Caracas.- The Bolivarian National Guard (GNB) of Venezuela, one of the country’s five military branches, called this Tuesday to maintain loyalty to the acting president, Delcy Rodríguez, and to guarantee the nation’s sovereignty.
“We are the ones called upon to fulfill our duty and to remain loyal to our President of the Republic, Dr. Delcy Eloína Rodríguez,” expressed the General Commander of the GNB, Juan Sulbarán Quintero, in a statement on the occasion of the 89th anniversary of the military corps.
The major general pointed out that the members of the National Guard, in charge of maintaining internal order and cooperating in the defense of the country, have “the unshakeable commitment to continue guaranteeing, together with the sister components (Army, Navy, Aviation and Militia), the national sovereignty and the stability of the State institutions.”
The military in Venezuela
The statement makes no mention of the deposed president Nicolás Maduro or the United States military operation in Venezuela on January 3rd, when the Chavista leader was captured along with his wife, Cilia Flores, who have been detained ever since in a federal prison in New York.
On the occasion of the 89th anniversary of the GNB, the acting president inaugurated care areas at a polyclinic of the military component in Caracas on this same day, where Rodríguez thanked the national guards for “helping those in need.”
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Last December, the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission, created by the UN to investigate abuses in Venezuela since 2014, reported that National Guard officials committed serious human rights violations and crimes against humanity over the course of more than a decade.
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The 123-page report, which studies the role of the GNB in the repression of protests such as those in 2014, 2017, 2019, and 2024, concludes that officials of the security and public order body “perpetrated and contributed directly to the commission of arbitrary deprivations of life, arbitrary detentions, torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, and sexual or gender-based violence.”
These crimes were committed both during protest control operations and in actions of selective political persecution, abuses that were facilitated by “a prolonged environment of impunity,” according to the mission.
