OPINION:
Since Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro launched his attempt to steal the election that he lost in a landslide on July 28, thousands have been detained, 24 Venezuelans have been killed by government agents and threats are made daily by the regime that it will go against opposition leaders Edmundo Gonzalez or Maria Corina Machado.
Many underestimate the role of Cuba in the present crisis. The Castro regime assisted Hugo Chavez in his rise to power in Venezuela in 1999 and oversaw the succession of Mr. Maduro, who took over when Chavez died of cancer in 2013.
“It is estimated that the Cuban presence in Venezuela is 46,000 people, an occupation force that teaches to torture, to repress, to do intelligence tasks, civil documentation, migration,” said Luis Almagro, secretary general of the Organization of American States, on Dec. 7, 2018.
“Venezuela has turned into an ally in the region of Russia, Iran, China, Cuba,” Ms. Machado said in her Aug. 11 interview on CNN with Fareed Zakaria. In the interview, she also observed that “Venezuela is a safe haven for irregular activities of criminal networks that are spreading in the region, not only narco trafficking, but illegal mining, traffic of human beings.”
The Cuban military dictatorship facilitated these relationships between Venezuela, Iran, China, Russia and criminal networks involved in drug trafficking, as well as the creation of new ones such as the Soles Cartel, which is linked to the Venezuelan military.
Havana served as a middleman, building alliances with regimes hostile to the United States and seeking to expand their influence in the Western Hemisphere to counter U.S. power.
In May, the Casla Institute, an organization that promotes democracy and the rule of law based in the Czech Republic, documented in its annual report how Cuban officials oversee, with Mr. Maduro’s approval, the repressive apparatus in Venezuela. Cuban officials are “the ‘experts’ who direct the torture to make the detainees say what the regime needs,” the report said.
“We have the largest torture center in Latin America,” Ms. Corina Machado said in her Feb. 7 appearance before the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere.
The Venezuelan opposition leader added, “Cuban agents have been involved in torture cases in our country.”
The crisis stems from the Biden administration’s gambit of promising sanctions relief and normalized ties in exchange for free and fair elections. The more unified and well-organized democratic opposition in Venezuela is exposing the dictatorship’s falsehood, while maintaining nonviolent discipline in the face of repeated acts of violence and repression by regime agents and their sympathizers.
What is happening in Venezuela is part of a disturbing pattern.
The Biden administration loosened sanctions on Russia and Iran, providing the hostile nations with more resources. The results have been disastrous. In the case of Moscow, as troops amassed on the border of Ukraine, the United States threatened new sanctions if the invasion materialized but did not apply them before Vladimir Putin invaded in February 2022.
Iran was provided with more resources while cracking down on Iran’s pro-democracy movement and funded its proxy terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah to increase their attacks on Israel.
Today there are wars in Europe and the Middle East, and a huge loss of life, and it appears that this policy of loosening sanctions and inviting more chaos will engulf Latin America.
The Biden administration made a deal with Mr. Maduro that if he held free elections, then the United States would lift all sanctions and normalize relations with Venezuela. This has created a crisis that can benefit the democratic aspirations of the Venezuelan people who voted for change by an overwhelming majority on July 28.
Through diplomatic channels and nonviolent means, including sanctions, democratic nations have the opportunity to pressure Mr. Maduro to respect the results of the Venezuelan presidential election. There will be hemispheric repercussions if the democratic world is unable to effectively assist Venezuelans defend their popular sovereignty using nonviolent means.
Caracas has bought a large quantity of heavy weapons from Moscow and Tehran. Mr. Maduro in 2023 began threatening to invade and annex Essequibo, which makes up two-thirds of neighboring Guyana’s territory, to stoke nationalist sentiment in Venezuela and seize its rich oil deposits. It is highly likely that if Mr. Maduro survives the electoral challenge from Mr. Gonzalez, he will pursue war with Guyana in an attempt to gain support but more importantly to advance Russian, Chinese and Iranian objectives in the South Atlantic.
The democratic world must do more now to rally, work together and impose multilateral sanctions to ostracize the Venezuelan dictatorship as was done with the apartheid regime in South Africa. It must target Venezuelan officials who engaged in crimes against humanity with sanctions and charges in the International Criminal Court. Other countries siding with Mr. Maduro must also be sanctioned and publicly called out.
The future of Latin America will be decided in Venezuela over the next few weeks, and if autocracy triumphs, war is bound to follow. Providing carrots, such as amnesty and safe harbor, is fine. But sticks must also be displayed to discourage the continued brutalization of Venezuelans.
Jeffrey Scott Shapiro’s Washington Times opinion piece on July 30 calling for the U.S. to “arrest Maduro on 2020 narco-terrorism charges” raises the question: Is there a red notice out on Nicolas Maduro with Interpol?
• John Suarez is a human rights activist and executive director of the Center for a Free Cuba and a former program officer for Latin America programs at Freedom House.
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