The Bolivarian Republic stated in a letter sent by the Venezuelan Foreign Ministry to its Salvadoran counterpart in response to the Diplomatic Note received on April 22nd that the statement “constitutes, in effect, an express confession of serious violations of international human rights law,” as well as the commission of acts that “could be classified as international criminal acts.”
Venezuela cited the violation of the human rights of Venezuelan citizens deported from the United States, who were arbitrarily deprived of their liberty, detained without a court order or trial in a maximum-security detention center, and subjected to degrading and inhumane conditions. They were also denied “contact with family members or legal representation, and, most importantly, they became victims of the extremely serious crime of human trafficking.”
The Venezuelan Ministry of Foreign Affairs also denounced the collective criminalization and institutional xenophobia, which was attributed to them, without individual evidence, neither links between the detainees and transnational criminal organizations (dismantled in Venezuela), in “a blatant violation of the principles of the presumption of innocence and individual criminal responsibility.”
The Ministry also referred to the denial of the right to defense, due process, and access to justice to the migrants, as information on the charges brought against them, access to legal assistance, and appearance before competent courts are not guaranteed. This, it stressed, constitutes a direct violation of the minimum guarantees recognized by general international law, “automatically transforming them into victims of enforced disappearance.”
The Venezuelan Foreign Ministry considered Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s proposal to be an “illegal and morally inadmissible exchange,” as he attempts to condition the release of innocent people on an “exchange” for citizens deprived of their liberty in Venezuela for the “commission of terrible punishable acts.” “This approach constitutes a legal aberration, unprecedented in the framework of bilateral or multilateral relations, which violates the basic principles of justice, proportionality, and human dignity,” it emphasized.
The Bolivarian government urged the Salvadoran government to “provide an immediate, truthful, and concrete response” to five questions posed by the Venezuelan Prosecutor’s Office, which contain fundamental requirements for the ongoing investigation and the guarantee of the rights of persons deprived of liberty; the identification of the Venezuelan prisoners deported from the United States; what crimes they committed in El Salvador; whether their rights to defense, health, and communication with their families were guaranteed, among other questions.
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