·On August 8, 17 foreign affairs ministers from the
Americas met in Lima to address Venezuela’s crisis. Twelve of them signed a
comprehensive resolution, available here, that includes the following
statements: it condemns the rupture of democratic order and the systematic
violation of human rights in Venezuela, states they will not recognize the
Constituent Assembly nor its resolutions, expresses concern about the
humanitarian crisis and the government’s refusal to accept international aid,
and imposes an arms embargo on Venezuela.
·On July 31, the attorney general stated that since
early April, 121 people died in the context of demonstrations. Security agents
were responsible in at least 25 percent of the deaths, while armed groups were
responsible for an additional 40 percent.
·On July 30, the government went ahead with its vote to
elect members of the Constituent Assembly, which sets the stage for Maduro to
perpetuate himself in power, at the expense of Venezuelan democracy and the
rights of its people. Key leaders in the region and Europe stated they would
not recognize the Constituent Assembly.
·On July 21, following a July 16 plebiscite organized
by the opposition in which more than seven million Venezuelans opposed Maduro’s
proposal to establish a Constituent Assembly and supported the National
Assembly’s proposal to appoint new Supreme Court judges, the National Assembly
appointed 33 members to the court. Since then, one of them has been jailed,
another sought refuge in the Chilean embassy, and others fled the country,
following official threats.
·On July 19, OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro
published a third comprehensive report on Venezuela’s crisis.
·On July 4, the Venezuelan Supreme Court fired thedeputy attorney general that Attorney General Luisa Ortega Díaz had appointed
weeks earlier with the approval of the National Assembly, and appointed a
government loyalist, who is subject to US sanctions, to replace him. It also
held a public hearing to evaluate if Ortega would be removed from office, to
which Ortega did not attend.
·On July 4, the Attorney General said that 90 people
had died in the context of the protests, and more than 1500 were injured,
according to press accounts.
·On June 19, OAS member states failed to adopt a
resolution on Venezuela's crisis during the second foreign ministers meeting to
discuss the situation in the country.
·On May 31, the OAS held a meeting of foreign affairs
ministers to address Venezuela's crisis. After a several hours long meeting in
which most states expressed concern about the situation in the country,
participants suspended it without agreeing on the content of a joint
resolution.
·On May 24, Attorney General Luisa Ortega Díaz said the
number of people killed had risen to 55, and that a thousand people had been
injured. The Attorney General’s Office had charged 19 public officials for
their alleged responsibility in the violation of human rights, and 18 arrest
warrants had been issued but the suspects have not yet been detained.
·As of May 16, 38 people have been killed and 844 were
injured during incidents related to the protests in Venezuela, according to the
Attorney General’s Office. The media reported more deaths on May 15, putting
the death toll even higher.
·On May 15, the OAS Permanent Council decided it would
carry out a special meeting of foreign ministers to address the situation in
Venezuela on May 31. The meeting will take place at the OAS headquarters in
Washington, D.C.
·At least 200 people were injured during clashes that
erupted during a demonstration in Caracas on May 3 against the Maduro
administration, Reuters reported. Thousands had marched peacefully until they
were blocked by security forces. The death toll during incidents in Venezuela
rose to 34, Reuters said.
·On April 26, the Venezuelan Foreign Minister Delcy
Rodríguez announced that Venezuela would withdraw from the OAS. Under the OAS
Charter, the withdrawal will only have effects after two years.
·Between April 3-25, 26 people died in Venezuela in
“violent incidents,” 437 were injured, and 1.289 were detained, Attorney
General Luisa Ortega Díaz said.
·On April 21, the Attorney General’s Office said it was
investigating the death of 11 people, including a 17-year-old boy, and injuries
to six others in El Valle on April 20-21. Some victims were electrocuted, and
others were killed by a firearm. The office was also investigating the death of
another man who died in “a similar incident” in Petare, another poor area in
Caracas.
·On the evening of April 20, incidents of looting began
in El Valle, a hillside slum area in Caracas, according to the CaracasChronicles. Security forces were sent in to confront the looters, reportedly
alongside armed civilians with links to the government. Many social media
postings reproduced videos and audios of repeated gunfire, while others
reported that the Children’s and Maternity Hospital in the area had to be
evacuated after teargas entered the building. Local residents set up a series
of small, burning barricades to try to stop security forces and the armed
civilians from passing through, the Caracas Chronicles reported.
·Tens of thousands of Venezuelans who have reached a
breaking point over the country’s humanitarian and political crisis poured into
the streets all over the country on April 19. Security forces used force and
teargas against the anti-government demonstrators. Journalists covering the
protests said that security forces harassed them. The government took two cable
channels that reported on the protests off the air. More than 500 people were
detained nation-wide on April 19, reaching a total more than 1,000 detainees
since early April. Three people were killed on April 19, bringing the total
number of people dead in protests in April to nine. A second large,
anti-government demonstration on April 20 was met with more tear gas and
arrests.
·Meanwhile, despite government efforts to stop
demonstrations, the opposition and ordinary Venezuelan citizens have taken to
the streets to voice their discontent with the situation, including the Supreme
Court rulings, a recent decision by the Comptroller General’s Office to
disqualify opposition leader Henrique Capriles Radonski from running for office
for 15 years, and ongoing problems such as insecurity and shortages of food and
medicine. According to local sources, they have been met with excessive use of
force, including at least five cases where young men appear to have been killed
by security forces, and indiscriminate use of teargas, including throwing
teargas bombs into medical facilities and from a helicopter into the crowd. The
Venezuelan Penal Forum, a local group that provides legal support to detainees,
reported that 470 people were detained between April 4-14, including 168 who
were released before being brought before a judge. Other organizations have
informed about the detention of journalists and press workers who were covering
the protests, and of cases in which their work equipment and material was
confiscated by members of security forces and alleged armed groups of
civilians.
·The retractions, however, did not ease the
international pressure. On the contrary:
On April 1,
members of the Mercosur regional trade bloc—Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and
Uruguay— issued a joint statement in which they declared there had been a
“rupture of democratic order” in Venezuela. Citing Mercosur agreements that
protect fundamental rights and democracy, they urged Venezuela to ensure
effective separation of powers, respect human rights, carry out elections, and
free political prisoners.
After an
attempt by Bolivia to suspend another OAS Permanent Council meeting to discuss
the situation in Venezuela, a meeting in which 23 member states participated
took place on April 3. Nineteen states signed a resolution that, for the first
time, expressed “grave concern regarding the unconstitutional alteration of the
democratic order” in Venezuela, stated that the Supreme Court’s revisions did
not ensure a full restoration of democratic order, and decided to continue
monitoring the situation in Venezuela, opening the door to convene a
ministerial meeting. There were four abstentions, and no one voted against the
resolution.
·Hours later, the Supreme Court backtracked “in
response to the National Security Council’s exhortation,” the court said. But
in practice, it only reversed key provisions in the most recent rulings: the
broad language that it would take over all legislative powers, and the decision
to lift parliamentary immunity of opposition legislators. Every other ruling it
has adopted undermining the legislature’s powers since the opposition majority
took over the National Assembly in January 2016 remains in effect. This means
that every single law adopted by the Assembly that affects government’s
interests and was overturned by the court remains invalid, every power granted
to the government—including the one to sign oil deals without congressional
approval decided in the last controversial ruling—remains in place, and the
Supreme Court still considers legislators in contempt. There is also no reason
to believe the court will not continue to strike down every new law that is
passed.
·In response to Ortega Díaz’s statement, President
Nicolás Maduro convoked a meeting of the National Security Council to discussthe “discrepancy” between the attorney general and the Supreme Court. After
midnight, Vice President Tarek El Aissami read a statement adopted by the
council that “exhorted” the Supreme Court to “revise” the rulings to “maintain
institutional stability and a balance of powers.” Maduro soon after said the
“controversy” had been “resolved.”
·On March 31, in a rare statement of dissent, Attorney
General Luisa Ortega Díaz said that the two most recent Supreme Court rulings
“constituted a rupture of constitutional order.”
·The international reaction to these rulings was very
strong. Almagro said the rulings undermined the legislature, which had been
elected by popular vote, and many governments in the region criticized the
move, some who withdrew their ambassadors or called them back to the capitals.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights urged Venezuela to
preserve the separation of powers, and the Inter-American Commission on Human
Rights stated that the rulings were equivalent to annulling the popular vote by
which legislators were chosen.
·On March 29, the Venezuelan Supreme Court adopted a
second ruling allowing the government to create joint ventures with private
investors in the oil sector without congressional approval. Critically as part
of the ruling, the court argued that the National Assembly was in contempt of
the court’s prior decisions, including those stripping it of its powers. At the
end of the ruling, the court effectively shut down Congress, the only key
government institution that remained independent of executive control,
announcing that it would assume all legislative powers itself or choose some
other institution to delegate them to.
·On March 28, the OAS Permanent Council held a meeting
to discuss the situation in Venezuela. The Venezuelan representative tried,
with the support of a handful of allies (including Nicaragua and Bolivia), to
stop the meeting. He argued that debating the Venezuelan situation without the
government’s consent amounts to interference in Venezuela’s internal affairs, violating
the country’s sovereignty. Nonetheless, 20 member states voted to move forward
and delivered a message to the Venezuelan government that was loud and clear:
The ongoing economic, political, and humanitarian crisis is undermining human
rights and their democracy.
That day,
back in Venezuela, the Supreme Court ruled that a statement approved days
earlier by the opposition majority in the National Assembly, supporting the OAS
debate, constituted “actions that run counter to [Venezuela’s] independence and
national sovereignty.” The court ruled that the legislature’s statement may
constitute treason and warned that the legislators responsible would not enjoy
parliamentary immunity. It ordered the president to adopt “economic, military,
criminal, administrative, political, juridical, and social” measures that “he
deems pertinent and necessary to avoid a state of commotion.” These are broad
enough to include almost anything, but the court explicitly authorized
President Maduro to modify criminal laws, including the Code of Military
Justice, noting that “military crimes may be being committed.”
·On March 27, Delcy Rodríguez, the Venezuelan Foreign
Minister, spoke at the OAS Permanent Council, per request of the Venezuelan
government. She accused the OAS and Almagro of interfering with Venezuela’s
internal affairs, and Almagro of working for the US government and being a
“liar” and a “traitor.” Rodríguez said the debate on Venezuela’s compliance
with the Democratic Charter was a “campaign to destabilize Venezuela” and
threatened the government would adopt “severe actions” if the “aggressions”
continued.
That day, the Venezuelan Supreme Court issued a statement rejecting
Almagro’s report, supporting the government’s foreign policy, and calling on
the government to protect national sovereignty and consider proposing Almagro’s
removal to the OAS General Assembly.
·On March 14, 2017, OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro
published a comprehensive report on the Venezuela crisis, stating that the
Venezuelan government has breached its obligations under the Democratic
Charter. The report outlines previous efforts to promote a dialogue between the
government and the opposition, which were unable to deliver concrete results,
calls for the release of political prisoners, highlights abuses committed by
security forces, and describes the humanitarian crisis that is affecting
thousands of Venezuelans. It also includes a detailed account of Supreme Court
rulings that have endorsed rights-violating measures by the government and
undermined the National Assembly’s powers. The report calls on the Venezuelan
government to set a date for elections within 30 days, and argues that not
doing so opens the door to Venezuela’s suspension from the OAS.
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