Venezuelan opposition denounces “new wave of repression” after new arrests

Two members of Vente Venezuela, the party of Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, were arrested this Monday, bringing to five the number of people arrested since Friday.

Gabriel González, a member of the Vente Venezuela press team, and Javier Cisneros, national youth coordinator, later released, were intercepted by intelligence agents this Monday when they went out to buy lunch near the party’s main headquarters in Caracas, Machado said. .

The young people “are being linked to a file in which they are accused of inciting hatred and association to commit a crime” for having accompanied the presidential candidate Edmundo González Urrutia to an activity in the state of La Guaira, according to the opposition leader.

The prosecutor’s office has not publicly referred to the arrests.

“What we are experiencing right now in Venezuela is the regime criminalizing the electoral route, criminalizing the electoral activity and the campaign,” Machado said in a press conference in which he assured that 37 political leaders, as well as social leaders, have been detained. so far this year.

Over the weekend, Juan Iriarte, leader of Vente Venezuela in the state of La Guaira, the youth leader of the Voluntad Popular party Jeancarlos Rivas and Luis López, journalist and state liaison of the communications center of the opposition campaign command, were arrested.

Ten close collaborators de Machado, who is touring the country campaigning for González, with more than 50% voting intention, are arrested for allegedly being involved in the organization of alleged destabilizing plans. Six other members of his party are sheltered in the Argentine embassy in Caracas.

Machado insisted that none of the detainees have committed crimes and stressed that they have evidenced arbitrary detentions and forced disappearances.

“They have been denied the right to defense, imposing a public defender against their will. I must say that the public defender who has most of the detainees is a person who has dedicated himself to telling them that if they accuse me of being directly responsible for the crimes that are supposedly involved, they would be released,” the opposition leader warned.

González maintained that the recent actions violate the agreements on electoral guarantees signed by the government and the opposition in Barbados and insisted that they will denounce the “new attack” of the government in all the corresponding international bodies.

“They affect the normal development of the electoral campaign that has not even formally begun, it is about creating a hostile environment before the official start of the campaign,” the presidential candidate warned at a press conference with Machado.

In recent days, the government has accused the opposition of seeking to install a matrix of electoral “fraud” in the elections with the aim of promoting violence, but the opposition insists that it seeks a peaceful transition through voting.

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