Hipólito Mejía and several former presidents denounce threats against María Corina Machado

Miami (USA).- The Democratic Initiative of Spain and the Americas (IDEA Group), made up of 30 former heads of State and Government, including the Dominican Hipólito Mejía, denounced this Monday threats against the life and personal integrity of the Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, made by the Government of Nicolás Maduro. In a statement, the former presidents warned that the official expressions constitute an apology for the crime and recalled that this type of threats have already led to violent acts against political leaders in the region.

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The signatories warned that the warnings against Machado are part of a pattern documented by the United Nations and the International Criminal Court regarding human rights violations in Venezuela. The group asked the international community, in particular the Organization of American States (OAS) and the Governments of Colombia and Brazil, to guarantee the protection of the opposition leader. “This threat gains gravity, as it is also true that the appeal to the assassination of the most important political leaders is repetitive in the region, whose messages speak of the rescue of freedoms and the punishment of those who use politics to collude with forms of organized crime, particularly drug trafficking,” the statement indicates. In that regard, he mentioned the assassinations of Colombian presidential candidate Miguel Uribe Turbay, Ecuadorian journalist and politician Fernando Villavicencio, and Venezuelan officer Ronald Ojeda, a political dissident who had taken refuge in Chile. The statement was signed by former presidents Mauricio Macri of Argentina; Carlos Mesa and Jorge Tuto Quiroga of Bolivia; Eduardo Frei of Chile; Iván Duque, Andrés Pastrana and Álvaro Uribe of Colombia; Carlos Alvarado, Óscar Arias, Rafael Ángel Calderón, Laura Chinchilla, Luis Guillermo Solís and Miguel Ángel Rodríguez of Costa Rica; Osvaldo Hurtado, Jamil Mahuad, Lenín Moreno and Guillermo Lasso of Ecuador, and Alfredo Cristiani of El Salvador. They were also supported by Mariano Rajoy of Spain; Felipe Calderón and Vicente Fox of Mexico; Nicolás Ardito Barletta, Mireya Moscoso and Ernesto Pérez Balladares of Panama; Mario Abdo, Federico Franco and Juan Carlos Wasmosy of Paraguay; Hipólito Mejía of the Dominican Republic, and Luis Alberto Lacalle and Julio María Sanguinetti of Uruguay.