The End of Chavismo - Part 8 - The Struggle of Political Prisoners

Recently, Delcy Rodríguez, one of chavismo's last gangsters and the current acting president, said that 626 political prisoners of the regime had been released from their holding facilities. That's a flagrant lie, less than 200 have been released, and here's the background for that.

According to national human rights organizations such as Foro Penal and PROVEA, there are between 800 and 1,200 political prisoners in Venezuela. Some are soldiers and policemen considered traitors and insurrectionists, but most of them are common people taken by security forces in the midst of anti-regime protests, after posting something on social media that contradicted the official narrative or simply for being in the wrong place at the wrong time; a large part of these detainees were teenagers when they were taken, some have been charged with "inciting hatred", "conspiracy" or "terrorism" without any proof, but the majority have never been charged with any crime, they just vanished without reason and their families have known little or nothing at all about their whereabouts and health. In recent years, this number has included many foreigners accused of being spies for their respective nations, again with zero proof.

The ones who have been released and have managed to leave the country in order to protect themselves, speak of the horrors that they had to endure or watch others endure during their kidnapping and their time in one of the regime's infamous prisons, such as being forced to kneel with their mouths pressed against a vehicle's exhaust pipe so they'd choke on smoke and scorch their mouths, or having their own feces thrown at them, or being subjected to electroshock, or being routinely sexually assaulted by multiple officers and other inmates, or being made to stand naked in the cold for hours while repeating a chant praising Chávez and Maduro. Several of these people have been kept from crucial medical treatment, starved, beaten and held in critically unsanitary conditions, and if their families spoke out, it was the prisoners paid the price with increased punishment. The stories are bone-chilling and you can easily find them now with a quick search on any platform, because they're being interviewed in many podcasts and news outlets.

After the U.S. raid and Maduro's abduction, what's left of the regime's leadership is scrambling to meet the U.S. government's demands, among them the full release of all prisoners, something they're quite unwilling and probably unable to do in many cases, considering the physical state of some of these detainees and the very high likelihood that they're no longer alive. At this moment, mothers, fathers, daughters, sons and friends are standing vigil in front of El Helicoide, the darkest prison in the country, and also in front of DGCIM headquarters and other places, demanding the release of their loved ones. The regime doesn't dare to repress or impede them in any way for now, but neither does it budge. On top of their already gruesome abuses, the chavista regime has a veritable army of bots pushing all sorts of propaganda and, in the case of political prisoners, the comments exploit the lack of information around their kidnapping and holding conditions, questioning what they were doing to prompt their arrest or mocking the families, calling the whole thing a charade; in other words, adding insult to injury over and over again. Fortunately, they can no longer control the narrative like they used to.

Why should this matter to anyone who's not Venezuelan?

All governments have political prisoners, torture facilities and corrupt officials. All of them. There's not a single State in the world right now that isn't involved in some major criminal activity with more or less discretion. The difference between other nations and Venezuela is that, at this moment, when the regime is faltering, they can't prevent the truth from coming out, so the whole world can see the degree of their moral bankruptcy, which constitutes an excellent mirror to judge the rest of the regimes out there, especially the Trump administration and its ICE goons who murder people in broad daylight, in front of witnesses.

It's essential for humanity as a whole to understand that we're not dealing merely with incompetent politicians and misguided officials, but with a hulking, encroaching machinery of gangsters, a mafia syndicate whose only goal is to grab and preserve as much power and influence as it can. In public, France's Macron and Spain's Sánchez condemn Trump; Russia berates NATO and China criticizes Germany. In private, they sit at the same tables and drink the same whisky, attend the same parties and commit the same abuses. None of these so-called leaders deserve our respect, admiration or consideration.

So, please pay attention to what's happening in Venezuela, ask those who lived through it, read about it conscientiously, and you'll begin to grasp the extents to which your own governments are willing to go to keep their seat at the table, because as Canada's Prime Minister Mark Carney said recently (perhaps outing himself), "If you're not at the table, you're on the menu".