WASHINGTON, USA – The General Secretariat of the Organization of American States (OAS) calls on the international community to promote international justice for the commission of crimes against humanity in Venezuela.
The authorities of the Venezuelan dictatorial regime have planned, implemented and executed the repressive reality that the country is experiencing: the plan to prevail by force and repression that imprisons, tortures and kills. And that imprisons, tortures and kills minors. Those responsible for these crimes must be stopped by justice, which is the way to stop the disgrace of death and the violations of human rights that tyrants use against their people daily. This is the direct responsibility of the International Criminal Court.
The regime maintains this ignominious repressive system based on a policy that requires the annihilation of the will of the people, the destruction of the collective democratic conscience, to impose its own will, and it has sustained this process on the basis of the persistence and continuity over time of crimes against humanity contemplated in the Rome Statute. The recurring and reiterated complaints reflect murders, deportation or forced transfer of the population represented in the worst migration crisis in the history of this Hemisphere, political imprisonment and other forms of serious deprivation of physical liberty in violation of fundamental norms of international law, torture, rape and other forms of sexual violence of comparable gravity, the persecution of a group or collectivity with its own identity based on political motives, and the forced disappearance of persons.
Of course there are people who do not react to these crimes; of course there are others who traffic in justice so that it is never done, or so that the responsibility of the dictators is diluted and, if possible, becomes a commodity of exchange; or those who only condemn what happens, but without demanding the responsibility that arises from it. However, we believe that we must have another dimension of responsibility in the face of this human rights crisis; the policy of omitting justice in response to complaints from victims and victims’ families cannot be the basis of the solutions that we want to build. It cannot be the basis of the diplomacy that we want to exercise. We can never be indulgent with the crimes of the dictators of the present, while we want justice, truth, reparation and non-repetition of the crimes of the dictators of the past. That is not even a double standard, but rather an unacceptable pattern of omission. We must all aspire to justice for Venezuela.
During this time, we have seen how the regime has mocked or deceived its interlocutors and/or “back-channels.” But it has not been able to mock the Venezuelan people, who time and time again have created democratic alternatives, often practically out of nothing. This has been done at a very high cost of suffering and systematic violations of human rights by the state terrorism of the Venezuelan dictatorial regime. The international community still owes justice to this people.
