Venezuelans left to face military justice
President Maduro using terrorism laws in effort to stamp out growing unrest
BOGOTA, COLOMBIA— Cheers erupted as the protesters toppled the statue of former president Hugo Chavez, the metal cracking against concrete. The scenes, distributed around Venezuela on social media, showed a crowd smashing the ssculpture on a curbside as others came to set a fire inside its shattered belly.
But when the authorities rounded up suspects for the vandalism, they were not taken to an ordinary court. Instead, they were hauled off to a military base, where they faced the judges of a military tribunal this week.
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, embattled by a second month of protests against his rule, has prosecuted political rivals under terrorism laws and expanded his powers by emergency decrees. His backers on the Supreme Court have even tried to dissolve the national legislature, which is led by the political opposition.
Now, the president is turning to military courts to tighten his grip further, prosecuting demonstrators and other civilians in tribunals that the government closely controls.
At least 120 people have been jailed by military courts since early April, when demonstrators began taking to the streets to call for new elections, according to Penal Forum, a legal group assisting those arrested.
“Military justice sows the greatest terror in our population,” said Juan Miguel Matheus, an opposition congressperson in the state of Carabobo.
Those held include students, store owners, mechanics and farmers, rights groups say. An entire family was arraigned before a military tribunal in Caracas this week and charged with inciting rebellion. In one case, in the city of Valencia, two people were brought before military courts on suspicion of stealing legs of ham during a round of looting — then charged with rebellion as well, according to Penal Forum.
“They are being treated like they are combatants,” said Alfredo Romero, director of the legal group. “It’s taking civil jurisdiction and putting it in the hands of the military, like we are in a war.”
Many see another reason for the military crackdown against the protesters: The president’s power is declining within his own leftist party, especially among its law enforcers.
Even elderly Venezuelans, frustrated with medical shortages and the flight of grandchildren from their troubled South American country, joined anti-government street protests demanding elections Friday.
Lines of police officers blocked thousands of protesters from advancing in the capital city of Caracas. White-haired demonstrators with raspy voices berated officers for not letting them through.
“Respect the elderly!” one yelled at the young officers standing shoulder-to-shoulder with plastic shields.
The protest organized by the country’s opposition coalition was billed as the “March of the Grandparents” and comes on the heels of six weeks of demonstrations against Maduro’s government. Many of the elderly marchers said it made them angry to see a once prosperous nation devolve into a country with triple-digit inflation, shortages of basic necessities such as food and medicine and one of the world’s highest homicide rates.
In April, Maduro announced what he called “the Zamora Plan,” a set of decrees meant to combat “internal and external attacks” using the armed forces. Many lawyers and opposition officials see it as the legal premise for the shift to military courts.
Maduro said he had expanded the role of the armed forces in a “strategic civil-military plan to guarantee the country functions.” He warned that the opposition had “called for a coup d’état” and that the punishments would be tripled for such offences.
The president has since described the protests as acts of terrorism that would be treated legally as such.
This week, Vladimir Padrino Lopez, Maduro’s defence minister, told a Spanish news service that he planned to take any protester who attacked national guardsmen to the tribunals.
“Military justice will immediately be used to hear this kind of case,” he said.
Yet human rights lawyers say that some cases have nothing to do with attacks against soldiers. Romero cited the case in Valencia, about a twohour drive west of Caracas, where widespread rioting has led to a near state of martial law. He says his team recently attended the arraignment of two residents who were arrested after cuts of ham were found in their homes, presumably evidence that they had been involved in the rioting. However, when the court announced the charges, the pair stood accused of insulting soldiers and inciting rebellion.
“A narrative was completely invented,” Romero said.