According to her party on Sunday, three Venezuelan activists were detained following their participation in a campaign rally alongside opposition leader Maria Corina Machado. This development heightens worries about President Nicolas Maduro’s administration’s repression of dissent in the run-up to the July 28 election.
Members of Machado’s campaign team in the state of Portuguesa, Ambar Marquez and Victor Castillo, were taken into custody on Sunday. Yesterday, opposition activist Oscar Castaneda was also taken into custody; police have not commented on either development.
All three have now been added to the growing list of opposition activists arrested this year. Machado organized the demonstration at which all three spoke on Saturday in Portuguesa.
Castaneda and Castillo are activists with Machado’s Vente Venezuela party, while Marquez was with the aligned Primero Justicia (PJ) party.
“The regime has once again shown its oppressive and violent nature by kidnapping 3 activists from Portuguesa state,” PJ said in a post on X, referring to Maduro’s government.
“That makes three members arrested in the last 24 hours,” wrote Vente Venezuela, on X.
Despite winning the opposition primary the previous year, Maduro’s supporters in the judiciary have barred Machado from participating in the main election. Maduro is running for a third six-year term.
Machado has been replaced by another candidate, the obscure diplomat Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, but she has persisted in running as the front-runner of the opposition.
Machado has consistently condemned what he claims to be an assault on Maduro’s opponents, even though he and the opposition leaders agreed to organize free and fair elections last year.
US sanctions against Venezuela were loosened as a result of that accord, but Washington has now declared it will reimpose them, citing the Maduro government’s ongoing persecution of opponents.
Six opposition activists have sought sanctuary in the Argentine ambassador’s home, and seven more have been imprisoned since January on conspiracy charges, prior to the three arrests made over the weekend.
