In recent years, the reports of the disappearance of ships in Venezuela waters have sadly become increasingly common.

According to a UN report, 129 people remain missing after setting sail in clandestine voyages from the coast of the Venezuelan states of Sucre, Falcón, and Nueva Esparta.

These journeys have been propelled by the forced migration afflicting Venezuelans. Most of the boats set sail for the islands of Trinidad, Aruba, or Curaçao.

The National Committee of Relatives of Victims of Disappearances and Trafficking in Persons on the Coasts of Venezuela (Confavidt for its acronym in Spanish) has registered the disappearance of seven boats since 2019 with 116 people on board.

The relatives of the disappeared, some of whom are minors, are convinced that their loved ones fell into the hands of criminal gangs that engage in human trafficking.

“We have collected evidence from our own investigations, but there has not been a single word by the Public Ministry, which has failed to conduct an inquiry. They take our statements and evidence, but they do not investigate the cases, nor follow them up or prosecute them,” said Mr. Jhonny Romero, a representative of the Committee.

Romero has stood out as a human rights activist after the disappearance of his son Jhonny de Jesús Romero, who on June 7, 2019, sailed from the state of Falcón to the island of Curaçao, where he seems to have never arrived.

Human Trafficking and mafias

Recently, it became known that the large criminal gang known as the Tren de Aragua had kidnapped 680 miners in the Peramanal district of the state of Bolívar, according to the Venezuela newspaper Últimas Noticias.

The hostages were rescued alive during an operation conducted by the General Directorate of Military Counterintelligence, the Anti-Extortion and Kidnapping National Command, and the Bolivarian National Guard, but there are no further details of what happened to them.

Mrs. Elisa Vargas claims to have recognized her husband in a picture of the operation that circulated on social media. The man had also disappeared in one of the boats that sailed from Falcón.

The incident caused the relatives of the people who disappeared in the boats to demand from the Public Ministry a list of people rescued in the Bolívar mines. But, again, they are still awaiting an answer from the authorities.

However, this would not be the first time that something like this has happened. Mr. Jhonny Romero affirmed that “the same happened last year. They rescued 207 people in three different operations of the National Armed Forces, the National Guard, and the National Police in the states of Sucre and Delta Amacuro”.

Romero explained that “at that time, they dismantled three trafficking camps but we were not given any information afterward,” adding that “there are pictures of those operations, too, which show a woman who disappeared in 2018 while pregnant”. Again, the organization did not get a word from the authorities.

Tarek William Saab, Attorney General of the Maduro government, reported that in the last 4 years, the Public Ministry has registered 330 cases of trafficking in persons, with 696 victims.

If we take into account UN data estimating that for every identified victim of human trafficking, 20 remain hidden, we could be speaking of more than 13,000 Venezuelan nationals in the hands of human trafficking rings, including women and girls.

According to the Venezuelan NGO Mulier, most of the cases of sexual exploitation of Venezuelan women and girls have been detected in Colombia, Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, and Venezuela.

Translated by José Rafael Medina