Venezuela suspends UN Human Rights office amid international concern

2024-02-15 19:31:38

Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yvan Gil announced on Thursday that he was ‘suspending the activities’ of the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in the country. He ordered his staff to leave within 72 hours.

The OHCHR, headed by Volker Türk, expressed its ‘deep concern’ on the his immediate release and respect for his right to defense.

Minister Gil denounced the ‘inappropriate role that this institution has developed, which far from showing itself as an impartial entity, has led it to become the private office of putschists and terrorists who constantly plot once morest the country’.

The suspension will remain in effect ‘until they publicly rectify before the international community their colonialist, abusive attitude that violates the United Nations Charter,’ he added.

‘Fierce campaign’

Ms. San Miguel, of Venezuelan and Spanish nationality, is accused of ‘treason’, ‘terrorism’ and ‘conspiracy’, because she is ‘directly linked’ to an attack which aimed to assassinate President Nicolas Maduro, according to the Attorney General of Venezuela Tarek William Saab, who on Tuesday castigated ‘a ferocious campaign waged from abroad once morest the Venezuelan justice and state’.

The European Union and the United States had also expressed their ‘concern’ regarding the fate of the lawyer, NGO director and specialist in military issues, arrested on February 9 at Caracas airport. Her ex-husband was also detained in this conspiracy case for which 19 people were arrested.

The office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights was established in Venezuela in 2019, under the leadership of former OHCHR President Michelle Bachelet. Its main task is to ‘provide support for the effective implementation of the recommendations made’ in the reports that the High Commissioner presents to the Human Rights Council.

Since 2019, there have been at least six reports on the situation in Venezuela.

Volker Türk visited Venezuela in January 2023, at the invitation of Caracas, and spoke with President Nicolas Maduro to discuss the human rights situation in the country.

Mr. Türk and his delegation also met NGOs, representatives of civil society and victims denouncing ‘systematic violations’.

‘Wave of repression’

The United Nations Human Rights Council, an intergovernmental body of the United Nations made up of 47 states, established, also in 2019, an independent fact-finding mission on the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.

In a report on Tuesday, the mission denounced a ‘wave of repression once morest opponents’ which is intensifying in the country.

According to the president of the fact-finding mission, Marta Valinas, ‘these are not isolated incidents, but rather a series of events that appear to be part of a coordinated plan to silence critics and alleged opponents’.

Francisco Cox, a member of the mission, argued that ‘the Venezuelan state has violated the human rights of dozens of people by investigating groups of alleged conspirators, depriving those investigated, detained and pursuit of the most basic rights’.

‘If the State has the right to investigate, it must do so with full respect for human rights and without committing international crimes,’ he added, with particular reference to ‘detentions and threats of detention of members of the National Primaries Commission, as well as activists of the political party that won the opposition primary elections, and the disqualification of political leaders, including opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, from public office’ .

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