At the Caracas airport, the flights of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, and Venezuelan General Miguel Rodríguez Torres, former head of Intelligence of the Nicolás Maduro regime, who has just been released thanks to the humanitarian efforts of former Spanish President Rodríguez Zapatero.
The commissioner arrived in Venezuela invited by the Government and with the plan of inquiring into how opponents are treated there.
The general was flying to Spain, where he has been granted temporary residence.
Türk's doctor's language during his 72-hour visit, governed by the precautions of his high office, recalled that of his predecessor, Bachelet: "I am here to listen, the closed-door interview with Maduro was frank and cordial, I they have promised to stop torturing at night and only do it during office hours, the testimonies of the victims tortured while they were arbitrarily detained are, as always, very moving, these things should not happen in any country in the world” and things like that .
Every time these overlords from international organizations go to Venezuela and talk to the press after a set-up with Maduro and his cut throats, it seems to me that CNN, Deutsche Welle and AFPTV could well superimpose on their audio the “badap-beep- badapbap-badapbip” by Sonny Corleone scornfully mimicking Virgil Solozzo's peace offers in
The Godfather
.
Whether deliberately scheduled or not, the truth is that visits by high commissioners are surrounded by circumstances so macabre that they shamefully compromise the seriousness of the visitors.
The last time Bachelet visited Caracas in a "factual discovery mission" the henchmen of the regime tested the facial musculature of the UN official by torturing a young Navy officer kidnapped by them.
They took him in a wheelchair before a Cacaseno judge who was unable to find out what he was accused of because the detainee literally died in his presence.
He only managed to say "I'm dying".
All this while Bachelet watched the local news on the censored TV at the hotel.
The truth must be honored and, certainly, Bachelet left a permanent mission to establish the facts installed in Caracas on that occasion, which, also honoring the truth, the authorities of the regime have treated with their usual lack of pressure and self-confidence.
General Rodríguez Torres, creator of the infamous torture chambers known as “the tombs”, had been in prison for almost five years accused of conspiring against his family.
During the 2017 protests that resulted in more than 100 murders, still unpunished, in a few weeks at the hands of the repressive forces commanded by General Rodríguez Torres, this heartless man even encouraged the use of weapons of war in the repression of peaceful protesters.
Venezuelans have been able to read on social networks a statement from the general's relatives in gratitude for the good offices that worked in his release, in addition to Zapatero, Colombian President Gustavo Petro and the Pope together with well-known figures from the Venezuelan opposition who Do they negotiate?, do they become intimate?, do they make friends?
in Mexico in search of conditions for free elections in Venezuela.
I'm talking about Gerardo Blyde, head of the commission, and Stalin González.
Also officiating the clemency measure were several notorious supporters of the primary elections that, in theory, will appoint the opposition presidential candidate in 2024.
The opposition gossips in Caracas, Miami and the Salamanca neighborhood cross each other when they see Blyde's name in the statement and it has even been stated that, unless his mediation is not true, with the statement they "window" to the severe doctor, head of the negotiators, as Maduro's collaborationist panhandler.
The grotesque thing in all this is that Blyde supports a humanitarian initiative for a human rights violator at the same time that the regime unleashes an annihilating offensive against NGOs with Nicaraguan characteristics.
Beautiful Mexican word is "window", eloquent and sonorous.
However, I see in this window the opportunity, rather, to demand that the opposition spokesmen take the humanitarian demand to the extreme and demand the freedom of Javier Tarazona, an eminent defender of human rights who will soon serve six hundred days in detention without trial and in such precarious health that he fears that he will die in captivity.
A good way for the unhappy Venezuelan opposition to recover, in part at least, the lost credit in the eyes of their compatriots is to forcefully demand a total amnesty for the more than one hundred hostages of the regime.
Many of them have been since General Rodríguez Torres imprisoned them, tortured them, and threw them into their dungeons.
Achieving her full freedom, conditioning the intercession of Blyde and her colleagues before Washington for the lifting of sanctions on her and only her, may mitigate, and I emphasize the “perhaps”, all the universal contempt that they have earned with their good offices on behalf of of an abhorred repressive military man.
Subscribe here to the EL PAÍS America
newsletter
and receive all the latest news from the region
Subscribe to continue reading
Read without limits
Keep reading
I'm already a subscriber