On November 21, 2019, five members of CADEF were persecuted and harassed by security forces at several points in Cojedes and Tinaquillo, through several arrests after participating in a peaceful protest.
The Center for Action and Defense for Human Rights (CADEF) is an organization dedicated to the promotion and defense of human rights in Cojedes, northwest of Venezuela. It seeks to train and provide necessary tools for the empowerment of new generations of human rights defenders. Through a work of monitoring, record and documentation of human rights violations, complemented by workshops, campaigns and advocacy activities, provide tools for action and visibility of social and legal proposals before the Venezuelan national reality.
On November 21, 2019 five members of CADEF, Gabriel Aranguren, Luis Henriquez, Erick José García Lucena, Carlos Cisneros and Richard Medina went to San Carlos to document through photographs, videos, and interviews the national protest of the “Student day”, a peaceful protest held by the student sector in the city of San Carlos.
After the demonstration took place – which happened without violence or direct police repression, officers of the Bolivarian National Police (PNB) and the Bolivarian National Guard (GNB) approached the five human rights defenders to take pictured of them with their cellphones. Then, when returning to their vehicle to return to the city of Tinaquillo, the defenders were followed by two unknown vehicles and an official motorcycle, who ordered them to stop.
Without offering any information about the reasons for their arrest, they were held for an hour and a half. Subsequently, they were called one by one to be photographed. Once on their way to their city, they were detained another three times by the police in the checkpoints of the route, where they were photographed again, and indicating that “they had orders to perform requisitions on them.”
Front Line Defenders expresses concern over the use, by public officials, of its authority to intimidate human rights defenders. It also states special concern about the systematicity with which Front Line Defenders receives complaints in those that public officials, particularly the GNP and GNB, are responsible for assaulting and intimidating those who document human rights violations and exercise their right to freedom of expression and association in Venezuela.
Front Line Defenders rejects the use of intimidation as a strategy against defenders and human rights defenders in Venezuela, whose work is essential in a society Democratic These intimidating acts generate an unfavorable climate for the defense of human rights, discourage defenders from continuing their work and affect negatively to all human rights defenders who raise their voices and perform Documentation work on human rights violations in the country.
Front Line Defenders urges the authorities in Venezuela to:
1. Take all necessary measures to ensure the safety and physical integrity of the members of CADEF, in consultation and agreement with the defenders;
2. Refrain from persecuting, intimidating, monitoring and threatening human rights defenders. Humans in Venezuela.
3. Ensure that human rights defenders in Venezuela can continue with their activities to defend human rights without fear of retaliation and without any restrictions, including police harassment.
