Voices Across the Globe Express Concern Over Increasing Arrests in Venezuela After Disputed Election 

Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado addresses supporters during a march amid the disputed presidential election, in Caracas, Venezuela August 3, 2024. (Reuters)
Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado addresses supporters during a march amid the disputed presidential election, in Caracas, Venezuela August 3, 2024. (Reuters)
TT
20

Voices Across the Globe Express Concern Over Increasing Arrests in Venezuela After Disputed Election 

Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado addresses supporters during a march amid the disputed presidential election, in Caracas, Venezuela August 3, 2024. (Reuters)
Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado addresses supporters during a march amid the disputed presidential election, in Caracas, Venezuela August 3, 2024. (Reuters)

Voices across the globe expressed concern Sunday over the growing number of arrests in Venezuela following last weekend’s disputed elections.

Pope Francis said Venezuela is “living a critical situation” in his traditional Sunday remarks at the Vatican, adding, “I appeal to all parties to seek the truth, to avoid all kinds of violence.”

The remarks came hours after Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro announced Saturday that the government has arrested 2,000 opponents. At a rally in the Venezuelan capital Caracas, Maduro pledged to detain more people and send them to prison.

US Deputy National Security Adviser Jon Finer told CBS program “Face the Nation” Sunday that the Biden administration is worried the arrests could spark wider unrest.

“We are concerned about the prospect of instability, should there continue to be these detentions,” Finer said.

And in a statement, the leaders of several European countries including France, Spain, Germany and Italy said “the rights of all the Venezuelans, especially the political leaders, should be respected during this process. We strongly condemn any arrests or threats against them.”

Authorities have declared Maduro the victor in last Sunday’s election but have yet to produce voting tallies to prove he won. The opposition claims to have tally sheets showing it won.

An Associated Press analysis Friday of vote tally sheets released by the opposition coalition indicates that their candidate, Edmundo González, won significantly more votes than the government claimed, casting serious doubt on the official declaration that Maduro won.

Both González, a former diplomat, and opposition leader María Corina Machado — who was barred by the government from running — have gone into hiding, saying they fear they will be arrested or killed. Maduro and his cadres have threatened to lock them both up.

The government arrested hundreds of opposition supporters who took to the streets in the days after the disputed poll.

Machado braved the threats to speak at a massive opposition rally Saturday in Caracas, but was whisked away afterwards on the back of a motorcycle.

“After six days of brutal repression, they thought they were going to silence us, intimidate or paralyze us,” Machado told the rally. “The presence of every one of you here today represents the best of Venezuela.”

A few hours later, Maduro again threatened to arrest González for not showing up at the electoral council meeting he had been summoned to. The council, like most parts of Venezuela's government, is completely controlled by Maduro.

“You face serious legal consequences for disobeying the Constitution, the courts and the law,” Maduro said of González.

Maduro also vowed to continue to use a heavy hand against his opponents, saying 2,000 of them have been arrested already.

“This time there will be no pardon, this time there will be Tocorón,” he said, referring to a notorious prison.

On Friday, masked assailants ransacked the opposition’s headquarters on Friday, taking documents and vandalizing the space.

In his long, rambling speech, Maduro issued threats but also called for reconciliation and peace, claiming, “There is room in Venezuela for everyone,” and calling it “the blessed land of opportunity.”

Venezuela sits atop the world’s largest proven crude oil reserves and once boasted Latin America’s most advanced economy, but it entered into a free fall marked by 130,000% hyperinflation and widespread shortages after Maduro took the helm in 2013. More than 7.7 million Venezuelans have fled the country since 2014, the largest exodus in Latin America’s recent history.

US oil sanctions have only deepened the misery, and the Biden administration — which had been easing those restrictions — is now likely to ramp them up again unless Maduro agrees to some sort of transition.

Late Friday, Venezuela’s high court, the Supreme Justice Tribunal, ordered the Maduro-controlled National Electoral Council to hand over the precinct vote count sheets in three days. There have been calls from multiple governments, including Maduro’s close regional allies, for Venezuela’s electoral authorities to release the precinct-level tallies, as it has after previous elections.

The AP processed almost 24,000 images of tally sheets, representing the results from 79% of voting machines.

According to the calculations, the González received 6.89 million votes, nearly half a million more than the government says Maduro won. The tabulations also show Maduro received 3.13 million votes from the tally sheets released.

By comparison, the National Electoral Council said Friday that based on 96.87% of tally sheets, Maduro had won 6.4 million votes and Gonzalez had 5.3 million. National Electoral Council President Elvis Amoroso attributed the delay in filing complete results to attacks on the “technological infrastructure.”

There has been a flurry of diplomatic efforts by Brazil, Colombia and Mexico to convince Maduro to allow an impartial audit of the vote. On Thursday, the governments of the three countries issued a joint statement calling on Venezuela’s electoral authorities “to move forward expeditiously and publicly release” detailed voting data.



Rwandan-Backed Rebels Enter Congo’s Goma in Major Escalation

This video grab made from AFP TV footage in Goma on January 27, 2025, shows armed men walking in the streets of the city, some carrying their belongings. (AFPTV / AFP)
This video grab made from AFP TV footage in Goma on January 27, 2025, shows armed men walking in the streets of the city, some carrying their belongings. (AFPTV / AFP)
TT
20

Rwandan-Backed Rebels Enter Congo’s Goma in Major Escalation

This video grab made from AFP TV footage in Goma on January 27, 2025, shows armed men walking in the streets of the city, some carrying their belongings. (AFPTV / AFP)
This video grab made from AFP TV footage in Goma on January 27, 2025, shows armed men walking in the streets of the city, some carrying their belongings. (AFPTV / AFP)

Rwandan-backed rebels marched into east Congo's largest city Goma on Monday and Congolese troops exchanged fire with the Rwandan military across the border, in the worst escalation of a long-running conflict for more than a decade.

A rebel alliance led by the ethnic Tutsi-led M23 militia said it had seized the lakeside city of more than 2 million people, a major hub for displaced people and aid groups lying on the border with Rwanda and last occupied by M23 in 2012.

The pounding of heavy artillery and rapid gunfire could be heard in a video of Goma airport, posted on social media and verified by Reuters, that showed unidentified armed men running on airport grounds.

"We can still hear gunfire coming from the airport. A rocket landed close to the church, behind our house," said one resident speaking from Goma's northeast Majengo neighborhood.

The M23 said it had taken control of the offices of Congo's national broadcaster in Goma, which goes out to all international radio and TV stations in the region. Two employees confirmed the information.

A senior UN official in Congo said late on Monday there was now fighting in every neighborhood in Goma.

Corneille Nangaa, leader of the Congo River Alliance that includes the M23, told Reuters his forces controlled Goma. "They (army soldiers) have started to surrender, but it takes time," he said. This could not be independently verified and it was unclear if the whole city was under M23 control.

Greg Ramm, country director for Save the Children in Congo, told an online briefing: "On any given moment, we have reports that neighborhoods are calm. A few minutes later, we hear reports of new shelling, of new fighting alongside."

Congo accused Rwanda of sending troops into its territory and threatening "carnage". The government urged residents to stay at home and refrain from looting.

Rwanda said fighting near the border threatened its security, requiring "a sustained defensive posture". Rwanda's army later said Congolese shelling had killed five people and injured 26 in the town of Rubavu, near the border, and Rwanda would respond to protect its civilians.

Congolese soldiers positioned on Mount Goma, a hill within the city, exchanged artillery fire with Rwandan troops on the other side of the border in the town of Gisenyi, according to two UN sources speaking from a UN site between the two.

A Reuters reporter in Gisenyi saw columns of people fleeing, some holding children by the hand or carrying heavy bags, one man carrying a mattress on his head, while gunfire could be heard in the background.

LOOTING AND JAILBREAK

Unverified videos posted on social media showed local residents looting merchandise outside the airport customs warehouse. Adding to the chaos, thousands of inmates broke free from Goma's main prison, a prison official said.

Hundreds of thousands of people displaced by recent fighting or earlier conflict have sought refuge in Goma and in surrounding camps. The arrival of M23 rebels in the city risks causing a new displacement and humanitarian crisis.

In the town of Bukavu, about 200 km south of Goma at the opposite end of Lake Kivu, thousands of people demonstrated against what they described as Rwandan aggression.

Roughly the size of Western Europe, the Democratic Republic of Congo is home to 100 million people, and its plentiful mineral supplies have long been coveted by Chinese and Western companies as well as by armed groups.

Its eastern borderlands are a tinderbox of rebel and militia fiefdoms stemming from two regional wars after Rwanda's 1994 genocide, when Hutu extremists murdered close to 1 million Tutsis and moderate Hutus. Many Hutus, some of them genocide perpetrators and others refugees, fled into Congo after the genocide, which is one of the root causes of instability there.

The UN has warned that the M23 offensive risks spiraling into a broader regional war.

Kenya said Congo's President Felix Tshisekedi and his Rwandan counterpart Paul Kagame had agreed to attend an online meeting on Wednesday.

Rwanda has in recent years received aid and diplomatic support from Western governments despite rights groups criticizing its record at home and in Congo. On Monday, it reacted with fury to criticism from Western powers.

"The righteous international community is back, issuing statements asking for the targets of ethnic violence to exercise restraint," said government press secretary Stephanie Nyombarire in a post on X, accusing Rwanda's critics of forgetting the lessons of the genocide.

COLTAN MINE TAKEN

Congo accuses Rwanda of using M23 to control swathes of Congolese territory for the purpose of looting minerals, which Kigali denies.

UN experts said M23 had conquered Rubaya, the largest coltan mine in the Great Lakes region, and exported at least 150 tons of coltan, which is used in smartphones, via Rwanda.

M23 last captured Goma in 2012 but withdrew days later after an agreement brokered by neighboring nations. That led to the deployment of a new offensive-minded UN force, an overhaul of the Congolese army and diplomatic pressure on Rwanda, leading to the M23's defeat the following year and a deal calling for its demobilization.

But the group never fully disarmed and launched a fresh offensive in 2022 that has seen it capture large parts of mineral-rich North Kivu province.

In an interview before the offensive on Goma, Nangaa, the alliance's leader, suggested it aspired to replace Tshisekedi and his government.

"Our objective is neither Goma nor Bukavu but Kinshasa, the source of all the problems," he said, referring to the Congolese capital, more than 1,500 km west of Goma.

"We have a weak state or a non-state. Where all the armed groups have sprung up, it's because there's no state. We want to recreate the state."