Briefing

The Regime Disregards the IFFM Report

Perhaps it was expected, but the arguments are very weak and they even try to use Bachelet's name in their defense; Armando.Info finds a trail of corruption; The CNE is just improvising

Naky Soto
The CNE basically lied.

Photo: Medium

  • On Saturday, Nicolás’s regime called the UNHCR Fact-Finding Mission report a fraud. Jorge Arreaza and ANC-imposed prosecutor general, Tarek William Saab, rejected in a joint statement the document with the argument that the mission has never been to the country. “A 444-page report without talking to Venezuelan authorities, that’s irresponsible, it’s a fraud and a monument to war propaganda,” said Arreaza and added that “it’s a report for judicial piracy.” According to Arreaza, this report means to trample the December election and the work with UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet, as if the Mission and Bachelet’s office were truly different entities and they only dealt with “la dueña del circo.” Besides: the Venezuelan State blocked this mission from entering the country and denied answering their requirements. Saab said that he had charged 565 officers for alleged human rights violations, and he thinks that’s a victory. Meaning that he sort of admitted that these violations have happened and in mass, as a matter of fact he said that during September he has requested 70 FAES officers be charged in different states. Only in September, huh? 
  • The mission’s report contains, out of everything they found, only that which can be proved. That’s why the conclusions are so devastating, and the most important thing is establishing the chain of command of crimes against humanity perpetrated by the regime: authorities ordered and provided resources for arbitrary detentions, torture, disappearances and extrajudicial executions. Why is it impossible that authorities knew, as Arreaza claims? The report shows these crimes “happened in dozens of military and police facilities,” that they “happened repeatedly over the years,” because the repetition and continuity allow to confirm that those weren’t “isolated incidents” and that they implied “cooperation by action or omission of many state agents at different levels.” Nicolás’s regime took three days to assimilate all these facts and decide a communications strategy. This week, the Human Rights Council will determine if the Mission continues working on Venezuela. This weekend, Nicolás’s regime let everyone know that it isn’t worried about impunity and that it doesn’t have sanctioning people responsible for crimes against humanity in its priorities. 
  • Nicolás confirmed on Sunday that flexibilization for his 7×7 starts on Monday, and reported 707 new cases of coronavirus for a total of 66,656 cases they’ve admitted to. He announced the new total of deaths: 547 (539 was the previous number, meaning that they admitted to eight deaths yesterday). He said, again, that the curve is flattening. He didn’t say how many PCR tests they’re doing per day and, believe it or not, he talked about human rights violations… in Colombia. He also talked about ozone therapy as a complementary treatment. 
  • NGO Médicos Unidos por Venezuela reported the death of four healthcare workers, for a total of 178 deaths of healthcare personnel. Healthcare personnel urgently need biosafety gear.
  • A little over 70 days away from the alleged parliamentary elections of next December, Indira Alfonzo, the TSJ-imposed president of the CNE, improvised answers in an interview, revealing that the required planning is simply not there. This reveals that the letters that Arreaza sent to the EU and the UN contained lies: these people haven’t even defined if they’ll use ink, because according to Alfonzo “not using it doesn’t risk the chain of guarantees”. What else did she say? They haven’t decided if the event will be one or two days long, but assured that the system could handle it because “it’s obviously encrypted.” Obviously, she doesn’t even know what “encrypted” means and how it’s tied to how long an electoral process is. She also made mistakes when referring to the possibility of habilitating a platform for a remote audit. Hardware: she said that all voting machines will be working by December. It’s absurd that there’s such mystery with the hardware and software they’ll be using. She confessed that they’ve sent 75 invitations to regional and international institutions but so far they haven’t had an answer. This is a message. Regarding biosafety protocol, so far the guidelines are using a facemask and social distance in line. About “puntos rojos,” the chavista control stations near voting centers that have existed for many elections now, she said she’s convinced that she’ll reach an agreement with the PSUV so they campaign “in the best of terms, respecting voters,” even though they said they’d eliminate them in their letters to the EU and the UN. They lie. They always lie. 
  • The Venezuelan Ecology Society expressed concern for another oil spill reported in the Western coast of Falcón state, in the underwater pipeline from Río Seco to the Paraguaná refinery complex. No word about this in state media. 
  • The Armed Forces reported that they detained five people, four military officers died and other four were injured on Saturday 19th, in an operation to destroy three camps in Apure state where alleged criminal groups operated. Who did they actually face? 
  • Colombian citizen Alex Saab’s defense team said that he denied any relation to the 700 million dollars frozen by the U.S. government last week, and that he hasn’t given information about Nicolás or voluntarily accepted his extradition. 
  • On Sunday, news site Armando.Info presented a new piece about how Saab raised suspicions in the banking sector long before he was detained, how banks have been accomplices to money laundering and how corrupt individuals’ money is moved even despite the sanctions. 
  • There have been 30.8 million coronavirus cases in the world, and over 959,000 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University.  The U.S. is still the country with the worst numbers, with 6.7 million cases and 199,474 deaths. India follows, with 5.4 million cases and Brazil with 4.5 million cases. Russia has over one million cases and 19,349 deaths, with which we could predict figures being manipulated. There have been 8.7 million cases and over 323,000 deaths in Latin America and the Caribbean. Peru is the fifth country in the world with the highest number of cases, 762,865. Colombia has had 758,300 cases, Mexico 694,121 and Argentina 631,365 cases.
Briefing

Naky Soto

Naky gets called Naibet at home and at the bank. She coordinates training programs for an NGO. She collects moments and turns them into words. She has more stories than freckles.

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