9 00 p. M. Followed by after words with senator jeff flake at 10 00 p. M. Eastern and Robert Oneill at 11 00 p. M. On cspan to book tv. Venezuelan democracy activist talked about the eroding political situation in the south american nation yesterday at the council on the americas. They spoke for about an hour. Hello everybody, good afternoon. Welcome to the council of the americas for our latest conversation on venezuela. I apologize for keeping you waiting. I actually had to go get my reading glasses. I turned 50 years old and im not too proud to admit it. Anyway, here we are. Thank you everybody for coming for what promises to be a fascinating and timely and important conversation on the country thats of increasing concern to all of us. That is venezuela. For those of you who may not know, and 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 people associate us with the business agenda and thats absolutely true, but notice that democracy comes first. The reason why is because Everything Else that we tried to promote in the western hemisphere context is much more difficult to do if democracy is not strong and healthy and growing across the region and thats one of the reasons why we are so deeply concerned about the direction of venezuela today. Most of you know the situation on the ground. You know the humanitarian crisis thats developing, the fact that food is increasingly unavailable to many citizens of venezuela, the fact that the average weight loss in venezuela is dramatic and significant, the fact that basic healthcare, especially outside the capital is increasingly unavailable. Theres difficult security situations, i could go on and on, but it also is relevant to note, for example that the imf projects that inflation, next year, 2018, will top 2000 . This is hyper inflationary rates that we have not seen in the western hemisphere in a generation. Many of us thought we would not see it again for this is a country that many would say is failing. We have seen an accelerated pace of difficulty on the ground in venezuela, particularly since the july 30 Constitutional Assembly which we will hear a little bit more about in a few minutes. It has empowered the government to take additional steps, antidemocratic steps, which it has taken total advantage of and accelerating the caseload of stuff so, taking venezuela in a direction that we believe is not the correct direction for the people of the country. Having said that, it is a real privilege to welcome to this table, to very prominent democracy activists in venezuela and for venezuela, to people who are doing on the ground what people like me just sit in washington and talk about. They are the ones were literally on the front lines of these discussions about the actions. Their biographic information is before each of you or at least available to the extent that you would like to have it. For those who dont have it in front of you, notice my 9dollar readers. They are impressive, arent they. To my immediate right, your left is mr. Henriquez who is the coordinator and we will hear from him on what that is and what his role is. Hes an immigration and human rights attorney. Hes the International Coordinator of the human rights ngo and the director of the bostonbased refugees freedom program, he represents Political Prisoners, asylumseekers and does so very effectively, i must say. Before the system of human rights and un agencies as well. He is committed to practice law in new york in venezuela. He is a very impressive background as an immigration attorney. He will talk to us about the political prisoner situation as well some of the other difficulties there. Carlos is to his immediate righ right. He is a National Political coordinator and board member. He is also a venezuelan lawyer and politician in 2009, he cofounded the organization and is the National Political coordinator within the movement. In 2011 he participated as Campaign Manager for lopez, one of the more famous Political Prisoners in venezuela today. In 2012 he participated as general manager of the opposition candidate, another leader of the opposition in venezuela. He has organized grassroots movements and activated young people. He has designed and executed campaign rallies, he is really somebody who is the nuts and bolts of the vertical movement within venezuela. His bio is also impressive and for those of you who do have the opportunity to read it, i would call that your attention, but instead of taking the time to introduce our gas, let me up a offer them the opportunity to speak for themselves. It is a real privilege and pleasure to have both of you to this table. We thank you for the important work you are doing on behalf of the people of venezuela paired with that, maybe ill begin with you and give you the opportunity to talk a little bit about your work, what you see on the ground and where you see things headed in the native country of meadows weller. First of all, thank you. This is for all venezuelans a personal issue, but for a lot of people in the International Community, its more comp located to grasp the severity of the issue and this opportunity allow the International Community to understand what really is happening. Thank you everyone for being present. I come here today as an International Coordinator which is then described as a network of pro bono authority. There are a good number of things, but its mostly known for two, one representing people detained for political motivations. If youre detained and you are taken to a court and you do not have an attorney, they will appoint an attorney on your behalf and that is a very good friend of the prosecutor. They basically represent people pro bono and its a network with over 200 Attorneys Nationwide and over 3000 detainees. The other thing we are very known for his documenting the situation. There are no numbers. The government is not out there issuing propaganda of how many people they have killed and how many people live detained. These numbers are not available. They are available because of the work which is, on a daily basis monitoring how many people have been detained, how many people are taken to civilians to military tribunals and the government is also trying to make this work a lot more complicated. 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 the direction with which venezuela is going. Regarding raw data, we have a humanitarian crisis that is happening in venezuela that has been brewing for years and that had been coupled with the crackdown on all the Democratic Institutions of the rule of law. Most people is not happy. Theres growing inflation, poverty, subsidy and no democracy. They are not happy. Some people took to the street and have taken that different point but most recently, as of april 1 we saw a new wave of protesters and the government crackdown like never before on these process. I would like to give you an explanation of the numbers that we saw from people through jul july 31, of the numbers that we have seen. 133 people have been killed. 101 of them directly at demonstrations and then these have not been accidents. Theres a very clear connection between the government repression and these deaths and theres an obvious intent. 83 of that, of the people have died of bullet ones. 44 directly at the hands of a government officer, 62 of them at the hands of a pro regime civilian arms group and its important to highlight that these pro regime civilian arms group that we know are coordinated with the lawenforcement agencies through government plans. The government has defense plans that include these people cracking down. Its not like they just show up. The government has included them in their plan. We see over 5000 people detained in just four months. That is a significant number. Today we have 1400 people behind bars. About 15 of the people detained are tortured. The norm for pretty much any detention is being a victim of cruel treatment. For women, Sexual Assault is the norm. We have seen even 12yearold little girls being victims of Sexual Assault. There are reports of rate for men and women alike. The numbers of Political Prisoners, to give you an idea when maduro got to power there were 11 Political Prisoners paired as of february 2013, there was an irruption and protest to the numbers of political prayer protesters started rising to a new level and they came up with this concept to understand how the number of clinical prisoners was working. They going to the revolving door affect. Basically Political Prisoners go in and go out. Some of them are detained and others are released. They keep, from 2014 until march of this year, they kept an average of 100 political business. That was the average and they were very careful every time imprisoned a few people they would release a few others and say we release to prisoners. The average kept very steady, around 100. Today we have 620. The revolving door is open. The use of military tribunals to crack on civilians is one new method that has become systematic as of april 1. 609 civilians have been tried. Many have been ordered detained. For instance, when you try a civilian in a criminal court, and a regular criminal court, you know where the court is, you know who the prosecutor is and you can show up. If you try living in a military court, there is no court. Its just a military for where they wont let you in and they just use the random room that they decide that to be the court that day. The prosecutor is a military officer in their uniform. They report to the ministry. They are on a systematic way, and a lot of this happened in connection to the fact that the attorney general became very critical of the government. One of the things we saw as a response to this way of protest as of april 1 is that the government came up with a new idea. Its a group of people that have super constitutional powers and they can appoint and change any law and one of the first few things they did, the attorney general was not cooperating with political prosecution and they appointed a person that has been very loyal to them. Obviously this is entirely unconstitutional, but thats what they do. That gives you an idea of what is happening. A lot of specific phases have suffered the persecution. I would like to highlight the case, he became famous for going to the protest, standing up in front of them the national guard, shooting at people and he would just play the National Anthem and other pieces with his violin. He is in jail now. He was tortured, they shot rubber bullets on his face. They also conducted his arraignment secretly, they hit him from the attorney. He was appointed a progovernment defense attorney. The requirement is another systematic thing they are doing. Theyre coming up with some entirely legal requirements that would keep someone in jail for about 45 days until they can come up with all the requirements. They been awarded bond that he will probably be in jail for the next 45 days until he can complete all of the requirements. They have been trying to represent but theyve been denied the opportunity and the government is not allowing this to happen. In july 27, deputy director. The director is in exile because he is being tried for treason. After representing a group of detainees, he was kidnapped by a group of armed civilians taking to a town and tortured for about five hours. He was hanged and beaten severely, and then he was told run and dont look back or you will get shot. That happened july 27. Today he was represented in court again. That is where we are. Its very important to understand the concepts of the government. Its not like they can say okay, lets turn around and go to election, lose the election and become the opposition. The Vice President has been labeled by the u. S. As a dropped kingpin and the nephews of the president , they are widely known in venezuela, two of them are in jail today in new york for Drug Trafficking and 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. They have to hold onto power or they will go to jail. With this in mind id want to explain the direction we are going. We have super constitutional powers their striking any International Human rights standards. We have the International Community cracking down and reacting for the first time on a massive level, recently, 12 countries signed a declaration acknowledging that there is no democracy in venezuela. Fortyone countries have refused to recognize the victory. The oes is evaluating whether venezuela has committed crimes against humanity. The union has expressed their concern that systematic Human Rights Violations, at the same time weve seen people show up, videos that have come up with armed members of the armed forces thing that the launch thing that they call operation david which is some sort of rebellion, and to be quite honest, we dont know how do you put that with whats happening, and the government has no exit strategy so we have red flags waving left and right for mass atrocity to happen in venezuela. Or to continue happening to an even much worse degree. At the same time we have factions happening from the government, people who have been traditionally progovernment arent defecting at a level, every time more outspoken, the Popular Support of the government is nonexistent so, we could see either a mass atrocity or the government imploding. What we know fairly is that we need to keep documenting the situation, the Human Rights Violations need to be documented and 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 transitional justice. Thank you very much. Its compelling and a great way to get us going. Its not terribly optimistic, but thank you for your realistic discussion. Carlos, your perspective is similar, but somewhat different so in your perspective, lets keep the conversation going. Thank you for this invitation. Its an honor for me being here to talk about the venezuela crisis. The me give you a little bit of context, especially for those people who are coming here, to be very clear, we are facing a dictatorship in venezuela. A new form of dictatorship. We dont have separation of power. We have Political Prisoners and we dont have a respective human rights. They dont respect. [inaudible] we dont have freedom of speech or freedom of press. We dont have fair elections. From the political point of vie view, in my view, we have a dictatorship. From an economic point of view, we have a catastrophe that this is our worst economic crisis in our entire history. You just saw certain numbers, our economy has reduced 30 or 40 . We have the highest inflation in the world it is killing the poor people. And, people dont have a future. From the social point of view, the poverty has increased close to 80 and we are one of the most violent country in the world. As eric said the beginning, people in venezuela are dying because of lack of food or medicine. That is a reality. Thats why people are demonstrating. Thats why we want to change the system in venezuela. We want to bring progress to bring i venezuela and the rule of law and democracy and respective human rights. Thats what we want. This crisis is not only affecting venezuelans. Its affecting the region, and in certain ways, the rest of the world. Why . Because we have a mafia and power. Officers are involved in money laundering, Drug Trafficking and terrorists. Thats why the venezuelan crisis matters to the rest of the world, particularly the u. S. We need to keep attention on this and thats why the International Community is a key actor in this fight. Thats the context. Let me tell you how i get here. It hasnt been easy for me. In 2014 i decided to go to the street with a lot of young people, students and other Political Parties to demonstrat demonstrate, to defend our right and the peaceful manner and the government or the regime reacted in a brutal way. My Political Party leader was arrested. Later they issued an order of arrest against me. I had to resist three violent attempts of arrest. They couldnt capture me. I spent the 100 days in hiding. I received a lot of threats against me and my family. My wife was pregnant at that moment the name of my son is sebastian. Many blasted why that name and i said i didnt have a time to discuss another name. And then, their dad, i took the most difficult decision i ever made in my life. I had to leave my country for political reasons. They dont have evidence against me. I was defending my right, the right of the venezuelan people according to our constitution, and because of that they issued the order of arrest against me. I love my country. Leaving my country in the middle of the 21st century because of my rights. I will fight for the rest of my life to have democracy in our country. I decided to leave my country to express that we believe what is happening in our country and we are looking for help. Ive been traveling around the world doing what im doing right now. If i were not here i would have been in jail. Understood we had to play like a team, a soccer team. Someone has to play the goalkeeper and the other one could be forward in the other one has to recover the ball. Ive been doing that as a team. For the past three months we have been on the streets fighting for democracy. Basically we have been acting for three things, one, general election in venezuela, fair and transparent including a president ial election to have a new government in venezuela, too, the release of all <