That call sent shivers down my spine. Although we knew it could happen, it doesn’t make it easier to pick up the phone and hear that your partner – in life and in the quest for democracy in Venezuela – has been detained.
On December 10, Jesús Armas was forcefully taken away from a café in Caracas by hooded men in a pickup truck without plates in the middle of the night. Ironically, Jesús, a 35-year-old engineer who, since his days as a student leader, devoted his life to trying to restore democracy and protect the rights of abuse victims in our country, was detained on Human Rights Day.
We have visited office after office, detention center after detention center, only to be told he is not there. Under international law, that constitutes an enforced disappearance. A high-level official confirmed on TV more than a day later that he was being held by Nicolás Maduro’s regime, but authorities have not allowed his family or lawyer to see him.
The regime has accused Jesús of participating in violent anti-government activities. The alleged source? An anonymous ‘cooperating patriot’ – a concept invented by the Maduro regime to fabricate criminal files against opponents in a country where the judiciary, which is an appendix of the executive branch, is used to prosecute and wrongfully detain opponents.
Jesús’ detention is receiving widespread international condemnation, given his multiple links abroad, including having studied at Bristol University with a Chevening Fellowship. But his case is far from exceptional. He is one of the over 1,900 political prisoners in Venezuela today. While some are released, at times conditionally and still subject to prosecution, others are detained, contributing to a revolving door that has been turning for years.
Since the opposition won the presidential elections on July 28, 2024, despite them not being free nor fair, the repression has escalated. Authorities have rounded up critics and opponents, stopped people on the street to search their cellphones and check if they have WhatsApp chats where they support opposition leader María Corina Machado, and have annulled passports to prohibit critics from leaving the country. Detainees are subject to dire conditions and brutal abuse.
While the repression has intensified in recent months – and will likely get worse in the lead up to January 10, 2025 when Edmundo González, the president-elect, should take office – none of this is new. In fact, it is part of a systematic pattern of human rights violations that has led UN independent experts to conclude there is evidence of crimes against humanity being committed in Venezuela and the International Criminal Court prosecutor to open the first investigation into such crimes in Latin America. In fact, in 2014, during the first peak of the repression under Maduro, I was detained for 132 days for having led student protests against the government. I know perfectly well how difficult and brutal these detentions are, and what Jesús is going through.
Despite the increasing risks that those of us who are fighting the Maduro dictatorship face, we will not give up. Venezuelans mobilised to vote for change in July, and we deserve to see our elected government take office in January, without political prisoners in Venezuelan jails.
We are doing our share – but for Jesús and all the others who are wrongfully detained to be released, and for Venezuela to transition back to democracy, we need the international community to stand with us. This means moving beyond expressions of concern and elevating the cost for the regime to continue down this brutally repressive path – which only benefits a handful of people in power who today can feel they have a blank check to consolidate a criminal structure that has contributed to the largest migration crisis in the Americas.
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