Venezuela Parliament Unanimously Approves Amnesty Law
Caracas: Venezuela’s National Assembly on Thursday unanimously approved a long-awaited amnesty law that could free hundreds of political prisoners jailed for criticizing the government.
However, the law excludes those tried or convicted of inciting military action against the country; These include opposition leaders such as Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Corina Machado, who has been accused by the ruling party of calling for international intervention similar to the one that ousted the former president.
The bill was signed by interim president Delcy Rodriguez, who pushed for the law to come into force under pressure from Washington after Maduro came to power following his capture during a US military raid on January 3.
“One must know how to ask for forgiveness and also know how to forgive,” Rodriguez said in his speech at the Miraflores presidential palace in the capital Caracas after signing the bill into law. he said.
The law is intended to apply retroactively to 1999, including the coup against previous leader Hugo Chavez, the 2002 oil strike and the 2024 uprisings against Maduro’s controversial re-election, giving families hope that their loved ones will finally return home.
But some fear the law could be used by the government to pardon its own law and selectively deny freedom to genuine prisoners of conscience.
Article 9 of the bill lists those excluded from amnesty as “individuals who have been prosecuted or may be convicted for inciting, instigating, requesting, promoting, favoring, facilitating, financing, or participating in armed actions or armed actions against the people, sovereignty, and territorial integrity of Venezuela by foreign states, corporations, or individuals.”
Venezuela’s National Assembly has postponed several sessions aimed at passing the amnesty bill.
“The scope of the law should be limited to victims of human rights violations and expressly exclude those accused of serious human rights violations and crimes against humanity, including state, paramilitary and non-state actors,” UN human rights experts said in a statement from Geneva on Thursday. he said.
Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Venezuelans have been imprisoned in recent years for real or imagined plots to overthrow the government of Maduro, Rodríguez’s predecessor and former boss, who was eventually ousted in a deadly US military raid.
Family members reported torture, mistreatment, and neglected health care among prisoners.
NGO Foro Penal says about 450 prisoners have been released since Maduro’s ouster, but more than 600 remain behind bars.
Family members have been crying out for their release for weeks and have been holding vigils outside the prisons.
A small group in the capital Caracas staged a hunger strike that lasted almost a week, ending on Thursday.
“The National Assembly has the opportunity to show whether there is a real will for national reconciliation,” Gonzalo Himiob, director of the Foro Criminal Division, wrote on Thursday X before the vote.
On Wednesday, the head of the U.S. military command responsible for attacks on alleged drug-smuggling boats off the coast of South America held talks in Caracas with Rodriguez and senior ministers Vladimir Padrino (defense) and Diosdado Cabello (interior).
All three were staunch Maduro supporters who echoed his “anti-imperialist” rhetoric for years.
Rodriguez’s interim government rules the country with the consent of US President Donald Trump, on the condition that he grants access to Venezuela’s vast oil resources.
