Venezuela’s representative to the United Nations (UN), Claudia Salerno, denounced before the multilateral organization that the United States (US) and El Salvador are violating global migration governance and violating the global criminal justice system in their cruelty against the group of more than 200 Venezuelan migrants kidnapped in the Central American country.
She asserted that the Venezuelans detained in El Salvador are being denied any type of legal assistance, and that there is also an exchange of money for each of the nationals:
“In El Salvador, these Venezuelans have been subjected to cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment, flagrantly violating due process, the right to defense, the presumption of innocence, and the established rules for the treatment of persons deprived of liberty, including the ‘Mandela Rules,’ to which El Salvador is a State Party,” warned Salerno to the UN during the opening of the 34th session of the Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice.
Given this, she asked the plenary to record the conduct of these two member states of the Commission, indicating that both countries are violating global migration governance and also violating the global criminal justice system.
The debate at this year’s session of the Commission is focused on addressing new, emerging, and changing forms of crime, particularly crimes that affect the environment, the smuggling of commercial goods, and the trafficking of cultural property.
Since last March, about 252 Venezuelan migrants have been illegally detained in a maximum-security prison in the Central American nation; an act condemned by the government of President Nicolás Maduro, who has promised to exhaust all diplomatic and legal avenues to secure the freedom of these Venezuelans and bring them back to the country.