An independent report by the Casla Institute confirms what we have all known for many years now: Cuba’s communist dictatorship is directly involved in the human rights violations taking place in socialist Venezuela.
Casla Institute report reveals the complicity between the regimes in Cuba and Venezuela
The Secretary General of the Organization of American States (OAS), Luis Almagro, presented a report prepared by the Casla Institute on Thursday, which reveals the complicity of the Cuban regime in the systematic human rights violations perpetrated by the government of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela.
According to the report from Argentine news outlet Infobae, during the presentation, Almagro emphasized the importance of this study for international justice: “The contributions of Casla to us are relevant and its systematization is very important. So far, they have had a zero margin of error in their allegations, as they have never been remotely rebutted by the [Venezuelan] regime or its lawyers before the International Criminal Court. Here, what is important is that there is memory, truth, and justice.”
Tamara Sujo, the executive director of the Casla Institute, highlighted the climate of oppression in Venezuela and the torture suffered by political opposition activists. Sujo revealed classified documents exposing the relations in Defense and Intelligence between Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez.
The report, titled “Venezuela: The establishment of a regime of terror and widespread systematic persecution with the impunity of power and the interference of the Cuban regime,” includes 79 pages and four chapters. It describes a landscape where the Maduro regime has intensified its persecution and repression, adding dozens of new detainees, including politicians, union leaders, and NGO members.
It also highlights the persecution against opposition figures such as María Corina Machado, who won the primaries with 92.5% of the votes. “Persecution was launched against María Corina Machado and the Vente Venezuela Party, the candidate who won the primaries held on October 23, 2023, with 92.5% of the votes,” the Casla report states.
The document also addresses the collaboration between the regimes of Maduro and Miguel Díaz-Canel in the perpetration of crimes against humanity, including the participation of Cuban officials in the preparation and execution of these crimes.
A witness, who was a member of Cuban Intelligence services, described the extent of Cuban influence in Venezuela: “When Chávez won the elections and took office in early 1999, Chávez had been a project of Fidel Castro, who already had intelligence operations going on in Venezuela (…). Chávez arrives willing to hand over Venezuela to Fidel Castro at a time when Cuba was bankrupt, without the help of the USSR (…). If the Soviet subsidy [to the Cuban regime] was 6 billion per year, from what I knew since 2001, PDVSA’s checkbook already exceeded 10 billion. That was oil and money. Chávez gave more money to Fidel than the Soviet Union did for years, and that was what prevented many things from happening in Cuba.”
The report concludes with allegations of new forms of torture and violence, including testimonies from victims of illegal detention and physical torture.
“For the first few months of detention, at least once a week, I was tortured with electric shocks, blows to various parts of the body, wrapped in mattresses and beaten with bats, they also submerged my feet in buckets of water and applied electric shocks to my chest, legs, neck, always twice a week. A commissioner pulled out one of my teeth with pliers,” recounts one of the anonymous testimonies.