The government of Venezuela continues with its policy of a strong hand against crime.
Last weekend, a police operation , which included members of the controversial police force FAES (Special Actions Force of the Bolivarian National Police) , left 23 killed in a neighborhood of Caracas, according to Provea, an NGO for the defense of Human Rights.
The Provea figure is based on data from the police itself and from the families, who are already beginning to report “ executions. ”
Until this Tuesday, the Venezuelan government had not given its version of what happened.
“ There are no comments for now, ”he said. A spokesman for the Public Ministry told BBC Mundo about the events in La Vega.
The attorney general, Tarek William Saab , did not respond to the request of comments from BBC Mundo.
The Ministry of the Interior, Justice and Peace did not respond to the request of BBC Mundo.
What is known?
Since Friday night and during the weekend, on social networks the neighbors published videos of the arrival of members of the FAES, heavily armed, to the La Vega neighborhood, in the west of the Venezuelan capital, and the subsequent confrontations.
“The focus was mainly on La Zulia, which is a fairly long street in contact with Las Torres, which is a territorially strategic area. because whoever controls it also controls the southwest mouth of Caracas, which is an important corridor ”, assures BBC Mundo Andrés, a neighbor and social leader of the community who prefers to use a fictitious name for fear of reprisals.
Marino Alvarado , Provea’s research coordinator, described what happened as a “massacre” and spoke of 23 dead.
“The confrontation was in the lower part (of La Vega), but still in the upper part, where I live, the detonations were heard, they lived a lot of anxiety, we were in a lot of tension during the confrontations, “Amaranta, a neighbor of the area, told BBC Mundo by phone who also prefers not to give her real name.
” There is still a lot of presence of the FAES even in the upper part, “said the woman on Monday night, who during the clashes tried not to leave the house, keep her family away from the windows, not play music and lower the volume of the television” to that they did not realize that there were people. ”
Marino Alvarado assured that the 23 dead are the highest toll of victims since the Venezuelan state started the call Operation for the Liberation of the People (OLP) , a controversial hard-line policy against crime in one of the most violent countries in the world.
The neighbor of La Vega, a traditionally quieter parish than others in the area, fears for her adolescent children, who are often the target of these operations because they are considered suspected of belonging to the gangs.
“They frighten them and tell them: Shut up or I’ll sow you. And how do I tie some teenagers to the leg of the bed? “, She said worried.
There are no details about which gang the police acted against, although it could be that of the” Coqui ” , based on the nearby area of La Cota 905 and that it is one of the most dangerous in Caracas and the ones with the greatest territorial control.
How common are these operations?
Operations such as La Vega are common in Caracas and other parts of the country.
In popular neighborhoods, the absence of the State is denounced and control by bands is common. Between April and May, clashes between armed groups were recorded in Petare, the largest popular neighborhood in Latin America.
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Subsequently, the bodies and security forces of the State took action against the gang of “Wilexis”.
In the Cota 891, near La Vega, in recent months clashes between the police and the “Coqui” gang were also common.
At the end of 2020, the Venezuelan Violence Observatory (OVV) published its annual report in which it highlighted the decrease in deaths s regarding 2019 for the coronavirus pandemic in a country that, however, continues to be the one with the highest number of violent deaths in Latin America: 11. 891 in 2020, that is to say 45, 6 for each 100. 10 population.
The great novelty of the report is that of the total number of violent deaths, one 35. 5% went to the police , in what is classified as “resistance to authority” , a figure higher than that of homicides.
“For the first time, more were killed by the police than those killed by the criminals ”, said Roberto Briceño-León, president of the OVV.
According to Provea’s calculations, from 2010 to August 2020 more of 27, 000 people have been assassinated by police and military agencies, “with significant growth in the last five years since the OLP emerged.”
What is the OLP?
Since the government of Venezuela c rejoined in July 2015 the Operation for the Liberation of the People (OLP) , complaints of murders and disappearances at the hands of the police have increased.
July 2015 to February 2017 the government said there was 245 victims and 2, 310 detained. Then he stopped making the count public.
The PLO, in which civil and military special forces participate, was born on 13 of July of 2016 as a new plan against the crime, but there is no official and public document that details its methodology or its goals, the human rights organizations denounce.
The president, Nicolás Maduro , then said that the objective was “to maximize the punishment of all crimes.”
And the OLP has hit especially in the neighborhoods more The poor, the most violent, where the presence of the State is scarce and where the police are the enemy of the gangs.
These gangs were given the so-called “peace zones”, sectors in which they can exercise control in exchange for guaranteeing security.
” But that has been spreading to dynamics of territorial control and it has escaped the State’s hands, “says La Vega’s social leader to BBC Mundo.
The State’s response against violence has been more violence.
What are the FAES?
It is the group of The police most feared for their firepower and for their deployment with long weapons, hoods and even masks with the symbol of the skull.
They are the commandos of the Special Actions Force of the Bolivarian National Police of Venezuela, an elite unit activated in 2017 by direct order of President Maduro.
His mission, said the president, is to “protect the people against crime.”
In June 2019, the Office of theUnited Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet , documented dozens of cases of extrajudicial executions in the country, something that residents of La Vega also denounced this weekend.
Bachelet’s report included among its final recommendations the dissolution of the FAES and the opening of an independent investigation into their actions that would attend to the victims.
A few days after the report was made public, Maduro appeared in a ceremony with members of the FAES.
“Long live the FAES! “, He proclaimed.
In September of last year the report of the United Nations Mission to Determine the Facts in Venezuela said that” there are reasonable grounds “to believe that both the President Maduro and the ministers of Interior and Defense contributed to the commission of crimes that fall within the category of against humanity.
“The authorities gave essential assistance, including material, logistics and human resources, which was necessary for the security and intelligence operations that resulted in the commission of the crimes, ”says the report.
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The government assured that the report is full of “falsehoods”, but in recent months it has been working on Close with Bachelet’s office.
Also in September, Bachelet spoke about human rights in Venezuela and insisted, among other things, on the actions of the FAES.
“I am concerned about the high numbers of deaths of young people in marginalized neighborhoods as a result of security operations. Based on an open source analysis, my office recorded 711 deaths from June to August, reaching more than 2, 000 deaths since January 2020 ”, said the former president of Chile.
“The Public Ministry reported that recently 70 officials of the FAES in different states of the country, ”said Bachelet about the prosecution’s actions.
Bachelet’s words highlighted that there was a certain reaction from the State to punish the excesses of these operations.
In fact, the prosecutor, Tarek William Saab , publicly admitted the excesses of a body that, nevertheless, continues to operate.
“Now the modality is kidnapping promoted by police officers. There are two defendants linked to the FAES again, “Saab said in November on state television.
” I do not understand what is happening with the FAES. Are 800 or 1, 10 police officers. It is a rotten lie that for them they have been reduced crime rates have gone, “he added, downplaying the alleged role of the body in the strategy against crime.
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