Venezuela’s parliament on Thursday started weighing an amnesty law whose long-awaited draft text showed it would not cover “serious violations” of human rights committed under 27 years of socialist rule.
The bill is an initiative of interim president Delcy Rodriguez, who stepped into the shoes of long-term leader Nicolas Maduro after he was deposed in a US military operation one month ago.
Rodriguez, who has been working with US President Donald Trump on access to Venezuelan oil, has been under pressure to free political prisoners.
It was not immediately clear if the “Amnesty Law for Democratic Coexistence” was designed to benefit political prisoners, state agents or both.
“It is recognized that it is important not to impose vengeance, retaliation or hatred, but to open a path toward reconciliation,” said the text, a copy of which was obtained by AFP.
“Excluded from its benefits” are offenses such as “serious violations of human rights, crimes against humanity, war crimes, intentional homicide, corruption, and drug trafficking,” it added.
Experts fear the text is sufficiently vague to allow discretion in a judicial system widely considered to be loyal to the ruling “Chavista” movement named after Maduro’s leftist predecessor Hugo Chavez.
The International Criminal Court in The Hague is investigating crimes against humanity allegedly committed in Venezuela during Maduro’s government.
“Amnesty is the framework that will ensure what happened in the past is not repeated and that the past does not serve to halt or derail transition processes,” Alfredo Romero, director of the Foro Penal rights NGO, told AFP.
“A reconciliation, a transition, cannot be a process of persecution against those who previously held power.”
– ‘Forceful message’ –
The head of Venezuela’s parliament Jorge Rodriguez — the interim president’s brother and a staunch Chavista — said Wednesday he hoped the law would “send a powerful, forceful message of the intention of a new political moment.”
The ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) has an absolute majority in the unicameral parliament under Jorge Rodriguez, who is next in the line of constitutional succession after his sister.
He said he hoped the bill would be approved unanimously.
The start of the parliamentary debate coincided with a new round of talks between the government and a faction of the Venezuelan opposition that has distanced itself from a majority wing led by Nobel Peace prize laureate Maria Corina Machado.
The opposition is seeking fresh elections to replace those held in July 2024 and which Maduro claimed to have won despite no official figures ever being released. Much of the world considers he stole the vote.
Maduro acolytes were left in power after American troops whisked him away in cuffs to stand trial on drug charges in New York.
But Delcy Rodriguez’s government has come under pressure from the United States, which has agreed to work with her in the short term while speaking of an eventual transition to democracy.
Rodriguez, despite being a close Maduro ally, has indicated a willingness to cooperate, particularly on Trump’s demands for access to Venezuelan oil.
Her government has started to release political prisoners and has reestablished diplomatic ties with Washington that were severed in 2019.
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