Accion Solidaria
The US and European Union remain aligned in a mutual commitment to the restoration of democracy and prosperity in Venezuela, said Special Representative Elliot Abrams.
“We have the same goal, and the goal is the restoration of democracy and prosperity, because the situation in Venezuela is, from the humanitarian point of view, terrible,” he told a State Department briefing. “We also know that the Venezuelan people are suffering greatly, and they are suffering from human rights abuses as well of a really brutal regime.”
The departure of US National Security Advisor John Bolton may be a game-changer for Venezuela, observers suggest.
Efecto Cocuyo
“What will be critical for Venezuela is that the next National Security Advisor works hand-in-hand with other US government agencies to advance a coordinated Venezuela policy that aligns the international community, puts new pressures on Maduro, assists the interim government, and keeps Venezuela’s future a nonpartisan issue in the United States,” said Jason Marczak, director of the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center.
The United Nations’ chief human rights official said Monday that millions of Venezuelans continue to suffer rights violations, including dozens of possible extrajudicial killings carried out by a special police force, AP adds:
Non-governmental organizations report that the Special Action police force carried out 57 suspected extrajudicial killings in July alone within Caracas, Michelle Bachelet said in an oral presentation on Venezuela to the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva.
Bachelet’s latest presentation followed a scathing written report issued in early July that drew a government backlash. It found a “pattern of torture” under the government of President Nicolás Maduro and citing violations like arbitrary detention, extrajudicial killings, sexual violence and enforced disappearances.
The Woodrow Wilson Center’s Latin American Program hosts a discussion on “Pathways Out of the Crisis: Views from Venezuelan Civil Society.”
National Endowment for Democracy
SPEAKERS: Feliciano Reyna, president of Accion Solidaria; Luz Mely Reyes, editor of Efecto Cocuyo; Marino Alvarado, coordinator of the Venezuelan Program of Action Education in Human Rights; Beatriz Borges, executive director of the Justice and Peace Center; Alfredo Romero, executive director of Foro Penal Venezolano; David Smilde, senior fellow at the Washington Office on Latin America; and Pedro Abramovay, director of Latin America and the Caribbean at Open Society Foundations.
9:30 a.m. September 12, 2019
Venue: Woodrow Wilson Center, One Woodrow Wilson Plaza, Ronald Reagan Building, 1300 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Sixth Floor, Washington, D.C.
RSVP: Ryan McKenna, 202-691-4217, ryan.mckenna@wilsoncenter.org
