(Clockwise from left) Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, UN Secretary General António Guterres, and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk. Photo: DiarioVEA.
The United Nations secretary general and the UN high commissioner for human rights “expressed their commitment to activating all the available mechanisms to re-establish as soon as possible the flagrantly violated rights of the Venezuelan migrants” abducted in El Salvador. This was reported by the Foreign Affairs Ministry of Venezuela via a statement issued on Friday, March 28.
This comes after Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro held a telephone conversation with UN Secretary General António Guterres two days ago about the issue of the Venezuelan migrants deported from the US and illegally incarcerated in a maximum-security prison in El Salvador. Thereafter, on Friday, President Maduro had a conversation with UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk, where he condemned the governments of the United States and El Salvador for kidnapping the Venezuelan migrants.
“President Maduro reaffirmed the unyielding determination of the Venezuelan government not to rest until guaranteeing the safe return of each unjustly imprisoned compatriot to their country,” the statement read.
President Maduro stated to the two UN officials that the abduction of Venezuelans by the US and Salvadoran regimes “reminds us of the persecution suffered by the Jewish community under the Nazi regime of Adolf Hitler during World War II. He reminded them that those crimes not only constituted one of the darkest chapters in history but also led to the collapse of the international order of the time and the dissolution of the League of Nations, the precursor of today’s United Nations Organization.”
On Monday, March 24, President Maduro made a call to High Commissioner Volker Türk and Secretary General Guterres to “intervene with their actions and good offices so that the Venezuelans who have been forcibly disappeared in El Salvador can return.”
On that occasion, President Maduro decried that “even a week after forcibly taking them away and throwing them into concentration camps, neither the government of the United States nor [Salvadoran President] Nayib Bukele has published a list with the names of the people they abducted in El Salvador.”
On Thursday, March 27, President Maduro condemned the Salvadoran regime for denying the 238 Venezuelans illegally imprisoned in El Salvador their legal defense rights. He reported that the Salvadoran lawyers who introduced a habeas corpus for these Venezuelan citizens on Monday have not been allowed to speak with the defendants.
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An unofficial translation of the full statement is provided below:
The President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro Moros, held a telephone conversation with the Secretary General of the United Nations, António Guterres, on Wednesday, March 26, 2025. Thereafter, today, March 28, he had a second conversation, this time with the High Commissioner of the United Nations for Human Rights, Volker Türk.
In both conversations, President Maduro highlighted the necessity for the United Nations framework to assume a firm commitment to safeguarding the rights of the Venezuelan migrants, ensuring compliance with international law, especially those that protect the rights of migrants.
The purpose of this request is to secure the immediate and unconditional release of the 238 compatriots unjustly detained in concentration camps in El Salvador, where they have been incarcerated without any kind of judicial process and their right to defense has been denied.
The head of state highlighted to both the UN officials that these actions remind us of the persecution suffered by the Jewish community under the Nazi regime of Adolf Hitler during World War II. He reminded them that those crimes not only constituted one of the darkest chapters in history but also led to the collapse of the international order of the time and the dissolution of the League of Nations, the precursor of today’s United Nations Organization.
Both the Secretary General of the United Nations and the High Commissioner for Human Rights expressed their commitment to activating all the available mechanisms to re-establish as soon as possible the flagrantly violated rights of the Venezuelan migrants. For his part, President Nicolás Maduro Moros reaffirmed the unyielding determination of the Bolivarian Government not to rest until guaranteeing the safe return of each unjustly imprisoned compatriot to their country.
Caracas, March 28, 2025
(DiarioVEA) by Yuleidys Hernández Toledo
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/SC/SF
