Americas
In Venezuela, Protesters Point to Their Scars
VALENCIA,
Venezuela — Clipso Martínez was shot at such close range by a soldier
at a protest that his surgeon said he had to remove pieces of the
plastic shotgun shell buried in his leg, along with the shards of keys
Mr. Martínez had in his pocket, shattered by the blast.
Jorchual
Gregory was detained with 10 others who said that over three days they
were kicked, pistol whipped, doused with pepper spray and battered with
helmets and shotgun butts.
“They
wanted to make people afraid so we wouldn’t stay in the streets,” said
Mr. Gregory, 19. “But what happened was more protests and more deaths.”
Venezuela
has been shaken by more than two months of often violent protests that
President Nicolás Maduro says are designed to overthrow him. He has held
the opposition responsible for violence that the government says has
claimed more than 40 lives, including those of protesters, bystanders
and six National Guard soldiers.
Until
recently, most countries in the region had either supported Mr. Maduro,
said little about the protests or gently urged him toward moderation.
But there are growing signs that support for Mr. Maduro in the region is
weakening, as some of Venezuela’s neighbors show unease with the
government’s response to the crisis, including the aggressive treatment
of protesters.
This
month, foreign ministers from the Union of South American Nations, a
group that Venezuela was instrumental in creating, pressed Mr. Maduro to
hold face-to-face talks with opposition parties.
With diplomats from
Brazil, Colombia and Ecuador sitting in, the government and opposition
agreed to create a truth commission to look into allegations of human
rights abuses during the protests, which were fueled by frustration with
rampant crime, soaring inflation, shortages of basic goods and a
government crackdown on dissent.
Adding
to the pressure, the former president of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da
Silva, voiced unusual public criticism of Mr. Maduro this month, saying
that he should “establish a coalition policy” and “lower the tension.”
The comments were particularly noteworthy because Mr. da Silva — a staunch supporter of Mr. Maduro’s mentor
and predecessor, Hugo Chávez, who died last year — made a videotaped
endorsement for Mr. Maduro when he ran for president last April. Mr.
Maduro won the election by a narrow margin.
Michael Shifter, president of the Inter-American Dialogue, a policy group in Washington, said the intervention by other South American countries was prompted by the escalating violence.
“The
primary concern is that without any moderation, without any space for
dialogue, there was a likelihood of continued crackdown and repression
that would spur more violence,” Mr. Shifter said.
The
growing concerns in the region coincided with increasing evidence of a
pattern of violent behavior by the security forces here. Mr. Maduro has
said that “a very small number of security forces personnel” have been
“accused of engaging in violence,” and that the government has arrested
them. Yet abuse allegations continued to mount, particularly against the
National Guard, a military branch at the forefront of the government
response to the protests.
Soldiers
have been accused of firing shotguns loaded with hard plastic buckshot
at point-blank range, injuring numerous demonstrators and killing a
23-year-old woman. Soldiers and police officers have also been widely
accused of beating detainees, often severely, with many people saying
the security forces then robbed them, stealing cellphones, money and
jewelry.
The
government — which has faced violent tactics from protesters, including
Molotov cocktails — said it is committed to protecting human rights
while maintaining order. Last month, Mr. Maduro created a Council of
State for Human Rights to investigate wrongdoing. Critics complained
that the council included the same government officials responsible for
the security forces implicated in abuses: the defense minister and the
interior minister.
“There
have been police excesses but we are investigating,” the national
prosecutor, Luisa Ortega, said in a television interview last month. She
defended the National Guard, saying that allegations against it
amounted to “a disproportionate attack.”
“If
it’s true that there have been excesses by some police personnel, it’s
not that the commander of the National Guard gets his people together
and tells them, ‘You’re going to go out and violate human rights,' ” she
said.
The
Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights had
voiced concern over reports of security force abuses in Venezuela, and
this month the Venezuelan conference of Roman Catholic bishops objected
to “the brutal repression of political dissent.”
“The government is wrong to want to resolve the crisis through force,” the bishops said.
Here
in Valencia, Venezuela’s third largest city, Geraldín Moreno, a
student, was standing outside her apartment complex on Feb. 19, banging a
pot in protest, when soldiers rode up on motorcycles, according to her
father, Saúl Moreno. She fell trying to run into the complex.
Witnesses
said that a soldier got off his motorcycle, pointed his shotgun at her
head and fired. The hard plastic buckshot slammed through her eye socket
into her brain, her father said. She died after a lengthy surgery on
Feb. 22, eight days shy of her 24th birthday.
“The pain will never go away,” Mr. Moreno said. “Every day her absence is greater.”
Mr.
Gregory, who said he had been detained with 10 others, had gone to a
protest here on Feb. 13 with friends Juan Carrasco, 21, and Jorge León,
25, but when they saw soldiers shooting tear gas and shotguns they ran
back to Mr. León’s car. According to the men, soldiers surrounded the
car, broke the windows and tossed a tear gas canister inside. Mr.
Gregory said that a soldier fired a shotgun at him at close range while
he sat in the passenger seat, hitting him in the arms and the back of
the head.
The
men said they were then pulled from the car and beaten viciously. At
one point, Mr. Gregory said, a soldier smashed their hands with the butt
of his shotgun, telling them it was punishment for protesters’ throwing
rocks. The men said that the soldiers set fire to Mr. León’s car.
They
were loaded into a truck with other detainees and driven to a National
Guard post. One of the detainees, Oswaldo Torres, 25, a salesman in a
brake shop, said that the soldiers pretended he was a soccer ball and
kicked him over and over again. The men said they were handcuffed
together, threatened with an attack dog, made to crouch for long
periods, pepper sprayed and beaten.
Mr. Torres said he was hit so hard on the head with a soldier’s helmet that he heard it crack. “Everything went black,” he said.
The
Penal Forum, a legal group, said it had documented 70 cases of alleged
abuse so far. “It is continuous and systematic,” said Gonzalo Himiob, a
director for the group. “The way they are mistreated is very similar in
all parts of the country.
Interviews
with more than two dozen people who said they were mistreated by
security forces revealed similar patterns of abuse. In San Antonio de
los Altos, outside Caracas, Luis Gutiérrez, 26, said that he and others
were cornered in a parking lot on Feb. 19 by soldiers who ordered them
to lie down and began kicking them.
Mr.
Gutiérrez said one of them kicked him in the face. Surgeons later used
screws and metal plates to mend his fractured forehead and broken nose.
“They
have the right to detain us because we were blocking the road,” said
Mr. Gutiérrez. “But there’s no justification for doing this to us,
causing these injuries.”
The
prosecutor’s office said it was investigating 145 allegations of abuse
and that 17 security officials are in jail. Critics questioned the
aggressiveness of the investigations. The number of jailed security
personnel had not changed in more than a month. According to the
prosecutor’s count last month, only one member of the National Guard,
the force that had been most widely accused of abuses, was in jail.
The
soldier who fatally shot Ms. Moreno in the face had not been arrested,
said Rafael Ramírez, a lawyer for her father. “While it’s true that
prosecutors have been receptive to us we have seen a brake” on the
progress of the investigation, Mr. Ramírez said.
Like
many of the protesters, Mr. Martínez, whose shattered keys pierced his
leg when he was shot here on March 20, faced charges of disrupting
public order.
“It
was easy for them to give me house arrest and say you face so many
charges,” he said. “But they never said, ‘We’re going to go find the
soldier who shot you.' ”
Keyla
Brito, 41, a housewife in Barquisimeto, said she had been on her way to
the butcher shop with her 17-year-old daughter on March 12 when they
were swept up by National Guard soldiers, taken with six other women to a
military post and handed over to female soldiers.
The
soldiers beat them, kicked them and threatened to kill them, according
to Ms. Brito, her daughter and two of the other women. Male soldiers
threatened to rape them, they said.
Ms.
Brito said that a soldier cut off her waist-length hair, leaving it
ragged. Her daughter and the other women underwent similar haircuts,
they said.
The women said they were released only after being made to sign a paper stating that they had not been mistreated.
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