Political prisoners in Venezuela: "My husband has pancreatic cancer and is still in jail"

Caracas“Today he didn't get out either”, says Eglis Manaure, 50, as she resignedly climbs the stairs leading to her home in a residential block in Guatire, a town about 50 kilometers from Caracas. She smiles and feigns normality, but her eyes betray her: she has a profoundly sad look. "I barely sleep. At one in the morning I'm already awake watching the news to know if he's been released", she confesses. Her husband, Enrique Parada, was arrested more than six years ago, on April 20, 2020, and has been in a prison over 450 kilometers away, in the city of Maturín, in northeastern Venezuela, ever since. To get there, Eglis takes fourteen hours by bus and can only go every three or four months. She has to choose between paying for the ticket or covering the medicines he needs. Her economy doesn't stretch to anything else. The man, 45, has pancreatic cancer.

On February 19, the National Assembly of Venezuela approved an amnesty lawOn February 19, the National Assembly of Venezuela approved an amnesty law that was intended to be a turning point, a before and after. Or at least that's how they sold it. Instead, the coordinator of the Venezuelan human rights association Justice, Encounter and Forgiveness (JEP), Martha Tineo, assures that the legislative text has remained on paper. It is true that a total of 721 political prisoners were released, but the majority continue with precautionary measures. This means they cannot leave the country, nor speak to the press, and must report to the courts regularly. And even worse: they can be re-imprisoned at any time. "Only 110 people have been definitively released from prison", states this human rights defender.

Without official data

According to this organization, at least 665 political prisoners remain in prison, to whom many other cases that have surfaced in recent months must be added. "Reprisals extend to the entire family group. They may be looking for one family member and detain another if they don't find the one they're looking for," explains Tineo. This is why many remain silent. Others remain silent for fear of rejection. The result is that no one knows for sure how many political prisoners remain behind bars, and the Venezuelan government has also not published an official list of those it holds imprisoned or those it has released.

“Many people distanced themselves from me when they arrested my husband”, says Eglis, who has seen how family and friends turned their backs on her as if she had the plague. And this, despite the fact that her husband has been in provisional prison all these years, without a final sentence. He is accused of being involved in a plot to kidnap the Minister of the Interior, Diosdado Cabello. The United Nations Human Rights Council has extensively documented the widespread and systematic use of arbitrary detention in Venezuela as a tool of repression.

Just four days ago, Enrique Parada was sentenced to 26 years in prison, but the sentence is not yet final. “When my child found out, he cried non-stop, he wet himself in bed, he didn't want to eat...”, explains Eglis with an afflicted voice, referring to her 8-year-old son Mauricio, who desperately awaits his father's return. The sentence is for the whole family.

Emirlendris Benítez Rosales's family is also devastated. This middle-aged woman used to sell clothes and shoes until she was arrested on August 5, 2018, accused of participating, the day before, in an attempted drone assassination against Nicolás Maduro and other public officials in Caracas. Since then, she has been behind bars and was sentenced to 30 years in prison, even though before her arrest she had no idea what an assassination was, let alone a drone. Her crime was being a co-pilot in a car that was acting as a taxi, in which two strangers were traveling who were allegedly involved in the attack. The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has requested her immediate release, as has Amnesty International. So far, with no consequences.

“They tore off her toenails with a hammer, put her head in a plastic bag with insecticide, hit her against the wall, kept her in isolation for 33 days…”, says Melania Leal Rosales, listing what they did to her sister when they arrested her. As a consequence of all this, Emirlendris has been left bedridden in a wheelchair: she has fibromyalgia, a herniated disc, a dislocated shoulder... “I ask God for justice to be done”, says her mother, Gladis María Rosales, who suddenly kneels on the ground as she begs, looking at the sky. The family is particularly humble. They live in a shack on the slope of a hill on the outskirts of Caracas.

Blows and rats

Williams Dávila is a recognized politician: he was governor of the Venezuelan state of Mérida, deputy minister in the eighties and senator in the nineties. Despite this, he too was arrested and beaten. He was arrested on August 8, 2024, for his participation in a peaceful demonstration in Caracas to request the release of political prisoners. Men in uniform with balaclavas assaulted him, hit him on the head, injured his leg, and locked him in a dungeon with rats; the wound became infected, and in prison, he suffered septicemia, pneumonia, a gastric ulcer, and hemorrhoids. He is now one of the few political prisoners who has been granted full freedom under the amnesty law, after being released under precautionary measures on July 18, after more than eleven months in prison. The criminal proceedings have been dismissed.

“[José Luis Rodríguez] Zapatero contacted my son to tell him that the Venezuelan government was willing to let me leave the country on the condition that I never return, but I refused,” states the politician. He is confident in change. Just five months ago, it would have been impossible for them to release him or allow him to participate in electoral events, he assures. That is why he is now willing to return to the political arena.