(Caracas) Hundreds of people gathered Wednesday in front of the Brazilian embassy in Caracas to ask President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to intercede for the release of the 2,500 “political prisoners” in the country.
Among these detainees are the 2,400 people arrested during the demonstrations that followed the announcement of Nicolas Maduro’s re-election on July 28, against a backdrop of allegations of fraud by the opposition, which claims victory for Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, now in exile in Spain.
The protesters, who displayed banners reading “Lula intercedes for Venezuela” and “Free all political prisoners,” delivered a letter addressed to the Brazilian president, who, along with his Colombian counterpart Gustavo Petro, is leading efforts to find a peaceful solution to the crisis.
“We informed him of the conditions in which our relatives are today in Venezuela, whose human rights are being violated,” said Diego Casanova, a relative of one of the detainees. “They are all prisoners of conscience, none of them have committed a crime.”
The repression of spontaneous demonstrations that broke out across the country the day after the election left 27 dead and 192 injured, according to official sources.
The United States, the European Union and several Latin American countries do not recognize the re-election of the outgoing president with 52% of the vote, according to the electoral authority.
Lula, who has already called Maduro’s government a “very unpleasant regime” with an “authoritarian bent,” has also not recognized his victory in the absence of a “transparent review.”
“Lula da Silva knows what it’s like to be in captivity” after spending 580 days in prison before being cleared in a corruption case, one of the organizers of the march, Andreina Baduel, told AFP.
According to the daughter of General Raul Baduel, an ally of former President Hugo Chavez (1999-2013) who died in prison in 2021 after breaking with the government, “the life of political prisoners is a slow assassination in Venezuela, simply because they think differently.”