A group of nine countries urged this Friday at the LII General Assembly of the Organization of American States (OAS) for the “immediate and unconditional release of all political prisoners” in Venezuela.
Source: EFE
“(The group of nine countries) The immediate and unconditional release of all political prisoners is urgently needed.to stop the harassment, respect political parties, freedom of expression, including that of the press, and restore full respect for human rights and individual freedoms,” said the Canadian Ambassador to the OAS, Hugh Adsett.
Adsett explained that he was speaking on behalf of the heads of delegation from Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala, United States, Paraguay and Uruguay who have attended the LII period of sessions of the OAS General Assembly, which concludes today in Lima.
They also expressed their concern over reports of “systematic human rights violations that continue to occur in Venezuela and that aggravate the social and economic crises”
Adsett mentioned a 2021 report from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) that “concludes that the erosion of the rule of law in Venezuela creates a climate of systematic human rights violations.”
“(The IACHR) considers that the co-optation of public power at the head of the government and the erosion of the rule of law created an environment conducive to the systematic commission of serious violations of human rights,” said the report.
In this sense, the IACHR explained that it has documented “the repeated practice of judicial executions of young men in a situation of poverty, arbitrary arrests of people who protest or publicly assume positions of dissent with the Executive Power, forced disappearances, as well as torture and other cruel treatment in contexts of deprivation of liberty.
The Canadian ambassador also mentioned the reports of the UN Independent International Mission for Venezuela, which last September accused the civil and military intelligence of that country (the Sebin and the Dgcim, respectively) of committing crimes against humanity to repress the political dissidence, through a modus operandi of abuse dictated “from the highest level”.
He also recalled that In November 2021, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Karim Khan, opened a formal investigation into the country for possible human rights violations.
For all these reasons, the group of nine countries called for “supporting the renewal” of the independent mission and called for a “deep investigation to bring justice and clarify the truth.”
