As Venezuelans face political upheaval, Cuba should stay out of it | Opinion

Eleven days before the election, Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro predicted a blood bath and a fratricidal civil war if he lost last month’s presidential elections.

On July 28, 2024, opposition candidate Edmundo González defeated Maduro by more than two to one , despite multiple irregularities committed by Maduro regime operatives. González won 67% of the vote, beating Maduro, who garnered 30%.

Now, Maduro is attempting to make his prediction a reality. Thousands of Venezuelans have been arbitrarily detained, and so far 24 have been killed with witnesses identifying government agents in 11 of the extrajudicial deaths, according to Provea, the Venezuela based human rights NGO .

This week, Amnesty International denounced the Maduro government for enacting an “anti-NGO law that punishes efforts to assist victims and defend human rights.” Genocide Watch is reporting that in poor neighborhoods the letter “X” is being painted on people’s homes to show they do not support Maduro, exposing them to possible retaliation.

Things can get a lot worse, especially if Cuba continues to interfere in Venezuela’s internal affairs .

In 2017, Maduro ordered the formation of the FAES – the Spanish acronym for the Bolivarian National Police’s Special Action Forces.” According to Caracas Chronicles , “they are police death squads in all but name.”

That same year, the Miami Herald reported that it had a secret recording of a Venezuelan general advocating for the use of snipers against street demonstrators.

A 2019 report by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights found that 6,856 Venezuelans were extrajudicially executed between January 2018 and May 2019 by Maduro’s “ security forces, particularly the special forces (FAES) .”

Andrés Oppenheimer, syndicated foreign affairs columnist for the Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald, wants to know what is holding up the order of arrest for Maduro in his Aug. 17, column, “Human rights leaders demand action: Why is the ICC delaying Maduro’s arrest warrant? ”

The International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague has been looking into Maduro’s possible crimes against humanity for the past six years.

The ICC also looked into Vladimir Putin’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine and in 2023 issued an arrest warrant for the Russian leader in less than a year.

And, after a seven-month inquiry, the ICC prosecutor declared in mid-May that he will seek arrest warrants for Israel’s prime minister and the leader of the terrorist organization Hamas for crimes committed during the Israel-Hamas war that broke out after the October attack on Israel.

Will the ICC finally do the same for Maduro?

The role that Havana is playing during this crucial political crisis inside Venezuela should not be underestimated.

This week, in an interview , Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado discussed Havana’s ongoing involvement inside Venezuela . “There are serious complaints from national and international human rights organizations...Several of the Venezuelan opposition victims have reported abuses committed [by Cuban oppressors]. We have known for a long time that Cuba has had a terrible impact in multiple areas: in methods of repression, persecution, espionage, and torture. And we have seen truly heartless things in recent days.”

Others have previously noted Havana’s significant presence in Venezuela. Beginning with guerilla expeditions in the 1960s and culminating in the recruitment of Nicolas Maduro as a Cuban mole, Cuban Communist officials recognized that if Venezuela, with all of its natural resources, fell , the rest of Latin America would soon follow .

Back in 2018, Secretary General Luis Almagro of the Organization of American States warned that “there are an estimated 46,000 Cubans living in Venezuela, part of an occupation force that is trained in repression, intelligence work and tracking the activities of civilians.”

Havana’s intelligence and security apparatus “has created a permissive environment for international terrorists to live and thrive within Venezuela,” reported the U.S. State Department in 2021 .

Venezuelan torture victims have testified how their sessions were overseen by the political police at Venezuela’s national intelligence agency, with assistance from Cuban intelligence officers .

As Venezuelans fight for democracy and a fair presidential election in their country, now is the time for the world’s democracies to send a clear and unambiguous message to Havana: Hands off Venezuela! It is long past the time for the Cuban repressive apparatus to leave.

John Suarez is the Executive Director of the Center for a Free Cuba. Suarez was a program officer for Latin America Programs at Freedom House. http://www.cubacenter.org/

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