Venezuela: Critics Under Threat | WPN World People News

The government of President Nicolás Maduro and its political supporters in parliament are misusing the criminal justice system to punish people for criticizing its policies, Human Rights Watch said on August 6. In addition to the well-publicized arbitrary arrests and prosecutions of opposition politicians, Venezuelan authorities have brought criminal charges or threatened to open criminal investigations against dozens of lesser-known critics over the past year.

On July 24, 2015, National Bolivarian Intelligence Service (SEBIN) agents detained Fray Roa Contreras, a Venezuelan businessman, a day after he criticized the government’s economic policies in a CNN television interview. Contreras remains in detention and is being prosecuted for allegedly disseminating false information that “causes panic in the people or maintains them in a state of anxiety,” media reports said.

“The government of Venezuela uses the justice system as a façade, but the reality is that Venezuelan judges and prosecutors have become obedient soldiers,” said José Miguel Vivanco, Americas director at Human Rights Watch. “Venezuelan authorities have routinely abused their powers to limit free expression, undermining open, democratic debate that is especially critical with legislative elections coming up in December.”

Human Rights Watch documented 31 cases in the capital, Caracas, and four states – Aragua, Carabobo, Lara, and Zulia – in which people are facing or were threatened with criminal charges for public statements critical of the government. These include 22 people linked to Venezuelan media outlets that published reports alleging that Diosdado Cabello, the president of the National Assembly and a member of the governing party, had links to a drug cartel. The intelligence service detained and interrogated 6 others, including 5 who were then prosecuted for their statements. Of the remaining three, authorities opened a criminal investigation against two, and threatened the third with prosecution.

Cases Human Rights Watch documented include a medical doctor who was detained by intelligence agents and threatened with prosecution for criticizing shortages of medicines on TV, an engineer who was detained after he was quoted in a local newspaper criticizing government policies that regulate access to electricity, and a fortune-teller with a diagnosed psychological disorder who was detained and prosecuted for tweeting, among other things, that “the dictatorship in Venezuela” would “die.”

While most of those detained have been conditionally released, the criminal charges or investigations have not been dropped, Human Rights Watch said.

In 2005, President Maduro’s predecessor, Hugo Chávez, and his supporters in the National Assembly expanded the scope of laws punishing expression deemed to insult public officials and established draconian penalties for defamation. The current criminal code provides for prison sentences of up to five years for anyone who causes “panic” or “anxiety” in the population by disseminating “false information.” It also provides for penalties of up to four years in prison for publishing information that “implicates an individual in a specific event capable of exposing the person to disdain or public hatred, or [that is] offensive to the person’s honor or reputation.”

The lack of an independent judiciary in Venezuela greatly enhances the threat these laws pose to free speech, Human Rights Watch said. The Venezuelan judiciary has largely ceased to function as an independent branch of government since a political takeover of the Supreme Court in 2004 by President Chávez and his supporters.

“This dramatic abuse of the justice system is possible because there are no truly independent institutions left in Venezuela capable of protecting human rights and acting as checks and balances of executive power,” Vivanco said. “Threatening and prosecuting people who speak out about Venezuela’s problems isn’t going to make those problems go away.”

Source: Human Rights Watch