Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro during episode 34 of his program Con Maduro+. Photo: Presidential Press.
The president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, ratified his position of suspending the activities of the Technical Advisory Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in Venezuela due to the office’s interference in the internal affairs of Venezuela.
On Monday, February 19, President Maduro said during episode 34 of his Con Maduro+ program that the officials of the UN Technical Office will not be allowed to return to Venezuela until they retract their position and offer public apologies. “Until that office respects the United Nations Charter, the independence and sovereignty of Venezuela, and rectify and apologize publicly, they will not return to the country,” he said.
The president explained that the installation of this technical advisory office was proposed and accepted by him during the time when Michelle Bachelet was the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. “She visited us in 2019. We talked, and I told her that we were going to install a technical and legal advisory office of the High Commissioner in Venezuela. She agreed and we signed a document,” President Maduro said.
He noted that the spirit of this office was to offer direct information and to allow the UN to have “a technical advisory office, and we were interested. The agreement was signed, the office was installed, and suddenly it transformed from being a technical advisory office that must respect the country’s institutions into an internal espionage office, and then it became a law firm for terrorists, conspirators, coup plotters and assassins in Venezuela.”
Venezuela Suspends Activities of UN Human Rights Office in Caracas Due to ‘Colonialist Attitude’
“They treated Venezuela like a colony”
President Maduro decried that the officials of the UN technical advisory office issued statements in which they “treated Venezuela as a colony” and expressed a biased vision. “A group of people involved in an attempt to assassinate the president of the Republic appeared… and they [the UN officials] were the first who demanded that they wanted to visit them, they demanded to see the case file as if Venezuela was a colony, demonstrating what we have said about them—judicial colonialism, and Venezuela will not tolerate judicial colonialism,” the president added.
“The straw that broke the camel’s back was a recent case about a person involved in espionage and conspiracy, exposed by those who were involved in the case and who have confessed and have been convicted,” President Maduro continued, referring to the arrest of RocĂo San Miguel for her involvement in the assassination and terrorism plot “White Bracelet.” “The UN technical office made abusive comments about the Attorney General’s Office, the judiciary, and the country, breaking the rules of the agreement they signed. That technical office and some of its spokespersons broke the terms and the principles of the signed agreement, and violated the letter and spirit of the United Nations Charter. They are not there to make judgments, they are not prosecutors and judges in Venezuela.”
In this scenario, President Maduro valued the response of Venezuelan institutions. He further added that the officials of the UN technical office “were given 72 hours to leave the country, fortunately, they all left on Saturday [February 17].”
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/JRE/SC
