, although this crime is a violation of human rights and a crime against humanity.
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By spreading terror, who commit these acts manage to silence the victims and their families, which in turn allows these crimes to be impunity and that the official narrative is strengthened that “nothing is happening, that there are no political prisoners, that there are no forced disappearances, that there are no human rights violations.”
The decision not to report, even if it is taken to protect the victim, has serious consequences, which, in the opinion of the Human Caleidoscope Coordinator, the main risk is invisibility; Since when a case is not made public, the victim is even more vulnerable and his whereabouts becomes unknown.
Buada emphasizes that every second counts in the middle of a forced disappearance, especially if the victim is a woman, an older person or a teenager. In these cases, vulnerabilities increase, and the risks of psychological, sexual or other abuse become greater.
The role of human rights organizations
In an environment where silence is imposed as a policy, human rights organizations play a fundamental role and their responsibility, according to Buada, is to make visible and denounce what fear hides. Without the work of organizations and defenders, cases such as Rocío San Miguel or Pedro Hernández would not be known, and violations of freedom of expression would go unnoticed.
Experience demonstrates, says Buada, that silence only increases the vulnerability of the victims, and it is for this reason that they recommend approaching these organizations, since the public light and the pressure generated can be a determining factor for the safety of the person detained or disappeared.
He ensures that silence in the abuse has a devastating impact on society and that the normalization of horror generates social desensitization, where people get used to repression, torture and disappearances. It indicates that this causes the collective capacity to react and demand the rights to institutions.
Buada warns that if the crimes are not documented or visible, there is a risk that the history is rewritten by those who have power, which makes transitional justice impossible and prevents human rights violations from also repeating the new generations to become accustomed to injustice that perpetuates a cycle of violence.
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