Buenos Aires, Argentina — On Thursday, Venezuela’s opposition leader María Corina Machado posted a video on X claiming that her campaign vehicle was vandalized and her brakes cut. The video came a day after her security chief was detained by the government of current President Nicolás Maduro.
“Our cars were vandalized and the brake hose was cut. Agents of the regime followed us (…) and surrounded the building where we spent the night,” Corina Machado said in her post.
In late June of 2023, Machado, a favorite for the presidency, was barred from running for office for 15 years by Maduro’s government. She has since thrown her support behind another opposition leader, Edmundo González Urrutia, in his race for the presidency on July 28 and remains on the campaign trail in support of him.
Following the detention of her security chief, Milcíades Ávila, on Wednesday, Corina Machado said, “I raise an alert to the world about [Nicolás] Maduro’s escalation of repression against those who work in the campaign or help us in any part of the country.”
The government of Venezuela did not release any information or official statement regarding Ávila detention.
Ávila was reportedly arrested and accused of gender violence. Machado said in an X post that his arrest was related to an episode on Saturday, July 13 in which some women attempted to attack her and González Urrutia in La Encrucijada, a locality in the state of Aragua, following a campaign event.
“There are dozens of witnesses and videos that demonstrate that this act was a planned provocation to leave us without protection 11 days before July 28,” said Machado.
González Urrutia, a retired diplomat, also denounced the arrest of Ávila and other attacks against the opposition as “intolerable acts of cowardice.”
“The authorities, the National Electoral Council and the international community (…) cannot remain on the sidelines in the face of these events,” he posted on X.
Corina Machado chose González Urrutia to replace her after Venezuela’s electoral authority banned her candidacy after finding her guilty of fraud and conspiracy against late President Hugo Chávez in 2002. Corina Machado has rejected all charges and has remained a leader in the Vente Venezuela opposition movement.
Venezuelan NGO Foro Penal on July 16 reported that there have been 114 arbitrary arrests for political purposes, of which 102 arrests are related to the team of María Corina Machado and the opposition presidential candidate, González Urrutia.
The organization tallied the number of political prisoners in Venezuela at 301, 93 of those people have not completed their judicial processes and are under preventive release measures.
Alfredo Romero, president director of Foro Penal, stated that of the total number of detainees, 77 occurred after July 4, when the official presidential campaign began. “That is, they have not yet been declared guilty, but they have been in prison for more than three years, which is contradictory to article 230 of the Criminal Procedure Code,” Romero told Venezuelan press.
