International courts to reopen investigation into abuses in Venezuela

After seven months, the International Criminal Court (ICC) ruled this week that prosecutors should resume an investigation into crimes against humanity allegedly committed in Venezuela when dozens were killed in a brutal state security crackdown in response to massive anti-government protests in 2017.

The ICC says the left-wing administration of President Nicolás Maduro, which has been accused for years of persecuting political opponents and suppressing basic human rights, has provided an “insufficient” response to the case, despite the government’s promises to use its rigged internal justice system to investigate such episodes of violence. 

“Venezuela is taking some investigative steps, but its domestic criminal proceedings do not sufficiently mirror the scope of the prosecution’s intended investigation,” the court said. Some agents involved in the repression were even arrested after the case, but the opposition and many international organizations present it as a smokescreen to avoid ICC probes. 

The Venezuelan government rejected the decision, saying shortly after through its Foreign Affairs Ministry that the investigation has “political purposes” in line with the “regime change agenda” supported by the U.S. 

In Brazil, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has been friendly toward the Maduro regime, consistently praising his Venezuelan counterpart and claiming on Thursday that the concept of democracy is “relative.”

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