Venezuela’s capital, Cairo (AP) Months after President Nicolas Maduro’s administration dismissed its employees for allegedly aiding terrorist organizations and coup plotters, the head of the U.N. office on human rights in Venezuela announced Friday that the agency has largely restarted operations in recent weeks.
In a speech to members of the 47-nation Human Rights Council in Geneva, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker T rk made the announcement and criticized the worsening circumstances in the South American nation after the July presidential election.
The political opposition and Maduro both assert that they won the referendum.
The excessive use of force and violence during the July and August post-election protests, notably by armed supporters of the government, continues to gravely worry me, T rk stated.
He stated that the imprisonment of about 2,000 people since the election has been confirmed by the authorities. The fact that many of these individuals—including teenagers and young adults, opposition members, human rights advocates, journalists, attorneys, and bystanders—were arbitrarily held worries me much.
In the midst of the turmoil that followed the July 28 election, he also demanded a swift and thorough investigation into the murders of over 20 individuals.
Amid increased worries that the government was suppressing actual or imagined opponents in an election year, the U.N. office in Venezuela’s capital, Caracas, was forced to close in February. The ruling came after a flurry of outrage both domestically and internationally over the imprisonment of a well-known human rights lawyer and her family.
The Maduro administration consented to work with the high commissioner in 2019 to set up the local technical advisory office.
In announcing the February ruling, Venezuela’s Foreign Affairs Minister Yvn Gil asserted that rather than advancing human rights, the 13-person office had turned into a private legal practice for terrorist organizations and coup plotters that constantly scheme against the nation.
Authorities did not offer any proof or cite a particular instance of this kind of behavior.
T rk expressed his optimism to the council on Friday that the Caracas office will soon be fully operating. T rk’s complaints of Venezuela’s human rights situation, however, do not auger well for the local office, according to Ambassador Alexander Ynez, Maduro’s envoy in Geneva.
“They do nothing to help this process,” Ynez stated, adding that the comments were self-serving tales from elements of Venezuela’s fascist opposition and that they undermine the independence, impartiality, and objectivity of the office’s work.
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