Venezuela is set to release hundreds of political prisoners and close down a notorious facility as part of an amnesty bill being championed by acting President Delcy Rodriguez.
“May this law serve to heal the wounds left by the political confrontation fueled by violence and extremism, may it serve to redirect justice in our country,” Rodriguez said in a televised statement.
The country’s new boss also announced that she would be shutting down Helicoide, a Caracas prison known for torture and human rights abuses. She said that the facility would become a sports and cultural center.
There are an estimated 711 political prisoners across Venezuela, according to the prisoners’ rights group Foro Penal.
It’s unclear how many prisoners would be granted amnesty, but Rodriguez said that it would cover the “entire period of political violence from 1999 to the present.”
Relatives of prisoners held inside Helicoide gathered outside the facility and livestreamed Rodriguez’s speech, crying and chanting “freedom! freedom!” the Associated Press reported.
The US has pressured Venezuela to increase civil liberties after its daring raid that captured dictator Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio testified to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Wednesday that the Trump administration seeks a “democratic [Venezuela] in which all elements of society are represented in free and fair elections.”
In response to concerns raised by senators that the US, though having removed Maduro, is still cooperating with his repressive regime — Rodriguez was his vice president — Rubio said that political change in Venezuela would take time to accomplish.
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“I get it, we all want like something immediately, but this is not a frozen dinner you put in a microwave and in two and a half minutes it comes out ready to eat, and these are complex things,” he told the senators.
Exiled Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado said in a statement that Rodriguez’s moves were made under “pressure from the US government.”
“When repression disappears and fear is lost, it will be the end of tyranny,” Machado said.
With Post wires.
