Covid-19 gave Maduro the Venezuela it had always dreamed of – but the one that comes may be a nightmare – Observer

However, two days later, the home bell rang. And when he opened the door, he came across four employees of the feared Special Action Forces (FAES), the elite troop of Nicolás Maduro’s regime. Armed and with their faces covered, they demanded that he let them enter the house where he lives with his parents.

“I was told that they had to come into my house because someone in our neighborhood knew that someone in our house had someone with coronavirus, or that they had been in contact with an infected person,” says the journalist. Darvinson Rojas knew well that this was not why they were there – and he quickly realized that the unexpected visit by the FAES men was due to his work as a journalist.

So while his parents tried to stop the police from entering the house, he took out his cell phone and reported the situation on Twitter. There, at 7:32 pm in Caracas, he wrote: “The FAES have just arrived at my house, they ask us to collaborate to accompany them to the police station, because they received an anonymous call saying that there is a case from Covid-19. If we do not obey, they will have to stop us ”.

URGENT | Las FAES has just called my home to “ask for collaboration” to accompany them at their command because they received an anonymous call saying that there is a case of #COVID ー 19.

Failing to comply with the order, I would tend to detain them.

– Darvinson Rojas (@DarvinsonRojas) March 22, 2020

The family did not give in – and Darvinson Rojas continued to report the situation on Twitter. At 8:55 pm, he placed a photograph with two visible agents.

Follow the instructions of FAES employees so that we can open the door. pic.twitter.com/Wb0h7ov83s

– Darvinson Rojas (@DarvinsonRojas) March 22, 2020

Shortly after placing the photograph, he says, pressure from the agents soared. Darvinson Rojas only had time to write, at 9:04 pm, his last tweet of the night: “FAES EMPLOYEES WANT TO HOPE ME”.

EMPLOYEES OF LAS FAES QUIEREN LLEVARME DETENIDO.

– Darvinson Rojas (@DarvinsonRojas) March 22, 2020

And so it was. With the journalist handcuffed and handcuffed, the FAES went into his family’s home and took all the electronic equipment they saw. They took two computers, two cell phones and one tablet – and took them together with Rojas, a scene that their neighbors watched, shooting a chorus of shouts at that elite troop.

Darvinson Rojas was detained for 12 days in a room at the FAES police station in Caricuao, a parish in Caracas. In the end, he was taken to an investigating judge, who charged him with two crimes: instigation to hate and public instigation. All because he did the math and, at the end of it, counted a handful of cases more than the regime.

The journalist is not a unique case. According to the NGO Foro Penal, among the hundred arrests that that group registered were for “political reasons”, ten are directly related to the pandemic. “In this group, there is a 70-year-old man who works in the health sector, who is under house arrest; a bioanalyst who referred to a case via WhatsApp, who is also under house arrest. In addition, there is a nurse detained for having made a video in which he denounced the conditions of the hospital, ”Alfredo Romero, director of that NGO, told AFP.

In an opinion article published in El País, O opponent Leopoldo López, refugee at the Spanish Embassy in Caracas since failed the military coup attempt in which he was involved on April 30, 2019, he wrote: “Narcodicture has converted the coronavirus into its human shield, a tool and an excuse to prolong usurpation, increasing social control and repression”.

The NGO Provea, in defense of Human Rights, has received several complaints, arriving from all over the country, from the military and also from groups of armed civilians working alongside the regime (known as collective) that humiliate and even attack citizens who are seen to break confinement orders or who are caught without a mask, mandatory use.

–