An arrest, a tweet and two words, “forced disappearance,” unleashed a storm in a few hours that ended with Venezuela leaving the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.
The Venezuelan activist Rocío San Miguel She was arrested in Venezuela on Friday, February 9, along with her daughter, her daughter’s father, two brothers and an ex-partner.
Four days later, on Tuesday, February 13, the UN office published this tweet:
“#Venezuela: We follow with deep concern the arrest of human rights defender Rocío San Miguel. Her whereabouts remain unknown, which could qualify her detention as a forced disappearance. We urge her immediate release and respect for her right to legal defense.”
#Venezuela: We are following up on the detention of human rights defender Rocio San Miguel with deep concern. Her whereabouts remain unknown, potentially qualifying her detention as an enforced disappearance. We urge her immediate release & respect for her right to legal defense of her.
— UN Human Rights (@UNHumanRights) February 13, 2024
Although the High Commissioner had requested information on other occasions about detainees in Venezuela, this was the first time he used the term “forced disappearance” on their social media accounts to refer to a specific case.
That term infuriated the government of Nicolás Maduro, which cares much more about not being associated with human rights violations than about its legitimacy being doubted, as many Western governments do.
But the criticism from a UN body did not stop there.
The next day, Wednesday, February 14, the UN special rapporteur on the right to food, Michael Fakhricalled a press conference in Caracas to report on what he saw during a two-week visit to five states in Venezuela.
He said the Venezuelan government’s food distribution program, known as CLAP bags or boxes, was managed by some authorities as a “charitable alms” that “undermines the human dignity of recipients” and “has become susceptible to political clientelism and does not address the root causes of hunger and malnutrition in Venezuela.”
Fakhri assured that he was “seriously” concerned about prisoners in prisons, especially those who remain in police stations. “The authorities do not provide detainees with food, water, bathrooms or healthcare. These centers are inhuman and degrading and may constitute torture.”
In just 48 hours, the UN had criticized two sacred issues for President Maduro’s government: complaints about forced disappearances and the food distribution programaxis of its social assistance policies.
The expulsion
Three days after the High Commissioner’s tweet, on Thursday, February 15, the Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yvan Gil announced the expulsion of the 13 people who made up the office team in Venezuela and gave them 72 hours to leave the country.
The chancellor indicated that the High Commissioner’s office in Caracas had become “the private law firm of the coup and terrorist groups,” by maintaining “a biased and partial position to generate impunity for people who plan attacks and assassinations.”
The Venezuelan attorney general, Tarek William Saabhad already reported by then that San Miguel had been arrested and was being investigated for her alleged participation in “White Bracelet”, a conspiracy to assassinate Maduro.
However, she had not given explanations about the irregularities reported by San Miguel’s lawyers: why she was detained with her relatives; why they denied at the beginning of her detention that she was in Helicoide, the intelligence service prison; and why she was kept in isolation for ten days, without contact with relatives or defenders of her.
“Within the corresponding legal periods and in strict compliance with respect for human rights and constitutional guarantees, the presentation hearing was held prior to an arrest warrant,” Saab justified in a press conference.
“How do you explain that until now there are people saying that there was a forced disappearance?” he said when questioning the High Commissioner and the more than 200 local non-governmental organizations that protested the activist’s case.
The Inter-American Convention on the Forced Disappearance of Persons indicates that this crime combines three elements: the deprivation of liberty against the person’s will, the participation of government officials and the refusal to recognize the deprivation of liberty or the concealment of the fate or whereabouts of the missing person.
San Miguel directs Citizen Control, an NGO that promotes the oversight of the Venezuelan armed forces. The Public Ministry accused her of the crimes of treason, conspiracy, terrorism and association.
One of his relatives remains detained and the relatives were released, subjected to a regime of appearance before the courts and prohibited from leaving Venezuela.
Four days after the chancellor’s announcement, on Monday, February 19, Maduro confirmed that the office staff had left the country on Saturday, February 17. And he changed the terms of the expulsion: “Until they rectify, ask for forgiveness and a relationship of respect can be reestablished, that technical office will not return to Venezuela.”
The creation of the office
The office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights was installed in Caracas in mid-2019, after a visit by the former Chilean president. Michelle Bachelet, who then held the position of High Commissioner.
Concerned about reports of human rights violations in the country, the government agreed to have the High Commissioner’s office settle in Venezuela and monitor the situation in order to cooperate and avoid new negative accusations that would tarnish its image in the world.
The Maduro government wanted to put an end to what it considered a “selective and openly biased view of the true human rights situation.”
But the establishment of the office did not prevent the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Venezuela, a UN mechanism with a separate mandate from the High Commissioner’s office, from investigating and documenting cases of extrajudicial executions, forced disappearances, arbitrary detentions, torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment committed since 2014.
That year the first protests against the Maduro government were recorded in which there were dozens of deaths and injuries.
The president of the independent mission, Marta Valiñas, warned that the way in which San Miguel and his relatives were detained responds to a pattern that mission investigators detected in testimonies from other victims of human rights violations.
That was not the language of the High Commissioner’s office, which was much more considered and publicly less critical.
Until the tweet arrived after San Miguel’s arrest.
The departure of office staff comes at a time of high tension in Venezuela waiting to know the final date of the presidential elections.
The government denounces an alleged conspiracy against Maduro amid national and international pressure to demand that he be lifted the political disqualification of María Corina Machadochosen as the opposition candidate to challenge Maduro in the presidential elections.
What does the exit entail?
Lawyer Alí Daniels, director of the Venezuelan NGO Acceso a la Justicia, explained that the expulsion of the office staff eliminates the “only impartial and independent body in the country” to which victims of human rights violations in Venezuela could go. .
“It was a place to listen to the victims. There was no fear there. They were not only listened to, they were believed. That was an essential factor for the victims because it was an act of justice. And being in Caracas was a huge advantage that is now lost.”
Daniels said the office could also intercede with the government in certain cases, obtaining releases and the cessation of violations. “They could do more than us,” he said, referring to local activists.
Sociologist Ligia Bolívar, who was founder of the NGO Provea and is a researcher at the Human Rights Center of the Andrés Bello Catholic University, pointed out that the office’s greatest contribution was “accompanying prisoners and families”.
“The government is secretive, it does not establish bridges or interaction with NGOs because it does not recognize their work. The office made the link between political and common prisoners and their families with the authorities and important actions were achieved from a humanitarian point of view.”
Bolívar specified that although the office’s capacity for action decreases because it is not in Venezuela, it can maintain its work from other locations. “What the government is trying to avoid is international monitoring. From now on it will be done remotely, as is the case with other countries like Nicaragua.”
BBC Mundo requested an interview with the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turkto find out the next steps of the instance, but did not receive a response by the date of publication of this story.
Nutritionist Susana Raffalli, activist for the right to food, recalled that the office built “a meeting space between civil society actors that is now lost” and constituted “a source of structured information about the country for the Council of UN Human Rights”.
Raffalli warned that the campaign “I am Rocío” and “We are all Rocío” It not only implies an act of solidarity with the activist, but also the recognition that anyone in Venezuela can be a victim of an arrest like the one in San Miguel.
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