Caracas.- The acting president of Venezuela, Delcy Rodríguez, proposed this Friday a general amnesty law to release political prisoners who have been detained from 1999 to the present, a period that covers the governments of Chavismo.
“I want to announce that we have decided to promote a general amnesty law that covers the entire political period of political violence from 1999 to the present,” Rodríguez pointed out at the beginning of the judicial year, in the Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ), broadcast by the state channel Venezolana de Televisión (VTV).
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The Chavista leader tasked the Judicial Revolution Commission and the Program for coexistence and peace to present the law to the National Assembly (AN, Parliament) in the “next few hours”, as well as the “maximum collaboration” to the legislative body for its approval. “May it be a law that serves to heal the wounds left by political confrontation, from violence, from extremism, that serves to redirect justice in our country and that serves to redirect coexistence among Venezuelans,” he added. The Chavista leader asked the country’s political prisoners, including those who have already been released, to “not impose revenge, retaliation or hatred.” Rodríguez indicated that this bill excludes those prosecuted or convicted of homicides, drug trafficking, and human rights violations. Several NGOs have insisted for years on a general amnesty for all political prisoners, presenting, at the same time, several bills. The last one was proposed last Tuesday by the organization Surgentes and the Mothers for Truth Committee. The text from the NGO and the Committee included 12 articles and proposed amnesty for “all those people who have been persecuted, social fighters, journalists, members of victims’ committees, military personnel and people persecuted or deprived of their freedom in the context of post-election mobilizations.” At the beginning of the month, a parliamentary fraction of Venezuela also proposed an amnesty law to, they argued, bring “calm” to the families of the people “who are unjustly detained.” Currently, according to the NGO Foro Penal, there are 711 political prisoners, but the Venezuelan government denied that there were people detained for these reasons in the country and pointed out that the detainees committed crimes, mostly related to terrorism. The last time an amnesty law was enacted in Venezuela was in December 2007, when the late President Hugo Chávez (1999-2013) pardoned people involved in the coup against him in 2002. In 2016, the Parliament, then controlled by the opposition, approved an amnesty law, declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ), which is aligned with Chavismo, and was never able to be applied. In August 2020, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro granted, by decree, 110 pardons to opponents, unionists, and social actors accused of various crimes, in preparation for legislative elections that were held in December of that year, an event to which the majority of the opposition did not attend.
