RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The figure is staggering: almost 3,000 people were killed in Venezuela by police and military forces last year. The shocking number is based on a report by the Venezuelan Program for Human Rights Education-Action (PROVEA) and the Gumilla Center.
The study indicates that at least 2,853 people were victims of deadly violence by the armed forces of the Venezuelan State. And it emphasizes that these are “serious human rights violations that could represent crimes against humanity.”
PROVEA and the Gumilla Center released their 2020 report, in which they pointed out that most of the victims were poor young people, between 18 and 30 years of age, “a pattern of growing discrimination against the lives of young Venezuelans.” The FAES were the most lethal police force and Zulia the state with the most victims: 667.
The report
One of the most shocking conclusions in the report is that the high number of victims due to the actions of Venezuelan police and military forces exceeds the number of deaths caused by the coronavirus in the Caribbean country, according to the regime’s official pandemic figures. “Venezuela’s police and military forces were more lethal than Covid-19 during the year 2020”, the document underlines.
It specifies that a total of 2,853 people were victims of the lethality of the Venezuelan State’s armed forces and that this amounts to serious human rights violations that could represent “crimes against humanity.”
“The majority of the victims were young people from popular sectors, between 18 and 30 years of age, which suggests a pattern of discrimination that endangers the lives of people in this age group. This fact, along with the exclusion in their access to other rights such as education and work, among others, shows the growing forced migration of young people seeking protection in other countries. In a country that has lost its demographic advantage, this pattern of executions deepens the complex humanitarian emergency that the country is experiencing,” the report stresses.
It then states that “not even the alleged ‘forced’ confinement due to the quarantine decreed by the national executive as a result of the coronavirus pandemic slowed down the actions of the police and military forces.”
The authors of the report stated that monitoring made it possible to determine that the thousands of victims of institutional violence in Venezuela are the consequence of a State policy that combines support from the highest authorities for the commission of abuses and structural impunity as a result of the monopolization of the justice administration system by the ruling party’s political project.
“Officers act with complete freedom because they are certain that their conduct will not be investigated or punished, and because they have the backing of governors, ministers and other high-ranking public officials,” they argue.
They then referred to the case occurred last August 21st, when officers of the Bolivarian National Police attached to the Special Actions Forces component (FAES), murdered citizens Andrés Eloy Nieves Zacarías and Víctor Manuel Torres, workers of Guacamaya TV broadcaster in the state of Zulia, a media outlet that maintains a profile of support to Nicolás Maduro’s regime.
“To the relief of the victims’ families, the Prosecutor’s Office acted quickly and four days later the 6 officers allegedly responsible for the crime were arrested,” it recalls.
Two months earlier, in the early morning of June 11th, the FAES killed 5 people in the El Limón sector in Caracas, Arquímedes Ramón Martínez, Andri Narváez, Roger Blanco, Pedro Pablo Salcedo and Wilmer Yáñez. This last victim was the bodyguard of Minister Iris Valera, who denounced what happened and demanded an investigation. Within 48 hours of the events, the alleged perpetrators were arrested.
PROVEA states that in both cases there is a common element: “the victims were linked to the official political project, and although they were victims of police lethality, their relatives had access to justice, which defines a discriminatory pattern that relies on the link to the power faction and renders justice a discretionary process.”
Then, the NGO highlights that in Venezuela “the majority of the population does not enjoy political support and, therefore, is excluded from access to the right to an investigation to clarify the facts and punish those possibly responsible for extrajudicial executions.”
And it adds: “For them, for now, only impunity is guaranteed. The version of ‘alleged conflict’ is almost always used and, consequently, the Prosecutor’s Office does not conduct the investigations it should, recurrently violating due process.”
The report points out that the states in which the population suffered most severely from institutional violence by the police and military were, in order of lethality, Zulia, Aragua, Bolivar, Lara, Carabobo and Miranda.
In the whole of 2020, the state of Zulia registered the highest number of deaths with 667, followed by Aragua with 297, Bolivar with 269 deaths and Lara with 193. “In many cases, relatives or neighbors denied the clash version,” states the document.
It then recalls that one of the cases that most shocked public opinion in Carabobo state was the murder of Daniel Alexander López Ramírez (28), a community doctor, director of the Bucaral outpatient clinic in the municipality of Guacara. He was killed during a joint operation conducted in the town of Guacara.
The official version stated that López Ramírez was a member of a criminal group and died when clashing with police officers who entered a house located in the Tesoro del Indio neighborhood, Guacara municipality, in search of alleged criminals.
The information was denied by López’s relatives, who said that the doctor was there because he had been kidnapped by members of a criminal gang to attend to the wounds of one of their colleagues. Lopez’s family assured that the doctor did not clash with the police force.
PROVEA emphasizes that the Bolivarian National Police (PNB), mainly through its elite Special Action Forces (FAES), is the most lethal police force. In the first six months of the year, the PNB was responsible for 672 murders, representing 23.55% of the total.
It is closely followed by the Scientific, Criminal and Criminalistic Investigations Corps (CICPC) with 593 cases, equivalent to 17.52% of the total. In the last two years, public debate has focused on the responsibility of this body in the hundreds of alleged executions that have taken place in the country. Accusations have been focused on the FAES since, acting in fewer states of the country, it is the security force that most violates the right to life, the report stresses.
It then specifies that the state police were responsible for 721 alleged executions, equivalent to 25.71%. “The lethality of the police of Zulia state responsible for 262 murders, Aragua with 104 and Carabobo state with 101 deaths is striking,” it added.
The Bolivarian National Armed Force (FANB) is responsible for 359 cases, mostly the responsibility of the Bolivarian National Guard (GNB). “The significant increase in the number of cases for which the FANB is responsible is striking,” indicates PROVEA; while stating that it was able to identify the involvement of the FANB in 55 alleged executions in 2019.
Finally, the report highlights that in 2020 the various media outlets reported the denunciations of 103 people, whose relatives or neighbors assured that they had been detained alive, but later turned up dead.
As for the numbers of executions by the FAES (elite corps of the PNB) 635 deaths are attributed in total, or 22.26%, with the fact that the overwhelming majority of victims are young men. The average age was 28.39 years, considering that the age of 228 victims was unknown. Three FAES officers were killed in the 462 alleged clashes.
Source: infobae