Parents: Venezuela Torturing Child Political Prisoners Accused of ‘Terrorism’
Venezuela’s socialist regime is currently unjustly imprisoning and torturing dozens of children charged with “terrorism” for allegedly participating in anti-regime protests following the July 28 sham presidential election.
Socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro unleashed a brutal dissident crackdown campaign in the aftermath of the fraudulent election. According to estimates from United Nations experts, the crackdown left 27 dead and more than 2,400 detained.
Venezuelan nongovernment organization Foro Penal documented at least 129 children among the detainees in mid-August. While some of the minors have so far been released from their unjust imprisonment, Foro Penal estimated in November that 69 minors remain unjustly detained by the Maduro regime.
The NGO’s statistics were “ certified” by Luis Almagro, secretary general of the Organization of American States (OAS). According to Foro Penal, approximately 1,800 individuals remain detained.
For months, families of the unjustly detained minors have denounced that regime officials are regularly beating and torturing their children, who stand accused of vague “terrorist” acts. Some of the minors have been reportedly forced to record videos “confessing” their crimes.
Last week, a woman identified as “María Alejandra” spoke to Venezuelan newspaper El Carabobeño to denounce the harrowing situation of her 15-year-old son, Aliángel Rodríguez, one of the imprisoned minors and a teenager diagnosed with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.
The mother recounted to the newspaper that her son has been in police custody since July 29, after he left his home upon seeing fireworks in the distance and went missing for three days. On the third day, she stated she received a phone call informing her that Aliángel would be prosecuted for terrorism. When she arrived, she found her son with his leg broken, his ribs bruised, his face unrecognizable, and a boot marked on his face.
“The policemen gave my son a savage, brutal beating and were saying very ugly things to him,” María Alejandra said, adding that despite the beating, her son did not record a video confessing the claimed “crimes.”
The mother stressed that her son has developed episodes of untreated schizophrenia, as she is not allowed to give him the treatment he requires. As a result of this, the mother said, her 15-year-old has tried to commit suicide on two occasions.
Theany Urbina, Venezuelan mother of a 17-year-old boy identified as Miguel Urbina, denounced to Voice of America (VOA) in early November that her son is imprisoned in a place referred to as as “the underworld” — a name given to a prison cell in the basement of a Bolivarian National Police building known as “Zone 7.”
VOA reported that the teenager was arrested on August 2 after going out to eat in Caracas. The mother explained that the police accuse him of “terrorism,” incitement to hatred, obstruction of public roads, property damage, and resistance to authority over his alleged vandalism of a police station.
“They put current [electricity] on him, forcing him to record a video saying that they were paying him for destroying the police module. He resisted and they beat him. They made him grab a card with [electricity], they also used a bag with a tear gas bomb,” Urbina said, adding that she had to pay so that the food she sent him would “get there in time.”
VOA also spoke to Dionexis García and María Navas, two women who stated that their relatives are imprisoned in the same “underworld” cell.
“It is a cell they call ‘la llorona‘ [‘the weeping one’]. Why weeping? Because the walls sweat, the walls drip water, let’s say it’s sweat (. …) In that underworld they had to be in boxer shorts because the heat was horrible, they couldn’t even breathe,” Garcia said, describing what her 17-year-old brother, Diomer Gómez, experienced during his imprisonment.
“They even had to rent a fan for an hour to get some air. They pooped in a bag, because there is no bathroom there, there are no conditions,” she added.
Other cases of minors subjected to torture and other inhumane treatment documented by the United Nations in its latest report include two girls aged 16 and 17, who were detained and subjected to threats, groping, and food deprivation in an intimidating context. Two other children were reportedly subjected to beatings by the arresting officials, resulting in one of the children suffering broken teeth and an arm injury.
Venezuelan Attorney General Tarek William Saab publicly denied in mid-November that any “school-aged children” were detained in Venezuela, claiming that it was all part of a smear campaign against the socialist regime. Saab described the detained minors as teenagers “who have confessed that they were used to cause the violence following the presidential elections on July 28.”
Days later, Venezuelan interior minister and long-suspected drug lord Diosdado Cabello acknowledged that children had been detained — but blamed their arrest on their parents for allegedly allowing them to “protest.”
“There they are pressuring [us] with the poor political prisoners, the children who are detained. Where were those parents on July 29 and 30 who allowed their children to go to the [protests]? Why didn’t they take care of their children? Where were they? Now we are the bad guys,” Cabello said.
On Sunday, Argentine Foreign Minister Gerardo Werthein denounced the Maduro regime’s unjust detention of minors and violation of their human rights in remarks given to Argentine news channel Todo Noticias.
“They take people’s children, using the Cuban system, they take them to prisons, torture them, rape them, minors. This gentleman should shut his mouth, go home and respect the democratic will of Venezuelans,” Werthein said.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
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