Venezuela | Maduro is deaf to left-wing criticism

Five days after her arrest, Martha Lía Grajales was back home. Last Wednesday, the left-wing human rights activist was released from Venezuela on parole. Hundreds of organizations and individuals had previously campaigned on Grajales' behalf. Among them were prominent figures such as the Argentine Nobel Peace Prize winner Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, the Argentine organization "Madres de Plaza de Mayo," and the French-Brazilian sociologist Michael Löwy.

"The fact that Martha Lía was allowed to leave prison is primarily due to the great solidarity within Venezuela and at the international level," her husband Antonio González Plessmann, who, like Grajales, is a member of the left-wing human rights organization SurGentes, emphasized to "nd".

However, the charges of "incitement to hatred, conspiracy with a foreign government, and forming a criminal organization" have so far been upheld. SurGentes describes them as "legally fabricated."

Arrest during a protest

On August 8, Grajales was forced by police to enter a vehicle without license plates during a protest organized by the Committee of Mothers in Defense of the Truth. The committee advocates for the rights of 124 young adults who remain detained as a result of the unrest following the disputed presidential election in July 2024. Grajales was subsequently missing for days. Official confirmation of her arrest was not received until August 11. Attorney General Tarek William Saab, once a renowned human rights activist himself, stated that the arrest warrant against Grajales was based on "actions against Venezuelan institutions and the peace of the Republic."

Grajales is originally from Colombia, holds a Venezuelan passport, and has been active in the Chavista grassroots in Venezuela for about 15 years. The left-wing human rights collective SurGentes has been critically addressing police violence in slums and government policies for years, which it attributes to a significant "shift to the right" under Maduro. Before the death of Hugo Chávez in 2013, various members of SurGentes held positions within the government and the public sector. For example, González, as an expert and sociologist, accompanied the process of progressive police reform beginning in 2006, which has long been considered a failure. Grajales temporarily worked in university-based human rights training for police officers.

Since Grajales' release, circles close to the government have denounced the funding of SurGentes and other left-wing groups. For example, the German Rosa Luxemburg Foundation (RLS), which is close to the Left Party, has been working with SurGentes for years. Financial donations have always been transparently identified. Various social media posts attempted to portray the foundation as a representative of the German government, since – like all party-affiliated foundations in Germany – it receives its funding from various ministries. Last Monday, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro took up this argument in a televised address. "Rosa Luxemburg is our heroine, the heroine of true socialists," he declared. "But then they founded a foundation, the NGO Rosa Luxemburg, to recruit and fund people who were once left-wing or pretend to be left-wing." The goal, he said, is to use left-wing discourse to "attack his government from within."

Whistleblowers are not welcome

In recent years, there have been repeated instances of selective repression against left-wing groups and individuals. The case of Aryenis Torrealba and Alfredo Chirinos, for example, drew sharp criticism from the left-wing Chavista base. In 2020, the two young employees of the state-owned oil company PDVSA had pointed out internal abuses and corruption. They were initially accused of espionage, imprisoned, and then placed under house arrest. They finally regained their freedom in April 2023 after their allegations were proven true. Following the presidential election in July 2024, which was overshadowed by allegations of fraud, both right-wing and left-wing sectors complained of increased repression. A few days ago, the left-wing lawyer María Alejandra Díaz was granted political asylum in Colombia. The former Chavista mayor of Caracas, Juan Barreto, has been living under de facto house arrest for months, as a secret service police vehicle is permanently stationed in front of his home. Both Díaz and Barreto had publicly demanded transparent election results after Maduro's declared re-election. Since the Supreme Court in 2023 classified the party structures of the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV) as part of a pro-government sector, as it had previously done with other left-wing parties, the anti-government left no longer has a legal means of nominating its own candidates .

González Plessmann of SurGentes isn't surprised by the recent crackdown on independent leftists. "The Maduro government has never been open to criticism," he told the "nd" newspaper. "Because the right-wing opposition is now severely weakened and virtually leaderless, the left-wing opposition is becoming more visible. This is the background to the recent attacks."