According to the documented cases, 13 women and 64 men are missing; most of them aged 20 to 30
At least 77 people disappeared between 2012 and August 15, 2020, in mining areas in southern Venezuela, according to an investigation carried out by the Commission on Human Rights and Citizenship (Codehciu) and a group of independent journalists in alliance with La Vida de Nos, released to mark the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances.
The International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances was declared by the United Nations (UN) in 2011, the same year the phenomenon was classified as a global problem not restricted to a specific region of the world. In this regard, the UN warns that “once largely the product of military dictatorships, enforced disappearances can nowadays be perpetrated in complex situations of internal conflict, especially as a means of political repression of opponents.”
The recently released investigation includes up-to-date data and three in-depth stories and reveals that out of the 77 people who have gone missing in the last eight years, half are still missing. 13 of them are women and 64 are men, while 39 percent of the cases involved a person aged 20 to 30 years old.
43 percent of the documented disappearances consist of miners or merchants who went missing in Sifontes county, the most violent county in the south of Bolívar state. This figure makes the county, according to the data collected, the epicenter of disappearances in southern Bolívar. In this area, not only the presence of armed groups acting with state complicity has been documented, but also the incursion of members of the Colombian National Liberation Army (ELN), which has been denied by military authorities.
The phenomenon of disappearances deepened after the creation of the Orinoco Mining Arc in 2016 by the government of Nicolás Maduro. The investigation reveals that 74 percent of the victims disappeared between 2018 and the first eight months of 2020, coinciding with the chaotic expansion of the mining activity.
The victims’ relatives claim that the authorities have failed to follow basic search protocols. The mother of Lisandro Murillo, a miner who disappeared in 2015 from the Cicapra mine, in Roscio county, southern Bolívar, assures that the complaint filed before the Bureau for Scientific, Criminal and Forensic Investigations (Cicpc) was unsuccessful. “They did not help me at all,” she says. The lack of response forces the victim’s relatives to investigate on their own.
Disappearances represent a serious violation of human rights for both the victims and their families. The Rome Statute and the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance state that, “when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed at any civilian population, a “forced disappearance” qualifies as a crime against humanity” and, thus, does not prescribe.
The monitoring of disappearances in southern Venezuela began in 2019 as part of the investigation Fosas del Silencio (The Graves of Silence), which recently joined the platform Indelebles (The Indelible), an initiative of a group of journalists in alliance with Codehciu to make visible the phenomenon of disappearances in southern Venezuela.
The investigation seeks to pave the way for the implementation of a national protocol to investigate cases of disappearances, search for and locate missing persons, under a differentiated approach that supports the victims at all times and protects human dignity.
Translated by: José Rafael Medina
