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NGOs from across Venezuela and beyond call for the release of the Executive Director of Espacio Público, Carlos Correa, arbitrarily detained and forcibly disappeared by individuals believed to be connected with State security forces.
Espacio Público and the undersigned organisations demand the immediate release of Carlos Correa, director of the NGO Espacio Público, who was intercepted by people dressed in black, hooded, and taken to an unknown destination on 7 January at around 5:00 p.m. in the centre of Caracas. This mechanism has previously been used by State security forces to arbitrarily detain and subject to enforced disappearance human rights defenders, those involved in politics or who may be critical of the government of Nicolás Maduro.
Carlos Correa is the director of the organisation Espacio Público, a journalist and human rights defender with more than 20 years of experience in the promotion and defence of human rights and freedom of expression in Venezuela. He is also a professor-researcher at the Human Rights Centre of the Andrés Bello Catholic University. After his arrest, he has not communicated with his family or trusted lawyers, a human right and also a guarantee of due process in the case of arrests established in the Organic Code of Criminal Procedure.
Relatives and colleagues of Carlos Correa have asked several detention centres about the whereabouts of the defender, but the authorities have denied that he is in those centres. We recall that denying information implies collaboration in the consolidation of an enforced disappearance and that the officials involved are responsible before the law.
We warn that this arbitrary detention and forced disappearance is taking place in the context of an intensification of harassment and persecution by the Venezuelan State towards all actors who represent the defence of civil and political liberties in the country. On 15 August, the ‘Law for the control, regularisation, operation and financing of non-governmental organisations and non-profit social organisations’ was approved, a regulation that violates the principles of autonomy and independence inherent to the right of association, and under the assumption that non-governmental and non-profit initiatives are ‘enemies of the homeland’, that they use ‘illicit funds’ to ‘finance terrorism’.
A few months ago, Nicolás Maduro mentioned Carlos Correa in a speech broadcast by the national media, in which he said he remembered him for his work with the Fe y Alegría radio broadcasting network. Moreover, Correa and the organisation Espacio Público have been mentioned by Diosdado Cabello on his television programme, in a persecution of his work defending freedom of expression.
Family members explain that Correa has health conditions that require immediate treatment, and that the State is responsible for guaranteeing access to the medicines he needs to maintain his physical condition. Furthermore, the State and public officials in charge of him are responsible for the psychological integrity of Carlos Correa and all those arbitrarily detained and disappeared.
The forced disappearance of Carlos Correa is part of the crime of persecution for political reasons and is an attempt by the Venezuelan government to silence the work of civil society, which demands respect for civil and political human rights, especially in the context of the crisis generated by the lack of transparency of public bodies in the context of the elections of 28 July 2024.
We demand that the Venezuelan State:
Signed:
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