Today marks the one year anniversary since Voluntad Popular leader Leopoldo Lopez was arrested in Caracas on charges stemming from violent protests that were taking place in Venezuela at the time. Supporters took to the streets of Caracas today in solidarity with Lopez, and attended a rally in the Jose Marti Plaza where Lopez handed himself in to authorities last year.
A number of opposition figures spoke at the rally, which was attended by crowds dressed in white. Maria Corina Machado said that the transition towards a “peaceful democracy” was at hand, and that:
[This past year] has changed Venezuelan history forever. The citizens stood up to a militaristic dictatorship, a mafia, and the world was forced to listen.
Miranda Governor Henrique Capriles spoke through his Twitter account in support of Lopez, saying:
We want a country where there are no political prisoners, where justice applies to everyone equally.
Below, some pictures from the event in Chacaito today:
Lopez Lives Tumultuous Year
Below is a summary of the events that have taken place regarding the Leopoldo Lopez case over the last year:
- February 12, 2014: An arrest warrant was issued for Leopoldo Lopez on suspicion of having committed nine crimes, including homicide and terrorism.
- February 18, 2014: At an opposition rally in Caracas, Lopez hands himself in to authorities. At the time, he says, “I’m handing myself over to an unjust and corrupt justice system. But, if my arrest serves to awaken the people, it will be worth it”.
- February 19, 2014: Lopez is formally charged with associating to commit a crime, instigating crime, arson and property damage in a makeshift courthouse inside a bus.
- July 23, 2014: Despite the pending legal proceedings, Maduro takes on the role of a judge when he announces on television that Leopoldo “should pay for the damage he’s done”.
- September 10, 2014: Two police investigators testify that there was no fire at the Public Ministry, essentially clearing Lopez of the charge of arson.
- October 9, 2014: The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention calls for Lopez’s release.
- January 21, 2015: The court agrees to hear evidence based on the testimony of linguist Rosa Asuaje, who testifies that Lopez called for violence during his speeches. Contrary to Venezuelan law and due process, this piece of evidence was added to the case against Lopez just one day before it was admitted in court.
Lopez spent two months in solitary confinement. His cell was recently raided by over two dozen masked and armed men. Salvator Lucchese, who was jailed alongside Lopez and recently released, described the Ramo Verde prison as full of cockroaches and rats, calling it “hell”.
El Nacional Records Lopez Trial
An El Nacional reporter secretly recorded a portion of Leopoldo Lopez’s trial this past January 22. The newspaper released the video today, and titled it “Leopoldo Lopez’s Hidden Trial”. The video can be seen here.
In the video, Lopez can be seen arguing against continued television statements from Maduro and other government officials declaring him guilty while the trial is ongoing. Another section of the recording shows Lopez defending himself against the imminent testimony of Rosa Asuaje, a linguist who testified that Lopez called people to violence.
The video also includes interviews with legal experts, who argue that the fact that the Lopez trial is being carried out under an extraordinary level of secrecy is a violation of due process.
My translation of the video can be seen below:
Leopoldo Lopez: … this is a political trial. and that is evident through all of its characterizations and through all of the manipulation of the processes that have taken place. It’s clear that the decision to sentence [me] has already been made.
Judicial authorities have gone to great lengths to stop people from knowing how the penal process against Leopoldo Lopez is taking place. El Nacional broke through this barrier and offers images of the session that took place on January 22 2015.
Leopoldo Lopez: … we are involved in a trial in which we’ve already been under arrest for a year, and not a single piece of evidence or a single witness from our side has been accepted. You might say, “This is a decision that has already been taken by the Court of Appeals”. Sure, but that doesn’t make it right. It doesn’t mean our rights haven’t been violated. We’ve got more than a hundred witnesses, pieces of evidence, we’ve got 31 videos, all kinds of evidence, but not a single piece of evidence has been admitted so that we may exercise our right to due process. We won’t tire of saying this, your honour, because our rights are being violated. [It’s not OK] for us to say, “Well, the Court of Appeals said it’s O.K. to not allow any defence witnesses or any defence evidence, so let’s not talk about it anymore”. No! This is wrong.
The restrictions [against a public trial] begin with a military take-over of the Palace of Justice. Vehicular and pedestrian traffic is blocked from Baralt Avenue to Bolivar Avenue.
Hector Faundez Ledesma (International Human Rights Expert): The general rule in international rights is that all trials have to be public, specially penal trials. For example, in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights there’s a general rule about proceedings – regardless of whether they are civil, criminal, or labour trials – as well as in the American Convention on Human Rights, which even though it might have been denounced by Venezuela, is still a part of its constitution. The American Convention on Human Rights explicitly states that public penal trials are an indispensable prerequisite for due process, without any kind of restrictions. There are no exceptions, no excuses.
Leopoldo Lopez: With all due respect, I’d like to ask [the court] your stance on two issues. First, on the political intervention in this trial. A week doesn’t go by that Nicolas Maduro doesn’t declare me guilty on live television. A week doesn’t go by that the highest political offices make a statement regarding our guilt. Who are the judges, them or you? Where is the trial taking place, in this courtroom or out there, on television, with Maduro and Cabello? Where is the trial taking place? Who is judging me? I want to face my judge. I want to see the people who’ve imprisoned me. Either you’ve [pointing to the judge] detained me, as the law says, or Nicolas has detained me. I think – and it’s obvious to all Venezuelans now – that I’m obviously a prisoner of Nicolas Maduro. I am a prisoner of the regime, the system, of a model, or whatever we want to call it. And Christian [another defendant] as well, of course. And the other 62 political prisoners as well… I request that you make a statement regarding this issue, and that it be accompanied by a request to respect [the legal process] if there is something to be respected in this courtroom.
To enter the courtroom, you must pass four security checkpoints. Opposition leaders, the press, and more recently international observers are not allowed to enter.
Magaly Vasquez (General Director, Graduate Studies, Universidad Catolica Andres Bello, and co-editor of the 1999 Penal Process Code): First of all, I’d say that these limitations come from interests outside of what the law says, those limitations violate due process. Also – and the code establishes this – the first reason for appealing a court ruling is if publicity, verbal expression, concentration or immediacy have been violated. Imagine the level of importance the law has given to these principles. If you’re talking about restrictions that are not couched within any of these theories, then you’re talking about a violation of due process because you’re impeding the possibility of completing the objectives set out in the Penal Process Code, that the citizen be allowed to connect with the justice system, that they be allowed to exercise control. As it says here, that justice not be removed from public control.
So, you’d have to be talking about some kind of case that fit into this. For some administrative official, a security officer, to block a person from appearing in court in a case such as this is completely and absolutely not normal. Of course, it’s not possible for every single person who wants to go to court to see a trial to be able to do this, because we’re dealing with spatial limitations. But what the law does allow for is that whoever wants to see a trial might be able to do so. The publicity of a trial is not violated even if the doors are open and no one wants to come in and watch. If even one person who wants to witness the proceedings is stopped from doing so without a cause established in the law, then that trial is nullified.
Leopoldo Lopez: … by not demanding respect [for the legal process] is also a clear sign that this court is submissive to [the government]. By not having an opinion on this, by not categorically rejecting intervention from the executive branch as the law demands, you are accepting that this is a [show] trial, a trial where nothing is decided, and that we’re all here just to make it look like justice is being done, and to make it look like there’s an ongoing process but the decision has already been made.
The second request I want to make, and connected to the first, is that you speak to the prisoner swap [with the U.S.] proposed by Nicolas Maduro. As if he were a guerilla leader, and if I were a hostage. I am actually a hostage, but the fact that the President of the Republic suggested a prisoner swap is evidence that I am a political hostage, and that there is a clear willingness [by the government] to deal with this case as a guerilla leader or some kidnapper might deal with a hostage taking. I’m asking you to make a statement regarding this issue, because [inaudible] that I be put on a plane and taken to another country.
Public trials are a guarantee of due process, consecrated by the Penal Process Code, the Constitution, and international human rights agreements.
Magaly Vasquez: Why did we, in 1999 – or before, because the Code was created in ’98 and came into effect in ’99 – why was this principle included? I’m going to look at the original “Objectives” section of the Code, which says that “because penal matters are extremely important, they cannot be carried out in secret. For this reason, notwithstanding legal limitations, they must be carried out in public. This constitutes the legality [y las justicias del fallo (?)] allows for a connection between the common citizen and the administrative legal system and strengthens his trust in it, at the same time providing a democratic control over the judiciary, […] and guarantees one of the facets of due process.”
The legislators wanted to establish, on the one hand, active participation in the justice system by the citizen through civil participation through mixed trials and for escabino trials, and on the other hand to allow citizens to witness these trials to let them know how their system works. And, in another way, to allow for social control [over the justice system].
Leopoldo Lopez: … don’t ask me to use a different style and tone in my defence than the one I use [unintelligible]. I’ve told you already, don’t ask me that. Don’t ask me to talk in a different way, or to change my tone from that to which I’m accustomed to speak in. If I did, I’d be a hypocrite, and I’d come before you to kneel down before a justice system a different intonation, different words. I’d be disconnected from the reasons that have brought me here today if I came in here on my knees asking for mercy. No! We haven’t come her to ask for mercy. We’ve come here to ask for justice, for which we’re ready to die, the very thing the Venezuelan people lack today. That’s why I won’t change my tone, and that’s why I’m making this introduction, so that we all know of what I’m being accused – including this very thing I’m doing right now.
I’m being accused of using this tone, and we’re going to hear from this expert talk about intonation, and repeated words, and about the impact that I might have over those who hear my words. We’re going to hear her talk about how there’s a whole theoretical architecture that allows people to influence one another with words. What does Genesis say? “Let there be light”. But before [there was light], there were words, because without words God could not have called for light. Nor darkness, nor land, nor the seas, animals or human beings – words come first. We are human beings because we can talk, and here in this courtroom we are being condemned for that which makes us different from all the other animals on this planet: words, reason. The ability to feel, the ability to say, “I don’t agree with you, and here’s why”.
In this courtroom, through this witness we’re about to hear from, we’re going to hear how in a democracy – a so-called democracy – you can’t suggest the substitution of your leaders. What is democracy without the possibility of changing leaders? What is democracy, if not the people’s ability through popular will to demand, during times of crisis, for a change in leadership? This is precisely what separates democracy from a dictatorship, a monarchy, a theocracy. Our Constitution gives us all of the mechanisms we need to make this change happen.
We’re going to hear from a witness today who says that this isn’t in the Constitution. That what we’re doing is calling for violence while ignoring our speeches, omitting [words] and lying, analysing some words and omitting others. Lying, like when they say that I didn’t call for non-violent protests. Lying, like when they say that we weren’t calling for constitutional change. False. False! From the very beginning, we’ve let Venezuelans know that there’s an exit from this social and political disaster within the framework of the constitution alongside the people. The constitution doesn’t use itself. The constitution allows for the change of those in government – corrupt, the anti-democratic, repressive, inefficient, and tied to drug trafficking – that we have in Venezuela today. We can create this change only if the people chose to do it., and that’s why we made a call for people to take to the streets in a peaceful manner.
We made this call – tomorrow it will be the one year anniversary of the call – and the witness we’re going to hear from today will condemn me [for making the call]. If the reasons for that call were true a year ago, they’ve multiplied now. If a year ago we talked about line ups, they’ve multiplied now. If a year ago we talked about hardship, scarcity, the lack of credibility of this government that is hitting rock bottom. They want to condemn us through our words, and this tribunal wants to say that we cannot call for change in Venezuela.
Restrictions on public trials are explicitly stated in law avoid the re-victimization of, for example, children, teenagers, women and other vulnerable groups.
Hector Faundez Ledesma: In the case of the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which applies to Venezuela and has not – and cannot be – denounced [as not applicable by the government] there are some exceptions [to public trials] but they’re very clear. The general rule, as I’ve said, is that trials must be public. The press and the public can be denied access to all of part of the proceedings in exceptional cases, but only when the tribunal is justified and motivated in its decision by very precise objectives: public morals, public order, and national security.
Magaly Vasquez: What’s particularly interesting is that the 2009 reform – which is, by the way, totally questionable since it was made by legislative decree – a new, really dangerous section is added. The judge is allowed to evaluate any other circumstance that, according to their own criteria, could compromise the trial, and gives the judge the power to decide if the trial should be conducted totally or partially behind closed doors. This is very dangerous, specially if we consider the fact that there isn’t civilian participation in the administration of justice anymore.
Leopoldo Lopez: … and I want to have to change to go back on the streets so I can say it again. If you ask me, “Why do you want to be free?”, I will tell you that it’s so that I can go out and continue to say the same things that landed me in jail. To continue to speak to Venezuelans with the same level of clarity, forcefulness and irreverence that have landed me in jail for one year.
Article 14 of the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights establishes that “The press and the public may be excluded from all or part of a trial for reasons of morals, public order (ordre public) or national security in a democratic society, or when the interest of the private lives of the parties so requires”
Magaly Vasquez: Generally speaking, the divulgence of sound and images is permitted because they allow the general public to see what is happening. That doesn’t mean that it’s a direct transmission.
Hector Faundez Ledesma: It’s not just about ensuring that justice is done. It’s important, it’s vital, to make justice visible. This is the essence of this rule: that the people see who’s carrying out justice, and that they can see that power is not being exercised arbitrarily to punish someone for their ideas.
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