Report: Venezuela Arrests 129 Children Since Sham Election

Venezuela’s Vente Venezuela party, the country’s only mainstream center-right party, presented over the weekend evidence that the socialist regime has arbitrarily detained over 120 minors in its ongoing crackdown on dissidents following the July 28 sham presidential election.

Nationwide protests erupted in Venezuela after the regime-controlled National Electoral Center (CNE) proclaimed socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro the “winner” of the July 28 sham election. While CNE, an entity openly loyal to Maduro, claims the socialist dictator was “reelected” for a third consecutive six-year term, it has refused to publish voter data or any kind of documentation that can corroborate the claimed “results.”

The Maduro regime immediately responded to the protests with a brutal repression campaign led by the national guard, the Bolivarian national police, and other branches of the socialist regime’s security apparatus, including the colectivos, armed socialist gangs that directly serve Maduro.

The crackdown resulted in over 2,400 arbitrary detentions and at least 25 deaths as of last week. Venezuelan Attorney General Tarek William Saab claimed last week that none of the deaths can be attributed to the Maduro regime’s security forces because, according to him, his office has not received “a single complaint” against any of the state’s security forces.

The Venezuelan non-governmental organization Foro Penal reported on August 18 that it had confirmed and identified 1,503 of the arbitrarily arrested individuals, of whom 129 were teenagers between the ages of 14 and 17.

Vente Venezuela, led by opposition leader María Corina Machado, presented several of the known cases of teenagers arrested in posts made on social media, including the case of José David Crespo, a 14-year-old boy detained during the protests alongside his father Israel Crespo in the city of Carora, Lara state, on July 30.

The child’s mother, Marbelín Camacaro, denounced her son’s arbitrary detention in a video posted on social media. The mother explains that her son was first detained in a National Guard post and then transferred to the Manzano juvenile detention center in the city of Barquisimeto on August 10 while the father remains detained on the National Guard post.

“My son is innocent. He is studying. He is 14 years old and I ask for justice, for the release of my son,” the mother said at the end of the video.

Vente Venezuela also presented the case of a 16-year-old girl referred to as “Lau,” explaining that the minor stands accused of “inciting hatred” after she was detained in the city of Carúpano, Sucre, on August 14 following threats made by a local public official.

In a follow-up post, the center-right party denounced that the 16-year-old, who suffers from nervous breakdowns and despair, presented health problems and was taken to a local hospital where she remains hospitalized after an encephalogram showed that she had suffered brain damage.

“She was put on trial without the right to a defense, guarded by police officers,” the post read. 

“This situation is the reflection of more than 100 children who are currently unjustly held behind bars,” Vente Venezuela continued in another post. “Not only are their rights being violated, but also their development and goals are being interrupted.”

The Venezuelan outlet El Pitazo reported on Saturday that one of the 129 known children subject to arbitrary detention was released in the city of Barinas by a judge under precautionary measures. The minor, only identified as a 15-year-old boy, spent three weeks detained on “terrorism” accusations.

Five days before his release, the minor reportedly suffered facial paralysis and was taken to a hospital. El Pitazo explained that the minor’s father, who is reportedly outside of Venezuela, started a campaign to secure his son’s release. The boy reportedly must appear in court every eight years and is prohibited from leaving the country.

El Pitazo pointed out that according to estimates from the non-government organization Provea, the Maduro regime has surpassed the figures of repression registered during other South American dictatorships such as Augusto Pinochet’s in Chile, who “did not reach 150 detainees per day between September and December 1973, as Maduro has had.”

Following a request made by Maduro, the Venezuelan Supreme Justice Tribunal (TSJ) — also openly loyal to Maduro and fully stacked with socialist judges — ruled last week to uphold CNE’s results and the dictator’s “victory” after “reviewing” voter data provided by the regime-controlled electoral authority, which CNE has not publicly released at press time. Venezuelan state-owned media reported last week that CNE has not published the voter data because it claims the data was compromised by an alleged “cybernetic attack.”

The international community has questioned Maduro’s alleged “victory,” particularly in light of the Venezuelan opposition publishing copies of more than 80 percent of the sham election’s vote tallies that it collected on the day of the election from local voting stations. Those results indicate that opposition candidate Edmundo González, a 74-year-old former diplomat, defeated Maduro in a landslide.

Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.