Venezuela has suspended flights from neighbouring Colombia after authorities detained more than 30 people allegedly plotting activities to destabilise the country before Sunday’s parliamentary election.
Venezuelan Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello announced on state television on Monday that the flight ban was “immediate” and would last for a week.
The arrests were announced just as an independent panel of experts released a report documenting serious human rights abuses committed in Venezuela in the aftermath of the July 28, 2024 presidential election.
Cabello said the antigovernment plans involved placing explosives at embassies, hospitals and police stations in Venezuela. He said authorities had detained 21 Venezuelans and 17 foreigners, some of whom hold Colombian, Mexican and Ukrainian citizenship. Cabello said those detained arrived from Colombia, some by plane, others over land, but had set out originally from other – unnamed – countries.
Cabello, without offering any evidence, said the group included experts in explosive devices, human smugglers and mercenaries, and was working with members of Venezuela’s political opposition.
“The scenario they want to present is that there are no conditions in Venezuela for holding an election,” Cabello said, referring to the opposition.
Colombia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement it had not received any information from Venezuela’s government regarding the detention of Colombian citizens.
Colombia’s civil aviation authority confirmed that commercial flights between the countries had been suspended, while Venezuela’s aviation authority said the measure will last until Monday, May 26 at 6pm local time.
‘Political repression’
The government of President Nicolas Maduro, whose re-election in July 2024 to a third term was rejected by much of the international community as fraudulent, frequently claims to be the target of US and Colombian-backed coup plots.
In an interview over Zoom with the AFP news agency last week, opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, who went into hiding after last year’s presidential election, pledged a voter boycott on Sunday that would leave “all the [voting] centres empty”.
The opposition says its tally of results from the July vote showed a clear victory for its candidate, former diplomat Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, who went into exile in Spain after a crackdown on dissent.
The independent panel of experts backed by the Organization of American States on Monday wrote in their report that Venezuela’s post-election period has seen “the most severe and sophisticated phase of political repression in Venezuela’s modern history”. This included the execution of unarmed protesters, enforced disappearances and an increase in arbitrary detentions. They also noted that the state had expanded its repression targets beyond political opponents and human rights defenders to include poll workers, election witnesses, relatives of opposition members, minors and others.
The diplomatic outcry that followed last year’s election saw Venezuela break off ties and flight routes with several countries. Some airlines have also cancelled operations to and from the country due to unpaid debts.
Venezuela and Colombia reopened flight routes in November 2022, after the election of Colombia’s first-ever leftist President Gustavo Petro, who reinstated bilateral ties broken off in 2019 when then-leader Ivan Duque refused to acknowledge Maduro’s re-election to a second term.
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