Hello everybody. Im having meetings and i know youre going to be watching a couple of them. We have a lot of people here today and a loft subjects uncolluding north korea and venezuela and i think were making tremendous head way. Welcome to the council for the americas for the latest conversation on the venezuelas i had to run and get my reading glasses. So i have turned 50 years old and im not too proud to admit it. Here we are. Indeed. Indeed. But thank you everyone for coming and what promises to be a timely conversation on a country of increasing concern to all of us that of course being venezuela for those of you who are tuning in thank you for doing so. The council of the americas is an organization that for over 50 years has promoted democracy, open markets and the rule of law. Most of us associate was the hemisphere and thats absolutely true but notice the democracy comes first and the reason why is because Everything Else we try to promote in the hemisphere context is difficult if democracy is not strong and healthy and growing and one of the reasons why were so deeply concerned about the direction of venezuela today. Most of you know the situation on the ground. You know the humanitarian crisis developing there. The fact that food is increasingly unavailable to many citizens of venezuela and the fact that the average weight loss is dramatic and significant and that basic healthcare outside of the capital is increasingly unavailable and the difficult security situation i could go on and on. Also imf predicts inflation will top 2,000 . This hyperinflation rates weve not seen in the western hemisphere in a generation and many thought we would not again. This country many would say is failing and we have seen an accelerated pace of difficulty on the ground in venezuela particularly since the july 30th Constitutional Assembly that we are going to hear more about in a few minutes which has empowered the government to take additional steps, antidemocratic steps which it has taken full advantage of in accelerating the pace of those steps so taking venezuela in a direction that we believe is not the correct direction for the people of the country. Having said that its a real privilege to welcome two prominent democracy advocates. Two people doing on the ground what people like me sit in washington and talk about. Theyre the ones literally on the front lines of these discussions and of these actions. Their by graphic information is before each of you or at least available to the extent you would like to have it for those that dont have it in front of you notice my nine dollar readers. Impressive. To my immediate right your left is the International Coordinator and were going to hear from him about what this is and his role is. Hes immigration and human rights attorney. International coordinator of the venezuelan human rights ngo and refugees Freedom Program he represents Political Prisoners and victims of differences and human rights and u. N. Agencies as well. Hes admitted to practice law in new york and venezuela and immigration attorney with impressive background and will talk about the political prisoner situation. Carlos delvechhio is a National Board member. Hes also venezuela lawyer and politician in 2009 he cofounded and is the National Political coordinator within a movement. He participated as the president s Campaign Manager for one of the more famous Political Prisoners in venezuela today and in 2012 he participated as general manager of the oppositional candidate, another leader of the opposition in venezuela. Organized grass roots movements and activated young people and designed Campaign Rallies and someone thats in the nuts and bolts of the Political Movement within venezuela. His biography is also impressive and for those that can read it i would call that to your attention. Instead of taking time to introduce our two guests let me offer them the opportunity to speak to themselves. Its a pleasure to have you. We thank you for the important work you do on behalf of the people of venezuela and maybe i begin with you and give you the opportunity to talk about your work and what you see on the ground and where you see things headed in your native country of venezuela . Well, first of all thank you very much for elevating the discussion on these important topics. As i had said before, this is for venezuela this is a personal issue but for a lot of people in the International Community, more complicated to grasp the severity of the issue and these opportunities allow the International Community to understand what is really happening and thanks everyone for being present. I come here as International Coordinator of a place thats been described as a network of pro bono attorneys. Its mostly known for two things. One, representing people detained for political motivations if youre detained by venezuela regime and you dont have an attorney at court they will appoint one on your behalf and that is a very good friend of the prosecutor so its not a good idea to go with government appointed attorney. Basically we represent people pro bono and its a network with over 200 Attorneys Nationwide and over 3,000 detainees. The other thing were known for is documenting the situation. Theres no numbers the government is not out there issuing propaganda of how many people they have killed or detained. These numbers are not available and they are available because of the work of our organization thats on a daily basis monitoring how many people are detained and are taken to civilians taken to military tribunals and the government is also trying to make this work a lot more complicated. But i would like to start giving you some raw data. I will give you a brief overview of how we got to where we are, and i want to conclude with where the direction which venezuela is going so regarding raw data we have severe humanitarian crisis happening in venezuela. Its been brewing for years and that has been coupled with a crack down on all the Democratic Institutions and the rule of law. Those people is not happy. If you have growing inflation, poverty, and no democracy, well youre not happy. So people took to the streets half thinking they have different point but most recently as of april first we saw a new wave of protesters. And the government cracked down like never before on these protests. Id like to give you an explanation of the numbers we saw. From april first to july 31st of the numbers that weve seen. 133 people have been killed. 100, 101 of them directly at demonstrations and these have not been accidents. Its, there as clear connection between the government repression and these stats. Theres an obvious intent. 83 of the People Killed have died of bullet wounds. 40 directly at the hands of a government officer. 52 of them at the hands of a pro regime civilian arms group. And its important to highlight these pro regime arm groups we knows a militias are coordinated with the Law Enforcement agencies through government plans. The government has defense plans that include these people cracking down on, its not like they just show up, the government is including them in their plan. We see over 5,000 people detained in just a period of four months thats a significant number. Today we have 1,400 people behind bars today. About 15 of the people detained is tortured, and the norm for pretty much any detention is being a victim of cruel and in human treatment. For women Sexual Assault is a norm. Weve seen even 12yearold little girls being victims of Sexual Assault. Weve seen reports of rape for men and women alike. The numbers of Political Prisoners to give you an idea, when maduro got to there were 11 Political Prisoners but as of february there was an eruption in protests so the numbers of Political Prisoners started to rise to a new level and we came up with this concept to understand how the number of Political Prisoners was working. They coined it the revolving door effect. So basically Political Prisoners come in and Political Prisoners go out. Some of them are detained and some others are released at the same time this is happening so they keep from 2014 until march of this year they kept an average of 100 Political Prisoners for the last three years. That was the average and they were very careful. Every time they imprisoned people they would release a few others. And but the average kept very steady. Around 100. Today we have 620 so the revolving door is broken. The use of military tribunals to crack on civilians is one new method that has become systematic as of april first. 609 civilians have been tried. 327 of them have been ordered detained by military tribunals and these are civilians tried by a military officer and for instance when you try a civilian in a criminal court, a regular criminal court you know where the court is and the prosecutor and you can show up as an attorney if you try in a military court theres no court. Its just a military fort where they wont let you in and they just use the random room that they decide that to be the court that day and the prosecutor is military officer in their uniform and the judge is. They report to the ministry of defense. And they are on a systematic way trying civilians and a lot of this happened connection that it became critical of the government. So one of the things that we saw as a response to this ways of protest as of april 1 is that the government came up with a new idea. Constituent assembly thats aptly described as dictator its basically a group of people that have super constitutional powers and they can appoint and change a law and one of the first things they did was sack the attorney general. Because he was not cooperating with political persecution and they appointed a person that is has been very loyal to them who used to be the offense man. Obviously this is entirely unconstitutional but that what is at dictator does and that gives you an idea of what is happening. Lot of specific faces have suffered this persecution. Id like to highlight the case of william ortiaga. He is a violinist and he became famous for standing up in front of the National Guard shooting at people and he would play the National Anthem and other pieces in his violin. Hes in jail now. He was tortured. He was, they shot rubber but lets at his face. They also conducted his arraignment secretly and they hid him from the attorneys. He was appointed a pro government defense attorney. Hes been awarded a bond allegedly but this is, the requirements of the bond and this is another systematic thing theyre coming up with, theyre coming up with entirely legal requirements for bond that would keep someone in jail for about 45 days, until they can come up with all the requirements so willy has been awarded bond but will be in jail probably for the next 45 days until he can complete the requirements and theyve been denied to representative and his family has been asking for them to do this but the government is not allowing this to happen and the government has gone after a lot of members of our organization just in july of 2017. The Deputy Director of one state in venezuela, he was just to mention out raned the Deputy Director because the director is in exile being tried for treason. And another individual was coming out of a military tribunal after representing a group of detainees and was kidnapped by a group of armed civilians taken to a shanty town. Tortured for about five hours, he was hanged by his wrists and tortured and beaten severely and told run and dont look back or youll get shot. That happened on july 27th and still today hes representing people in court again. So that is where we are. Now its very important to understand in the context. Its not like they can say lets turnaround and go to an election and lose the election and become the opposition. The Vice President has been labeled as a drug kingpin. The nephews of the president , they are known as the narco nephews. Two of them are in jail today in new york for drug trafficking. A lot of them have committed crimes against humanity. There is universal jurisdiction for the crimes of these top leaders have committed. They dont have an exit strategy. It is not like they are going to now become the opposition. They have to hold onto power or they will go to jail. Its a complicated situation for them. Now, with this in mind, i want to explain the direction in which we are going. So, we have super constitutional powers that have already taken steps in legitimizing all the things that are obviously unconstitutional in venezuela and striking any International Human rights standards that would exist in venezuelas legal system. We have the International Community crackdown and reacting for the first time on a massive level. Recently in lima, 12 countries signed a declaration acknowledging there is no democracy in venezuela. 41 countries have refused to recognize it. The oas is evaluating whether venezuela has committed crimes against humanity. The u. N. Has expressed their concern of the systematic Human Rights Violations. At the same time, we have seen people show off videos that have come up of members of the armed forces, saying that they launched a thing they called operation david, which is some sort of rebellion. To be quite honest, we dont know how do you eat that how that is happening. The government has no exit strategy. We have red flags waving left and right for mass atrocities to happen in venezuela or to continue happening to a much worse degree. At the same time, we have factions happening from the government. People that have been traditionally progovernment are defecting at a level we have not seen ever. The Popular Support of the government is nonexistent. We could see either see mass atrocities or the government imploding. What we know, clearly, is that we need to keep documenting the situation. The Human Rights Violations need to be totally documented. We need to continue to stand up for democracy and the rule of law, and most importantly, we need to prepare for a scenario of traditional justice. Transitional justice. Eric thank you very much. That was compelling. Great way to get us going. Not terribly optimistic, but thank you for your realistic discussion. Carlos, your perspective is similar, but somewhat different. From your perspective, keep the conversation going. Carlos thank you for this invitation. It is an honor to be here to talk about the venezuelan crisis. Let me give you a little bit of context. We are facing a dictatorship in venezuela. A new form of dictatorship. We dont have separation of power. We have political of prisoners. We dont have the respect of human rights in venezuela. We dont have freedom of speech, freedom of the press. We dont have elections. From the political point of view, we have a dictatorship. From an economic point of view, we have a catastrophe. This is our worst economic crisis in our entire history. These are some numbers the size of the economy has been reduced 30 , 40 . We have the highest inflation in the world. That is killing the poor people. Poor people do not have a future. They dont have future. From a social point of view, the poverty has increased close to 80 . We are one of the most violent countries around the world. Of course, as eric said, people in venezuela are dying because of lack of food or medicine. That is the reality. That is why people are demonstrating. That is why we want to change the system in venezuela, because we want to bring progress, the rule of law, democracy and the respect of human rights thats what we want. So, this crisis is not only affecting venezuelans. It is affecting the region. In certain ways, the rest of the world. Why . Because we have a mafia in power. Top officers are involved in moneylaundering, drug trafficking, and close to the terrors of people terrorist people. Thats why the venezuelan crisis matters not only to venezuela but also the rest of the world, particularly the u. S. We need to keep attention on this and that is why the International Community is a key actor in this fight. So, that is the context. Let me tell you how i got here. It has not been easy for me. In 2014, i decided to go to the streets with a lot of venezuelans young people, students, and other Political Parties to demonstrate, to defend our rights. The government or the regime reacted in a brutal way, with repression. The main leader of my Political Party was arrested. Five days later, they issued an order of arrest against me. I had to resist three violent attempts of arrest in venezuela. They cannot capture me. I spent more than 100 days in hiding. I received a lot of threats against me, against my family. My wife was pregnant at that moment. The name of my son is sebastian. Many people ask me why that name . I say we didnt have time to discuss another name so that is why we call him sebastian. Then after that, i took the most difficult decision i could ever taken my life. I have to decide to leave my country for political reasons, because they dont have evidence against me. I was defending my right. The right of the venezuelan people. Because of that, they issued an order of arrest against me. So, i left my country, i left my country. Leaving my country for political reasons in the middle of the 21st century this is not the venezuela we deserve. We need to bring democracy back to venezuela and i will fight for