IN VENEZUELA
THE AUTHORITY
KILLS
State violence in the country begins to acquire characteristics of systematic extermination. The State, far from investigating the excesses of the security forces, has tried with a hard-line policy, through a perverse narrative, to make the victims invisible and to foment impunity.
Erick S. González Caldea
I
n Venezuela, a country overrun by crime, the government has endeavored to give it an accommodating sense of death. Faced with the tragedy of being the second nation in the world with more homicides by firearm, the resistance to authority is a category that has been systematically used to disguise the deaths at the hands of the State security forces and to cover possible excesses in the use of public force that could reach the point of extrajudicial executions.
Proiuris analyzed and systematized the information contained in 100 minutes or press releases prepared and disseminated between January 1 and July 31, 2018 by the same security forces that intervened in the alleged confrontations with criminals, in which the terms “neutralized”, “dados de baja” o “striked down” to refer to the people killed.
In these “filtered” reports to the press it is insisted that the fatal outcome of the procedure is due to the commission of the crime of “resistance to the authority”, typified in article 215 of the Venezuelan Criminal Code: “Anyone who threatens a public official or one of his close relatives, in order to intimidate him to do or to stop doing something proper to his duties, will be punished with imprisonment of one to three years. If the act is executed with violence the penalty will be two to four years”. At first glance, it is a relatively minor offense compared to homicide, which is punishable by imprisonment for 12 to 30 years.
The crime of resistance to the authority annuls the crime of homicide, since, it is supposed, (it is not indicated in the minutes), that in these cases operates the so-called defenses of criminal responsibility: fulfillment of duty or legitimate defense. But the doubts have to do with the circumstances of the fact: was it really a confrontation? Without this essential question being sufficiently clarified by an independent, efficient and timely criminal investigation, the alleged offender is blamed for his own death and the police or military officer is exempted from any criminal liability. In short, through the reports, which in many cases constitute the only official record of the events, the notions of victim and perpetrator are inverted to try to justify and legitimize State violence.
The results of the analysis carried out by Proiuris confirm that the authorities and agents of all the police and military agencies involved in citizen security make a chorus of the re-semanticization of relations between the State and the citizens that characterizes the so-called Bolivarian revolution. Although it seems impertinent and unnecessary, the ideological component is present in the reports of the proceedings that conclude in homicides of alleged criminals. “Chávez lives”, is usually added to the end of this type of documents.
In line with a war discourse that floods all public management, the police minutes reveal that citizen security in Venezuela is determined by euphemisms that, according to experts in criminology and discourse analysis, aim to achieve adherents to hard-line policies that resemble extermination practices.
Like in 1984 by George Orwell, the Venezuelan government has tried to institutionalize a neo-language that attempts to legitimize the violence that is exercised from power and pursues the physical and symbolic annihilation of all that the government identifies as an enemy. The objective of stopping the criminal boom is secondary, since the priority is to justify to the public opinion a raid, increasingly bloody, of alleged criminals.
The 100 reports analyzed also indicate that the fight against crime in Venezuela tends to dispense with guarantees of the rights to life and personal integrity enshrined in the Constitution and international treaties. Law enforcement officials claim their status as an authority, but they still kill. The absolute prohibition of the death penalty in Venezuela loses value.
There were 100 procedures executed between January 1 and July 31, 2018, which ended with 171 people killed. 168 were men and 3 women; two minors. The identity of 82 citizens was not provided, but their alleged aliases were. 79% of the victims were not specified their age. However, the highest number of deaths were between 18 and 34 years of age.
In the alleged confrontations all the alleged criminals were killed, while in only 4 of 100 procedures there were a total of 5 police officers injured, with minor injuries; none died.
Officials of the Special Actions Forces of the Bolivarian National Police (FAES) were the cause of the death of 108 people. In second place is the Scientific and Criminal Investigations Corp (Cicpc) with 31 deaths.
57% of the victims (98) were not transferred to hospital centers, after they were injured in the alleged clashes. 42% of the victims (73) were taken to a hospital, but only in 21.9% of the cases the injuries were reported.
The most perverse fact of these “operations”, endorsed by high government officials, is the blurring of the identity of the deceased, because in the official rhetoric, simply, are shown as “subjects” who deserved to be “neutralized”, “striked down” or “discharged”.
The anthropologist Nydia Ruiz emphasizes the abusive exercise of power and the effects of the artificial use of language.
In the opinion of the researcher at the Center for Development Studies of the Central University of Venezuela (Cendes), the risk is that citizens will end up being obedient, disciplined and subordinate soldiers: “When these expressions of the military are incorporated into civilian life -“discharged”, “neutralized”, “struck down”- We are accepting that things are not called by their name, in this case homicides; we are accepting domination. If we accept the masks, we are accepting what they are trying to cover. It is a citizen's duty to oppose the militarization of political language with the deliberate purpose of covering up crimes”.
Terror in the slum
The lack of methodological rigor in the elaboration of the minutes makes comparisons difficult and emerge as a primary element (deliberate?) Of the failures of the registration of police and military activities that culminate in homicides, for example, effects of the design of policies of citizen security adjusted to national and international standards on the proportional and progressive use of public forces. In no case of the 100 analyzed refers to the alleged commission of excesses by officials. Each police or military agency reports what it wants and how it wants, which makes public scrutiny difficult.
Frequently, the names of the dead are replaced by replacements, thereby incorporating an additional element of stigmatization. This happened during a procedure developed by FAES officials on May 22, 2018, in Block 11 of Lomas de Urdaneta, in the Sucre parish of the Libertador municipality of Caracas. On that occasion, officials of the Bolivarian National Police (PNB) killed eight people. “little Lou”, “sharpie”, “the Esmi”, “little Albert”, “the Adonai”, and “the baby" were “neutralized”, according to the police jargon used to justify homicides. All would be aliases arbitrarily imposed by the police, as the relatives and neighbors of the deceased do not recognize them as real. What is missing in this and in all the minutes is a firearm next to each corpse, as evidence of the alleged confrontation. With the “help” of the Cicpc technicians the official version would be completed.
In the aforementioned reports the names and positions of four officials are indicated as informants, as if they were simply those who make the report. It is not specified how many officials intervened in the procedure, nor their names and positions.
The operation continued on several floors of Block 11, at least for one hour and 21 minutes, as indicated in the document. During that time the neighbors would have remained terrified by the police raid that, by the way, would have included several raids of residences, although this is not mentioned and, therefore, nothing is said of the judicial home visit orders that were required. In order to dispense with this legal requirement, it is also not clear whether it was a flagrant commission of crimes.
In the aforementioned minutes the names and positions of four officials are indicated as informants, as if they were simply those who make the report. It is not specified how many officials intervened in the procedure, nor their names and positions.
It is noted that the PNB officer Luis Alberto Rizzo González was killed, but it is not specified that this homicide was the trigger for the raid that was undertaken later. When the police come out to avenge the death of a comrade, they can take anyone who crosses their path ahead. It is a common practice of the security forces of the State that is more like revenge than justice.
Only in one of the eight homicides are alleged criminal records of the deceased: “ belonging to the band of Jairito, dedicated to the sale of narcotic substances, robbieries and theft of vehicles, linked to the death of the fallen official (CPNB) Rizzo Luis”. The reference corresponds to “neutralized citizen: undocumented alias little Lou”. Only as regards the nicknamed citizen “the Esmi”, the report informs he was taken to Los Magallanes de Catia hospital: “Given (sic) by the guard group number (sic) 2, indicating that the deceased presented two (02) injuries produced (sic) by a firearm, in the chest region, allegedly produced by the step of projectiles fired (sic) by a firearm”.
“When these expressions of the military are incorporated into civilian life -“discharged”, “neutralized”, “struck down”- We are accepting that things are not called by their name, homicides in this case”
Nydia Ruiz, anthropologist
The minutes conclude with a slogan used by the PNB, in capital letters and without the comma that should separate the enumeration of verbs: “PROTECT DEFENDING AND SERVING OUR PEOPLE”. Hthere is an additional data, also in capital letters: “FAES WE ARE ONE”. The FAES, elite group of the PNB, boasts of having become “the terror of criminals”, as one of their slogans says.
And what follows is impunity, since none of these eight homicides has been properly investigated. The only thing that has a definitive and unappealable version (judgment) is a "report", prepared by the same responsible officials who applied capital punishment without a trial.
Between May 2017 and May 2018, 301 people were murdered during police operations in the Metropolitan Area of Caracas, 87% by agents of the Cicpc and the PNB, according to data collected by Monitor de Víctimas. And in 2018, 570 deaths were attributed to the police forces in the capital region.
In 2017, Attorney General Luisa Ortega Díaz denounced that in Venezuela extrajudicial executions constitute a systematic policy against a historically marginalized social sector, despite the political instrumentalisation that Chavismo has done when equipping it with the "peoples" category: “The police and the armed forces enter poor slums, heavily armed and in large numbers, leveling everything in their path”, she explained after her political-ideological demarcation of the government and before she was dismissed by the National Constituent Assembly.
None of the 505 extrajudicial executions reported by Ortega Díaz has been duly investigated by her successor, in the directorate of the Public Ministry, Tarek William Saab, who is the head of that institution since July 31, 2017.
Deficiencies in the registry of homicides in the context of alleged confrontations with the police are subject to impunity. In 85 of the 100 reports analyzed by Proiuris, there is no evidence that public prosecutors have been notified of the procedures or their results. In this way, the cases of 139 deceased are not in the hands of the Prosecutor's Office and probably are not investigated. In case of having committed any excess in the use of public force, it will surely go unpunished.
Only 15 procedures of the 100 analyzed were notified to the Public Prosecutor's Office and were left in the hands of 11 prosecutors. Four are in 20th Prosecutor's Office of the Aragua state and only one case was sent to a prosecutor's office in charge of investigating fundamental rights violations.
Precarious lives, precarious deaths
“Some lives are worthwhile, others are not; the differential distribution of pain that decides what kind of subject deserves a duel and what kind of subject does not, produces and maintains certain excluding conceptions of who is normatively human: what counts as livable life and lamentable death?”. In this way, Judith Butler approaches the notion of "precarious lives", the name of the book she authored, through which she analyzes and deconstructs the official discourse on the exercise of public force. The work of the American philosopher has as a backdrop the attempts to justify state violence after the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, in New York, on September 11, 2001.
As if she had in sight one of those police minutes that "filter" the security forces in Venezuela, those where the terms "neutralized" "struck down" or "discharged" crush all vestige of human dignity, Butler warns: “What is deprived of face or whose face is presented to us as the symbol of evil, authorizes us to become insensitive to the lives we have eliminated and whose grief is indefinitely postponed”.
Supported by the reflections of Butler and other renowned contemporary intellectuals, the criminologist Keymer Ávila delves into the purposes of the government when it promotes the extermination of alleged criminals. The professor at the Central University of Venezuela (UCV) argues that the Venezuelan authorities have used hackneyed resources of other regimes that systematically violated or violates human rights.
Keymer Ávila, criminologist, considers that police brutality is the result of the militarization of citizen security / Photo Mikel Ferreira
Avila affirms that the official narrative with warlike edges encourages polarization, and that journalists, as war correspondents, run the risk of becoming instruments of the powerful to win in each battle, including the battle of public opinion.
It is common to present as delinquents all persons who die at the hands of the State. Numbers are offered as an expression of "efficiency", but the identities of the victims and their histories are hidden.
When analyzing the official figures on police lethality, offered by the Minister of Interior, Justice and Peace, Néstor Luis Reverol, in 2017, the criminologist provides a revealing fact: in 2016 there were 16 police killings per 100,000 inhabitants and the rate It climbed to 19 the following year. "We are in the top positions in Latin America and the world" he said.
According to Ávila, the rising police brutality, carried out by groups such as the FAES, is a predictable result of the militarization of citizen security. The military is trained for war and the notion of an enemy buries the idea of a citizen with rights, even if it is a citizen who has committed crimes.
In most cases, the killings by police and military officers reported as results of alleged confrontations with alleged criminals correspond to people with precarious lives (in the exclusionary and stigmatizing sense pointed out by Butler) and who seem predestined by the State to have precarious deaths. In the official speech, the "neutralization" of alleged criminals should not cause pain, much less repudiation by the Venezuelan society. But, paradoxically, these are people with physical, social, economic and cultural characteristics that the Venezuelan government amasses through the "people" category.
El press' loudspeaker
If journalists are satisfied with the official version contained in the police reports, they feed the story that promotes the Venezuelan State to legitimize the excesses in its action against crime.
The Venezuelan Observatory of Violence (OVV), in its 2017 Annual Report, warned about state violence: “The increase of the victims that the authorities described as "dismissed" for resisting the authority and that according to the denunciations of many families and of the Attorney General of the Republic can be interpreted as extrajudicial executions of the police and military forces, and not as legitimate use of force, constitute a worrying aspect of violence in the country”.
The OVV insisted on the seriousness of the situation: “This type of actions, intended not to contain the crime or the application of the law, but to annihilate the alleged criminals, becomes a factor that undermines the legitimacy of the public force and concludes the destruction of the social pact. These operations can enjoy the sympathy of a part of the population and even have a relative success in the short term, but historical experience has shown that they are not sustainable, because they destroy the institutionality and then turn into more violence for society”.
“What is deprived of a face or whose face is presented to us as the symbol of evil, authorizes us to become insensitive to the lives we have eliminated and whose grief is indefinitely postponed”
Judith Butler, philosopher
In 2018, the OVV reiterated its concern about “the effects of the police extermination action” and alerted again about the risks of hard-line policies: “Certainly, acting firmly against crime is a demand of society and has been a claim that for more than a decade has been made to the security forces. But being firm in the face of crime does not mean that whoever is responsible for the protection and protection of citizenship assumes that the law or position empowers them to act arbitrarily, committing serious crimes such as executions, kidnappings and police abuse. Whoever pursues the crime can not do so outside the law, because justice or legality is not guaranteed, but institutionality is weakened, society creates a negative image of the police forces and violence increases, increasing mortality and crime”.
On the risk that the press reproduces in an uncritical manner the warmongering and dehumanizing discourse used by the Venezuelan State security forces (in writing through the police reports and by the mouths of the highest government authorities), Keymer Ávila invites to reflect on the thesis of "incorporated journalism". Reporting from the perspective of those in power, usually political power and firepower, is the denial of the intrinsic control role of journalism. It is a concern that arises from the so-called war journalism, with regard to access to the battlefield or leakage of privileged information in exchange for biased news. In this way, journalists, as soldiers, join the ranks of the strongest at the expense of their commitment to the promotion and defense of human rights.
Social psychologist Magally Huggins adds that journalists should fully assume their role as comptrollers, especially in a dictatorial context. Remember that journalists and social media have been victims of a systematic harassment of the government, precisely because of their influence on public opinion and the creation of a collective imaginary around violence. “The worst that can happen is that journalists contribute to create a society of subjects”, she warns.
International organizations and non-governmental organizations for the promotion and defense of human rights have contributed, with documented complaints, to unmasking abuses committed in police and military procedures not included in the minutes.
In a report entitled Violations of human rights in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela: a downward spiral that does not seem to end, published on June 22, 2018, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights warned: “The pattern of behavior followed by the security forces was to break into houses without a warrant and subject the victim before opening fire at close range without any justification. Next, security forces would have concealed the killings by simulating an exchange of gunfire, suggesting that the victims had opened fire first”.
“When analyzing the official figures offered by the minister (of Interior, Justice and Peace) Néstor Luis Reverol in 2017, we find 16 homicides by police officers per 100,000 inhabitants in 2016 and the rate went up to 19 the following year. We are in the top positions in Latin America and the world”
Keymer Ávila, criminologist
Amnesty International, in the report "This is not life", released on September 20, 2018, revealed that extrajudicial executions in Venezuela have increased 619.53% between 2012 and 2016. The document states that "in many cases, these (extrajudicial executions) are disguised as supposed armed confrontations. Most of the victims, among whom are adolescents, were branded as criminals, although in reality they were people who protested, or people who were not armed and who came from poor neighborhoods. "
Few "casualties" on the other side
The official reports of the alleged clashes contain information about the circumstances of the manner, time and place of each of the homicides, which increases the opacity of the proceedings.
The analysis of 100 reports made by Proiuris highlights the relationship in terms of death between alleged murderers and police and military is 171 to 0. Only five officials were injured and, ultimately, all were out of danger.
Only 16 of the documents analyzed (29% of the deceased) specify the type of injuries caused to the deceased and where in the body they suffered them. However, it was admitted that 12 people were killed by the police or military because of bullet wounds in the thorax.
98 victims (56.32%) of a total of 171 were not taken to hospital centers, after they were injured in the alleged confrontations.
The case-fatality rate in documented cases is extremely high, despite the fact that the country's legislation establishes that security officials should only use lethal force when their life is in imminent danger.
The numeral 1 of article 70 of the Organic Law of the Police Service and the National Police Corps establishes: “The level of use of the force to be applied is determined by the behavior of the person and not by the predisposition of the officer”.
“The worst that can happen is that journalists contribute to create a society of subjects”
Magally Huggins, social psychologist.
In many of the cases reported daily in the Venezuelan press about people killed by police officers, the relatives of the victims report that the officers burst violently into homes and assault the victims before executing her, many times, near their family.
“At no time should there be unnecessary physical harm or moral abuse to the persons targeted by the police action, nor should force be used as a form of direct punishment”, it is stipulated in numeral 5 of article 7 of the aforementioned law.
The policemen, when recording the facts in the reports, affirm that the perpetrator had a suspicious attitude, “so they proceeded to the imperative task of facing it and starting a confrontation”, is indicated in one of the analyzed documents. It is not explained if the officers applied the code that forces them to exhaust persuasion mechanisms to apprehend the alleged aggressors.
The Venezuelan State, in 1990, signed the "Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by the Officials in Charge of Enforcing the Law," established by the United Nations. These principles oblige the State, its governments and law enforcement agencies to adopt and apply rules and regulations on the use of force and firearms against persons.
Among the international guidelines on the subject, the obligation to specify the circumstances in which law enforcement officials would be authorized to carry and use firearms stands out. However, details such as the full name of the victim, the precise identification of the acting officials and the notification that must be made to the Public Ministry are not always recorded in the minutes.
“This type of actions, aimed not at the containment of crime or the application of the law, but at the annihilation of the alleged criminals, becomes a factor that undermines the legitimacy of the public force and concludes the destruction of the social pact”
Venezuelan Observatory of Violence
Extrajudicial executions are not classified as a crime in the country, but international treaties and agreements signed by the Venezuelan State impose the obligation to use all legal mechanisms available to investigate this type of events. According to data from the Venezuelan Observatory of Violence, impunity in cases of violation of human rights is 98%.
The difficulties for the relatives of the victims to promote the investigations begin with the obstacles to access the files. Even so, there are those who do not succumb to these mechanisms of impunity, because the pain of loss and the legitimate aspiration of justice are stronger.
Proiuris approached three of these families and, in addition to listening to them, provided them with legal assistance. In the stories that make up this special report the voices are claimed Rosa Ángela Justiniano (Yoya), Thaína Molina and Liliana Zerpa, three mothers willing to refute unjust death sentences.
