Francisco Kerdel, corresponding academician for Venezuela of the Royal European Academy of Doctors – Barcelona 1914 (RAED), has presented to members and friends of the RAED his manifesto entitled Las Academias Nacionales a la opinión pública, sobre presos de conciencia y torturas (“From the nation’s academies to the public: prisoners of conscience and torture”), a document in which the Venezuelan academies of history, language, medicine, political and social sciences; physical, mathematical and natural sciences; economics and engineering, and habitat denounce the existence of prisoners of conscience in their country, which is failing to observe judicial guarantees, the right to a fair trial and the stipulations of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Their preamble to the manifesto reads: “It is our duty to express concern at the information reaching the Foro Penal (‘Penal Forum’), Venezuela’s internationally recognised authority on criminal-law matters, regarding the detention of members of the university community, without following the procedures stipulated by the Constitution and the laws of the Republic”, followed by a list of specific cases of the university lecturers and students concerned.
The Venezuelan academies refer to the Report of the General Secretariat of the Organization of American States and the Panel of Independent International Experts on the Possible Commission of Crimes against Humanity in Venezuela and the declarations of defence lawyers and prestigious organisations concerned with the promotion and defence of human rights, which in turn refer to “the application of extreme methods of torture to citizens detained without legal guarantees and in contravention of the Rome Statute. This statute, of which the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuelan is a signatory, is particularly concerned with the monitoring and criminalisation of genocide and crimes against humanity. Constitutional and international law both regard torture as a crime which destroys the victim’s personality, degrades their dignity, supposes lasting spatial and temporal consequences and is an oppressive method of intimidation and control expressly prohibited by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights”.
