The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, a country on the northern coast of South America, has previously been criticized by human rights organizations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. However, as per a new report, the human rights abuses in Venezuela may have increased under the guise of the coronavirus state of emergency.
Amnesty International’s report on Venezuela in 2019, stated that the country continued to experience an unprecedented human rights crisis that included extrajudicial executions, arbitrary detentions, excessive use of force and unlawful killings by the security forces in the country. In fact, the report mentioned that by the end of 2019, the total number of people who had fled Venezuela in search of international protection had reached 4.8 million.
Reports of such violations have continued to come in through 2020. Tomeu Vadell Recalde, a CITGO Petroleum Corporation executive had been arbitrarily detained by the Nicolás Maduro government. On March 18, 2020, he called his family briefly from a location he did not mention. This was his first contact with his family since intelligence agents took him away 42 days earlier. It should be noted that his lawyer had also been unable to speak with him and neither the lawyer nor Vadell’s family was able to confirm his whereabouts.
Speaking on this matter, José Miguel Vivanco, the Americas director at Human Rights Watch said, “It’s bad enough Venezuelan security forces have arbitrarily detained thousands of people, but they have also resorted to enforced disappearances – a perverse and globally prohibited crime in all circumstances – by deliberately hiding the whereabouts of people taken into custody.” Human Rights Watch reported that the enforced disappearance of Vadell is not an isolated case, but rather part of a pattern by Venezuelan authorities in recent years.
Now in July 2020, a new report from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights accused Venezuela's government of arbitrary detentions, forced disappearances and torture. Al Jazeera's Lucia Newman reported from Santiago, Chile on the matter.
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