In Venezuela, torture became a daily practice in the security forces.
However, recently, in the South American country, they have taken another step that would fit a definition of institutional sadism.
The Directorate of Military Counterintelligence began a public relations operation to wash away the bad reputation, well earned by applying “beatings with objects, electric shocks, asphyxiation with plastic bags and stress positions, as well as forms of psychological torture, such as
white torture”,
according to testimonies of 122 victims, interviewed by the Independent Fact Finding Mission.
from the ONU.
In November 2023, the European Union ratified the personal sanctions against 53 Venezuelan government officials.
Some of them are accused of committing serious human rights violations such as “arbitrary detentions, brief forced disappearances, torture – including sexual violence – and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.”
But the authorities have not punished those responsible for such atrocities but have refined the application of fear to inhibit protests and induce self-censorship.
Their attacks against women have also intensified.
There are about 25 political prisoners in the country.
The arbitrary detention and subsequent forced disappearance of Rocio San Miguel, a well-known human rights activist, demonstrated, once again, the usual tactics.
On this occasion they also applied the “sippenhaft”, a German term that defines the arrest of relatives of people who are being wanted by the Government.
San Miguel, a Venezuelan of Spanish descent, was detained on Friday, February 9, 2024. She remained incommunicado for more than 100 hours.
Her daughter Miranda was also imprisoned, as well as four other relatives, including the former partner of the analyst on state security issues.
While she was missing, rumors circulated through the WhatAapp groups, a messaging system that is practically a fragmented virtual public square in Venezuela.
"They have it in the
digestion
(DGCIM)", it spread like a ball. In this disastrous headquarters of the military police force, located in an industrial zone of Caracas, Lieutenant Commander Rafael Acosta Arévalo met the devil. A few days later he He fainted in the middle of the presentation hearing and died. His body had 38 wounds. He was buried in the absence of his family: it was June 2019.
On Monday, February 11, 2024, in the middle of the carnival holiday, the lawyers of San Miguel toured the detention centers in a procession of more than 12 hours.
In each one they told them: she is not here.
He could have been in one of the clandestine safe houses where they drown out any scream of pain with the noise of blenders and other appliances.
He could have been in some of the known headquarters of the Intelligence Service, Sebin.
Councilman Fernando Albán fell from one of those buildings from the 10th floor in 2018. Or perhaps he could have been in El Helicoide, a futuristic shopping center, which became a white elephant and later a large torture center.
After more than two weeks detained and charged with alleged crimes of treason, San Miguel has not yet been allowed to see her trusted lawyers.
Her place of confinement is El Helicoide, where there are spaces designed so that natural light does not enter.
In this way, the detained person is always under artificial light sources, as part of the so-called white torture.
His daughter and other relatives were released with presentation measures, while his former partner was accused of treason and other crimes.
“Intentional violence is applied to dissidents, which includes harassment, humiliation and attacks due to our condition as women,” comments a former political prisoner, who tells me that when she was detained she received electric shocks to her breasts.
The documentation of a Government that tortures "the normal" has been possible thanks to the testimonies of the victims and the work of human rights defenders. Many of these acts have been recorded by the UN Fact Finding Mission, in extensive journalistic reports and are part of the investigation carried out by the Prosecutor's Office of the International Criminal Court on the commission of crimes against humanity, which have occurred since 2014.
However, there is a maneuver of erasure and propaganda, in the style of what is described in the famous dystopian novel
1984,
by George Orwell.
Such a strategy seeks to induce censorship and self-censorship as well as develop “alternative facts”, in the style of Donald Trump.
Spokespeople for the Maduro Government denied the forced disappearance of San Miguel and his relatives.
They described whoever said it as a liar and as if that were not enough, they charged him with a crime.
They went so far as to expel members of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and demanded that they retract, that is, lie as a condition for lifting the departure.
Maripili Hernández, former minister of Chávez and who declares herself a Chavista, although not a Madurista, wrote a controversial tweet on February 15, 2024. “I have been working in the media for 40 years and I have never been afraid to express myself before.
But let it be clear: the silence is out of fear, not out of lack of indignation or shame in the face of the facts.”
The fear of Hernández and others is natural.
Martha Tineo, coordinator of the NGO Justicia, Encuentro y Perdón, assures that the arrest of San Miguel is an attack on all defenders.
“The fear is real, but we don't let it paralyze us.
“We represent more than 200 victims and we cannot stop.”
She says it quoting Rosa Orozco, founder of this organization, who saw light after her daughter Geraldine Moreno was murdered at the door of her house.
Members of the National Guard fired iron pellets at him at random.
It was February 19, 2014.
With so many documents, the call that the DGCIM made to a group of journalists to offer them a war correspondent course is a daring act of propaganda, which was revealed as what it really was: to show them that in the facilities of this body no one is tortured. nobody.
Even more daring is that this agency circulated videos on social networks, where they explained the benefits of the security force, while highlighting over and over again that torture was not true.
I can almost hear some instructor graciously rebuke the journalists, “do you hear any screams,” while with a lunch tray, “like the one we give to detainees,” they insisted on its qualities.
Only knowing that one goes unpunished and believing that killing, pulling out teeth, suffocating, sexually abusing, drowning, isolating, electrocuting, immobilizing, threatening and persecuting, among other acts, have no punishment can induce some Venezuelan security agencies to show themselves with such brazenness. .
I trust that the repudiation, the continuity of the investigations by the ICC and above all the effort made by dozens of citizens in documenting the barbarism will have an impact on reversing any attempt to hide the memory.
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