A major Venezuelan opposition party, Voluntad Popular (VP), has accused the regime of President Nicolás Maduro of murdering one of its activists, Edwin Santos, after he was detained by state security officials in the western state of Apure.
According to VP, Santos was found dead on Friday morning on a bridge in the rural El Pinal district, which had been a focus of his advocacy. The party said that Santos had gone missing on Wednesday afternoon while traveling in the area and that witnesses confirmed he had been intercepted by state security agents.
VP claimed that it had confirmed on Thursday that Santos was being held in custody at the headquarters of Venezuela’s military counter-intelligence agency in Guasdualito, a city near the Colombian border. Party official Adriana Pichardo told AFP that Santos’s wife had identified his body.
“During the past few months, he had fought for his community, denouncing the collapse of the bridge that links Apure with [the neighbouring state of] Tachira,” VP said in a statement. “It was on that bridge that he was found dead this morning.” The bridge in question had collapsed in July following heavy rain.
Opposition presidential candidate Edmundo González Urrutia, who is in exile in Spain, called for justice over Santos’s death in a post on social media platform X. “Venezuela wants and needs the truth,” said González Urrutia, who recently shared the EU’s top human rights prize with opposition leader María Corina Machado for their resistance to Maduro’s regime.
The death of Santos comes amidst a sweeping crackdown on Venezuelan opposition activists since the July elections, in which Maduro claimed to have won a third term. The opposition, however, published detailed polling results showing González Urrutia winning by a large margin.
The murder of Edwin Santos has once again highlighted the ongoing human rights abuses and political repression in Venezuela under Maduro’s authoritarian regime.
theguardian.com
