Buenos Aires, Argentina – Martha Grajales, a human rights activist born in Colombia but naturalized in Venezuela, was charged on Monday with incitement to hatred, conspiracy with a foreign government, and criminal association by Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office.
Grajales was campaigning for the release of political prisoners outside of the UN’s headquarters in Caracas, Venezuela, when she was detained by the police and forced into an unmarked van on Friday.
It took three days for authorities to formally charge the co-founder of the Surgentes-Colectivo de Derechos Humanos NGO, and she was not released until Tuesday night, following mounting national and international pressure.
Earlier on Monday, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk had called for the Colombian-born activist’s “immediate release.” A petition demanding her freedom also drew high-profile support, including Nobel Peace laureate Adolfo Pérez Esquivel and the Argentine rights group Madres de Plaza de Mayo Línea Fundadora.
Grajales’ whereabouts were initially unknown, prompting Venezuela’s leading human rights group PROVEA to denounce her detention as a case of forced disappearance. The country’s legal authorities faced further criticism for denying her the constitutional rights to communicate with her family and consult an attorney.
Her husband, Antonio González, searched various detention centres across Caracas with members of PROVEA, but was refused any information. In a video published to the NGO’s X account, González stated that he had been to the centre where Grajales was being held four times, yet was neither granted access nor told she was there. She was later transferred to a detention centre in Los Teques, 20 kilometers (12 miles) away from the Venezuelan capital.
Grajales was also denied the right to choose her own lawyer, and was instead assigned state-appointed counsel, deemed by PROVEA as a routine abuse by Venezuela’s judiciary.
The protesters Grajales had joined were relatives of those arrested after last year’s presidential election. On Tuesday night, they were attacked and robbed by a large group of armed, unidentified assailants. Grajales and other victims tried to file reports in the following days but were refused by various state institutions.
While Venezuela’s judiciary has provided no further details surrounding the charges, state-owned newspaper El Universal claimed that Grajales was part of a far-right conspiracy to infiltrate and destabilize Venezuela. However, her NGO, Surgentes, dismissed these allegations as “baseless”.
Since the July 2024 presidential election, political repression in President Nicolás Maduro’s Venezuela has intensified to what the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights describes as “state terrorism”.
Grajales’ short-term disappearance is by no means an isolated case, but rather part of a pattern of state-sanctioned human rights violations. On Monday evening, various NGOs alerted that Nancy Camacaro, who had worked with the opposition in the leadup to 2024’s election, has been missing since July 21, with her whereabouts still unknown.
Featured image:
Image: Martha Grajales
Image Source: PROVEA via X
