United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, arrived on Wednesday 19 July to Venezuela for a 3-day visit. On Thursday afternoon, the High Commissioner, human rights organizations and multiple victim groups met. In this space of one hour, 26 spokesmen were able to make requests to the High Commissioner. 20 of these interventions are registered in this document, which represents an overview of the activists’ demands for the human dignity of the country in a context characterized by the lack of democracy, increase in poverty and forced migration.
Below is one of such interventions.
In Venezuela, ever since the December 2015 parliamentary elections, a State of arbitrariness has been set up, with the assignment or election of illegitimate and unconstitutional authorities.
The role of the courts has been key to get to this state, specially, that of its higher authority, the Supreme Tribunal of Justice, which has distorted its functioning to become a tool of oppression, no longer protecting human rights or acting as a balance against other powers.
The parliament, elected in December 2015 and in which the opposition occupies two-thirds of the seats, is the only remaining legitimate and constitutional power, but all its actions have been annulled through more than one-hundred sentences to date.
The Supreme Tribunal has allowed the imposition of a Nationwide State of Emergency, first decreed on January 14th of 2016, without the approval of parliament and extended 20 times already.
The tribunal has increased the persecution of dissent, a practice that started since the protests of 2014, to the point of becoming a systematic policy.
Ever since 2016, the Supreme Tribunal has validated through sentences or the rejection of legal appeals, the elections held in the country, despite lacking in democratic character.
But most seriously, the tribunal has become a façade for the regime to make believe, especially outside the country, that the government is in compliance with the Constitution and with international mandates on human rights, when the reality is far different.
The absence in checks of power from the court, in a country where almost everything has been absorbed by the state, has led to an institutional breakdown of such magnitude that the State is no longer capable of fulfilling basic needs, in turn causing a complex humanitarian emergency.
The situation in Venezuela demonstrates that without judicial independence, the rule of law and democracy, there cannot be effective guarantees of human rights.
Access to Justice is an independent and private civil association founded in 2010 by a group of Venezuelans committed to the defense of justice, the rule of law, the separation of powers, judicial independence, democracy, freedom, and human rights in Venezuela.
