By: Juancarlos Vargas
As a citizen from Venezuela and a professor at the Universidad Central de Venezuela and Universidad Catolica Andres Bello, I should raise my voice at events such as occurred during the last days, when an armed group attacked a significant numbers of students who were protesting peacefully. Some of them have been tortured and sent to jail illegally by the authorities.
There are different
versions about the perpetrators of these facts. Some people say that it were
armed civilian groups who acted spontaneously, others blame police, and some
student leaders have denounced the presence of agents as infiltrators belonging
to Castro-communist regime.
Regardless of the
perpetrators of the facts, it is appropriate to remind the Venezuelan government
that the State should take all necessary measures to guarantee the right to physical
integrity and the right to life of each Venezuelan citizen. In this case, it is
a group of brave young people who are making fair use of the right to protest.
Human Rights could be violated by action and/or default, so that by continuing
the negligent behavior of the government against this type of attacks on
students, which are not new—just remember other events such as the repression
that occurred on March 21 when a representation of students who marched
peacefully to the National Electoral Council was subjected to violence of a
civil group supporter of the regime—the Venezuelan government will continue to
violate the International Human Rights Law.
The Venezuelan government officials, especially senior government members, the
armed forces and the police should remember that under the International Law
coexists international responsibility of states with individual criminal
responsibility, without invoking due obedience.
In recent years a lot
of information was written by lawyers, journalists and politicians about the
possibility that Hugo Chavez should be judged by the International Criminal
Court based in The Hague. Currently there is discussion that Nicolas Maduro might
end up in The Hague to face international justice on charges of repressive acts
constituting massive and systematic violations of human rights. This could be a
real possibility unless the current head of state and the government start to
act responsibly and set aside hatred advocacy, double talk, and then use their
authority (not authoritarian) to control violent groups, especially an armed Bolivarian militia which has been preparing for the last fourteen years.
This article originally published on April 11, 2013 in
El Universal, and was updated and rewritten in English by the author.
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