On August 6 and 7, the periodic review of the combined 22nd to 24th reports of Venezuela was held before the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (hereinafter “the Committee”) within the framework of its 113th session, in Geneva. AlertaVenezuela, together with the Human Rights Centre of the Universidad Católica Andrés Bello, sent an alternative report to the Committee and participated in person with advocacy activities.
This periodic review by the Committee, unlike previous ones, is of strategic importance. It is the first dialogue between the State and an international human rights organization while it is carrying out a new wave of generalized repression against the civilian population, in the context of post-electoral demonstrations. The crime of political persecution committed by the State has resulted – at the time of writing this article – in at least 24 people killed, more than 1,000 people detained/disappeared – including 100 minors -, hundreds of people injured, censored and monitored, and beyond these figures, in a crisis of unprecedented dimensions both in terms of its scale and its impact on the population.
Although the Committee did not refer to the local context, it did take it into account when starting its statements by warning the State that it had received “worrying information about the safety of human rights defenders, including reprisals taken against people who cooperate with the Committee,” alluding to the case of Yendri Velásquez, who was held incommunicado at Maiquetía airport and had his passport revoked just before traveling to Geneva. Along the same lines, the Committee should have asked the State to respect its privacy policy since it had proceeded to take photos and videos of representatives of civil society without consent, as occurred with the General Coordinator of AlertaVenezuela, Ligia Bolivar. The State carried out persecution practices before and during the dialogue with the Committee itself, which are part of its current plan of political repression.
The interactive dialogue in Geneva took place in the context of this wave of State repression. The Committee, among its concerns, pointed to the lack of investigations into crimes committed against indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples in the Amazon; the use of the hate law to “deny democracy”; the lack of an institutional profile of the Ombudsman’s Office and its role in relation to indigenous and Afro-descendant communities; the “significant disparities in terms of social rights such as health, food and employment of these populations” and their low levels of political participation and representation in the State. The Committee also insisted on internal displacements, requesting information on the main causes and measures adopted to prevent them.
A serious incident was the open criminalization of the Yukpa indigenous people by the Director General for the Protection of Human Rights, prosecutor Karin García, seeking to justify the repression they have suffered at the hands of state security forces. The Yukpa are one of the most deprived indigenous peoples and affected by the crisis of services and diseases in the Serranía de Perijá, in the state of Zulia. When questioned by the Committee, the prosecutor said that the Yukpa had gone to Caracas demanding payment for some crafts, “but they carried out violent acts (…) blocking public roads, setting fire to vehicles, demanding a sum of money.” She then clarified that a criminal investigation determined that “these people are protected by organizations that finance them to perform these mobilizations, thereby achieving isolated and violent actions that threaten the security of the nation.” It is unacceptable that the Venezuelan State not only criminalizes an unarmed indigenous people, but also attempts to reconstruct them as a “threat to the nation” for exercising their right to peaceful protest.
As is its established practice, the State did not respond to most of the specific questions formulated by the Committee, but only to those more open ones that allowed it to elaborate on policies, institutions or the social context “because of the sanctions”. When it comes to addressing specific human rights violations or risks, the State either evades the question or answers with a generality, or even criminalises or disinforms. The State’s diplomatic line broadly reflects its lack of cooperation with the international community on human rights, which is consistent with its unwillingness to prosecute those responsible and comply with the Rome Statute.
This is the same State that issues: i) statements such as “bloodbath”, arrests to “cleanse society” or “we stay in power by hook or by crook”; ii) laws that are increasingly restrictive of civic space such as “the law against fascism”, “the law against hatred” and “the law of control and regulation of NGOs”; iii) recurring increases in massive violations of human rights during election periods against real or perceived dissidents – that is, against the entire population; and, in short, iv) a sustained failure to comply with a compendium of recommendations issued by the Inter-American Commission and Court of Human Rights for more than 20 years, as well as by the Fact-Finding Mission, the United Nations Special Procedures, the Office of the High Commissioner and other human rights protection bodies.
This is a historic moment for the international community to intensify its political efforts within the framework of international law to promote the democratic transition that the country formalized on July 28, while protecting the civilian population in the process. It is fundamental to explore and exhaust all legitimate mechanisms to support the demands of the population to allow the installation of an elected government and stop its own crisis.