RIGHTS-VENEZUELA: National Guard Guilty of Excesses, but no Killings

By Humberto Márquez Reprint | | Print |

Humberto Márquez

CARACAS, Mar 25 2004 (IPS) - Venezuela’s National Guard used excessive force in putting down opposition demonstrations in late February and early March, but none of the deaths that occurred during the protests can be blamed on the militarised police force, according to Ombudsman Germán Mundaraín.

”I share the government’s appraisal with respect to the deaths. None of the deaths appear to have been caused by members of the National Guard,” Mundaraín said in an interview with IPS.

”But on the other hand, it is clear that excessive force was used, for example, that an excessive number of rubber bullets were fired,” he added.

President Hugo Chávez and his Defence Minister, army General Jorge García, have praised the National Guard several times for their performance during the Feb. 27 to Mar. 5 violent opposition protests in which demonstrators blocked streets with burning tires and debris in the wealthier neighbourhoods of Caracas and other cities.

Thirteen people died during the protests, according to the local media, which are mainly aligned with the opposition. The government puts the number at nine.

In addition, some 50 people were shot and injured, hundreds were arrested, and at least 30 were taken to court. The opposition says eight are still missing – a claim that was refuted by Mundaraín – and that some of the detainees were subjected to ill-treatment and torture.

Venezuelan society is deeply polarised between supporters of the populist, left-leaning Chávez and the broad opposition movement.

While the former see Chávez as the only hope for redistributing the country’s oil wealth in a more equitable manner, the latter argue that he is pushing the country towards ”communism”.

Although Chávez’s popularity ratings stand at around 37 percent, higher than many Latin American presidents, he also faces an opposition movement that is determined to force him out of office.

The Forum for Life, an umbrella group of 12 human rights organisations, criticised the government for publicly praising the National Guard’s performance while failing to ”condemn the possible abuses, excesses, or grave human rights violations” committed by the force.

The Forum also demanded that the Ombudsman’s Office ”publicly speak out against the mistreatment and torture denounced by citizens,” and urged it to produce a report.

Mundaraín told IPS Wednesday that his preliminary report, which documents all of the complaints and denunciations, will be submitted to parliament Thursday.

”There is no doubt that there were excesses, and that members of the National Guard and police were guilty of mistreatment,” he said, criticising beatings of young detainees, who appeared in the news.

But he showed IPS the reports on those who were killed in the protests and clashes, and said that ”so far no evidence has emerged that anyone was killed by security agents.” In addition, he said ”the National Guard was often attacked by gunfire.”

”No one has disappeared. The disappearance of people is a very grave crime, but it doesn’t exist in Venezuela. We followed up each of the eight cases reported, and I can say where each of the individuals can be found at this moment,” said Mundaraín.

With respect to the reports of torture, ”we have heard denunciations of mistreatment and injuries inflicted on detainees by the National Guard and other police forces, but there is no government tolerance of cruel and inhuman treatment in Venezuela.”

”Torture is unacceptable in a democratic society,” he underlined.

”It must be understood that in today’s Venezuela, everything has been politicised. Reports by the Organisation of American States and the United Nations highlight the deep political polarisation. The issue of human rights has unfortunately fallen into that polarisation,” said Mundaraín.

The week of disturbances erupted after the National Electoral Council ruled that of the 3.4 million signatures the opposition said it had collected, with the aim of forcing a recall referendum on Chávez, only 1.8 million were valid. (At least 2.4 million are needed to trigger a referendum).

The electoral authorities announced that one million signatures were ”under observation”, and said the individuals would have to come out to confirm their signatures during a special ”repairs period”.

”On Feb. 25 we started warning that things would turn violent, because some opposition leaders called for ‘resistance’ and others called for ‘insurrection’ when the National Electoral Council made its decision,” said the ombudsman.

Furthermore, he said, ”the police of several municipal districts participated, by omission, in the disobedience and insecurity. The excessive polarisation led to an essential service, police security, being used as an expression of partisan politics.”

The 8,000-member metropolitan police of Caracas and the local police forces of two wealthy districts – all three of which are under the authority of opposition mayors – stood by while protesters provoked the National Guard.

The Forum for Life has admitted that the municipal police forces failed to live up to their duty of ensuring citizen security and the right to free transit. (Traffic was blocked in many places by the smouldering barricades).

Chávez has stated that he was just hours away from ordering the army to occupy the local police stations.

Those who were killed in the disturbances were mainly the victims of gunfire. The highest profile cases involved Eva Carrizo, who was protesting in the city of Machiques in western Venezuela, near the Colombian border, and José Vilas, a demonstrator in San Antonio, a dormitory suburb of Caracas.

In both cases, their fellow protesters said they were shot by the National Guard.

However, the autopsies found that Carrizo was killed by a shot from a 9-mm pistol – a weapon that the National Guard says it does not use – and that Vilas was hit in the back with a marble, presumably shot by a ‘chopo’ or homemade shotgun.

In Altamira, a posh Caracas neighbourhood where the stone-throwing and crackdown with tear gas were at their most intense, a young opposition demonstrator was shot and killed, and the angle at which the bullet entered his neck showed that it was fired downwards, from a building.

In the area, there were snipers posted by the opposition, as well as anti-sniper secret police units.

The government alleges that plainclothes members of the metropolitan police, which answers to opposition Mayor Alfredo Peña, shot and killed at least one pro-Chávez activist as he approached an area where opposition protests were being held.

Mundaraín downplayed the last report by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, which covered the May 2002-October 2003 period. The report stated that ”there has been a grave deterioration of the human rights situation” in Venezuela.

”There have been many disagreements between the Commission and the Venezuelan government,” said Mundaraín. ”The Commission clearly took a position in favour of the (April 2002) coup d’etat (that removed Chávez from power for two days), and its report was a result of that time of discrepancies.”

The ombudsman also complained that many of the reports of purported abuses are published by the media, and often given heavy coverage, but are not brought before the proper authorities.

”The media have taken sides, both the government outlets and those of the opposition, and instead of informing, they act as mouthpieces for specific political sectors with their own agendas,” argued Mundaraín, who presides over the Ibero-American Federation of Ombudsman.