Venezuela’s Delcy Rodriguez Provides More Details About Bot Campaign (ICC)

A big data investigation carried out by independent experts determined that local and international right-wing elements used social media networks to carry out a campaign of media denigration and defamation against Venezuela on the issue of human rights, with the result that the South American nation is now the subject of an investigation by the International Criminal Court (ICC). “They want to classify [them as] international crimes without them having been committed,” said the Executive Vice President of Venezuela, Delcy Rodríguez, in a press conference broadcast this Friday, May 7 by state-owned Venezolana de Televisión (VTV).

Regarding the investigation, Rodríguez explained that a range of more than 70 million tweets is being analyzed. The rigorous study of the first 15,345,683 tweets, from more than 1.4 million avatars (profile photos), with over 31 million interactions, shows that it is in fact confined to a very small group of users. These were identified as bots or fake profiles “with many interconnections through fraudulent technological mechanisms,” she specified.

480 media sources were considered: 61% corresponded to verified media accounts, and 27% to other users on social media networks. This revealed that the operation had Twitter as the main stage and that the influencing power of the bots “is deafening” compared to the rest.

Only 4% of the tweets issued were supported by some information, 17% were accompanied by a multimedia link, 79% were opinions not supported by any information or multimedia element. Finally, out of 293 verified news items, 70% are opposition releases.

ICC must be alerted so that they take the proper course
This new complaint from Venezuela was contained in the fourth report submitted by the state to the ICC prosecutor’s office. The executive vice president said that the warning was made so that this institution “does not take a wrong step.”

“Realize that you are doing a preliminary examination based on lies and news constructed through Twitter,” said Rodriguez, concerning the ICC. “This is a very serious matter… We have asked the ICC prosecutor’s office to grant priority to reality, to facts.”

“It is one more instrument in the hybrid war against the country,” said the vice president. She asked Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza to raise this alarm to the United Nations so that “the case of Venezuela is taken as an example of how the entire legal framework of International law is being violated,” she added.

Operation led by Almagro
Rodríguez assured that the strategy was orchestrated in the United States and was led by Luis Almagro, who instead of pronouncing on actual human rights violations in the region only deals with Venezuela.

“What has Luis Almagro done for the peoples of our hemisphere?” she asked. “He went to Bolivia to make a coup d’état… He has not seen that the peoples of the Caribbean have been hit by hurricanes. I have not seen him in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines where the solidarity of Alba arrived. I have not seen Luis Almagro in Colombia where they are massacring the people. He is a disgrace!”

“It is a great farce and a manipulation by the governments of the Lima Cartel,” said the vice president. “What has really happened is a media lynching of Venezuela, one of the few countries in the world whose Constitution establishes it as a constitutional state of human rights,” opposed to the logic of assassinations, torture and disappearances of the Fourth Republic [1958-1998]. She recalled that at that time “political dissent was punishable by death.”

In her argument, the senior official emphasized that in 2014 and 2017 the right wing elements that took to the streets to protest were armed with weapons such as homemade rocket launchers. “The state had to defend the peace from extremely violent demonstrations,” she noted, “a plan conceived in the United States and financed externally to overthrow the constitutional government of Venezuela.”

#HOY el @MinpublicoVE remite un #Cuarto documento a la CPI @IntlCrimCourt q forma parte d la segunda ampliación entregada a dicha instancia el #30Abr: cuyo objeto es acreditar el uso FRAUDULENTO de las #RRSS a través d Bots q lanzan #Millones d falsos mensajes sobre #VENEZUELA pic.twitter.com/b0MbQWGDRe
— Tarek William Saab (@TarekWiliamSaab) May 6, 2021

2) Cuyo fin es generar falsas #tendencias adversas al Estado Venezolano y a las personalidades señaladas como “presuntos responsables” d las denuncias hechas ante la CPI: En tal sentido, los compromisos en #DDHH la dicta el SISTEMA DE JUSTICIA y no #Bots mercenariamente pagados
— Tarek William Saab (@TarekWiliamSaab) May 6, 2021

“The Venezuelan state always defended itself by prohibiting the use of firearms, and President Nicolás Maduro was very clear that, first of all, life and human rights must be respected, and that if any state agent committed a violation, they should immediately be prosecuted,” she added.

She called on the international community to take a look at itself in the mirror, “because what they do to Venezuela today can be done to any other country tomorrow, as the powers that be decide.”

Progress
A preview of this case was given the day before by the Attorney General of the Republic, Tarek William Saab, on his Twitter account.

#HOY el @MinpublicoVE remite un #Cuarto documento a la CPI @IntlCrimCourt q forma parte d la segunda ampliación entregada a dicha instancia el #30Abr: cuyo objeto es acreditar el uso FRAUDULENTO de las #RRSS a través d Bots q lanzan #Millones d falsos mensajes sobre #VENEZUELA pic.twitter.com/b0MbQWGDRe
— Tarek William Saab (@TarekWiliamSaab) May 6, 2021

Featured image: Venezuelan Vice President, Delcy Rodriguez and Minister of Communication, Freddy Ñáñez, in a press conference denounced a bot attack to influence an International Criminal Court investigation on human rights. Photo courtesy of MINCI.

(RedRadioVE) by Lucía Eugenia Córdova

Translation: Orinoco Tribune

OT/JRE/SL