Incarceration of political prisoners gives away the existence of dictators and their accomplices in Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Bolivia

By: Carlos Sánchez Berzaín - 05/09/2023

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There are political prisoners in Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Bolivia, they are human beings who have been arbitrarily deprived of their freedom just because their ideas are perceived as a challenge and a threat to the regimes. They have been falsely accused for crimes they did not commit; they are subjected to torture and helplessness within judicial systems used by dictatorships to instill fear in the population. It is the flagrant violation of human rights and the perpetration of crimes against humanity that are internationally used as exchange tokens by criminals of the narco-States’ dictatorial system.

Human rights’ defense organizations periodically certify the number of political prisoners, identifying them and reporting their personal data. Prisoner Defenders certifies that up to August of 2023, there are 1,043 political prisoners in Cuba. The Venezuelan Penal Forum certifies that as of 28 August 2023, there are 282 political prisoners in Venezuela. In Nicaragua, in the aftermath of the forcible uprooting and deportation of 222 political prisoners, the mechanism for the acknowledgement of political prisoners certifies that as of 30 August of 2023, there are 79 political prisoners in Nicaragua. The Global Human Rights League certifies that as of 1 September 2023, there are 265 political prisoners in Bolivia.

The expansion of Cuba’s dictatorship presents itself as a leftist political group under the label of “21st Century Socialism” that -in this century- has turned Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Bolivia into dictatorships who also have at their service Para-Dictatorial governments in Argentina with Fernandez/Kirchner, Mexico with Lopez-Obrador, Colombia with Petro, Brazil with Lula da Silva, and intermittently Chile with Boric.

Within this context, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Nicaragua’s regimes implement the same system of repression through “State-terrorism” that consists in “the use of illegitimate means from the government that are aimed to instill fear and terror in the civilian population in order to reach its objectives or promote behaviors that would otherwise noy occur by themselves.” Terrorism is a chain of multiple crimes continually and periodically perpetrated that violate human rights, ranging from material and ideological falsification, false accusations, prevarication, manipulation of the proof, illegal detentions, torture, extortion, slander and more, in a criminal partnership directed by the regime.

Simply stated, it is about the judicialization of persecution and political repression based on penal rulings and despicable laws that violate human rights but that are approved by the dictatorial system. This process is enforced by prosecutors and judges who, instead of judging, are executioners and henchmen in charge of prevaricating and violating all fundamental individual rights that turn judicial proceedings into “lynchings” in which end results involving long periods of detention and procedural stagnation, or quick sentences with atrocious sentences, are known well before in-advance.

In the 21st Century Socialism’s system, all political prisoners -without exception- are subject to have their human right to equality, dignity, freedom, safety, and physical well-being, violated. Political prisoners have the right not to be tortured, they have the right to be legally represented, to have equality before the law, to have access to effective legal resources in their defense, not to be arbitrarily imprisoned or uprooted or deported, to be heard by an independent fair and impartial tribunal, they have the right to presumption of innocence, the right to due-process, protection of their family, to move about freely, to have private property, the right to freedom of thought and expression, the right to free assembly, to work… Political prisoners are turned into human beings without any rights whose guilt is presumed and whose torture starts at the moment of their detention.

All of these criminal acts have been publicly and widely proven. Beyond that, these are crimes against humanity established by Article 7 of the International Criminal Court’s Statute from Rome that states: “For purposes of the current Statute, it shall be understood by a “crime against humanity” to be any of the following acts when they are committed as part of a generalized or systematic attack against a civilian population and with the knowledge of such attack. 1.e. Imprisonment or other grievous deprivation of physical freedom in violation of fundamental standards of international law. 1.f. Torture.”

Criminals who have political prisoners subjected to torture, wield power in Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Bolivia -this latter regime is still incorrectly referred to as a democracy- and are backed and cloaked by the current governments from Argentina, Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, and Chile. The leadership and voters from countries with democracy must remember it because it is time for governments such as those of Fernandez/Kirchner, Lopez-Obrador, Lula da Silva, Petro and Boric to be held accountable to their voters and their laws for their participation in the existence of political prisoners in the Americas.

*Attorney & Political Scientist. Director of the Interamerican Institute for Democracy.

Translation from Spanish by Edgar L. Terrazas

«The opinions published herein are the sole responsibility of its author».