The former vice president who has been kidnapped for 700 days by the Paraguayan guerrilla

Former Paraguayan Vice President Óscar Denis (2012-2013) has already served 700 days in the power of the Paraguayan People’s Army (EPP) guerrilla, his daughter, Beatriz Denis, recalled on Wednesday, who considered “it’s time” to have information about the situation of her father, now 76 years old.

“Twenty-three months ago they kidnapped dad,” said Beatriz Denis, reading a statement from her family from the seat of Congress. Denis, who was vice president during the period of President Federico Franco (of the Authentic Radical Liberal Party-PLRA), was detained on September 9, 2020 at his ranch in the department of Concepción (northeast).

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“We want results, we are already disappointed,” said the daughter of the former governor of Concepción, consulted by journalists. Specifically, she asked to know the real condition of her father: “If he is no longer there, what did they do with him? Where did they leave him? And if he is, well, where is he?,” she said.

His daughter indicated that they are “days away” from the two-year anniversary of the kidnapping of a former vice president, former governor, former deputy, former senator, but above all of a Paraguayan.

“It’s time we knew something,” she claimed. In their message, the daughters of the former vice president claimed to have negotiated “with terror,” begged “the State to fulfill its duty” and have taken refuge in faith during all this time.

In addition, they said they had joined “other daughters and mothers of those kidnapped” by the EPP, such as the policeman Edelio Morínigo, in captivity since July 2014, and the rancher Félix Urbieta, kidnapped in October 2016.

The Denis family complained that “those responsible for the security” of these three hostages continue “until now to receive only excuses.”

“More than ever, it is clear that the government prioritizes partisan politics over the safety of Paraguayans,” said the Denis family, who say they had appealed, six months after the former official’s kidnapping, to the High Commissioner for United Nations Human Rights for help and received their solidarity.

In this context, they observed with “sadness and pain the partisanship of public affairs, and the open disdain for any problem that is not conserving or expanding spaces of power.”

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