Venezuelan Foreign Affairs Minister Yvan Gil, on Thursday, announced the Government’s order to the local United Nations Human Rights Agency in Caracas to suspend operations. Accusing the office of promoting Guyana’s opposition, they have given the staff 72 hours to “abandon” the country.
According to Gil, the local technical advisory office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights was used by the international community to “maintain a discourse” against Venezuela.
In a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, the Minister wrote, “This decision is made due to the improper role that this institution has developed, which, far from showing it as an impartial entity, has led it to become the private firm of coup plotters and terrorist groups that permanently conspire against the country.”
All personnel assigned to the Agency are to leave the country within three days’ time, unless they “publicly rectify before the international community their colonialist, abusive and violating attitude of the United Nations Charter.”
Despite the magnitude of the order, it is unclear whether the Venezuelan Government has directly notified the United Nations of the recent instruction to close the office.
This order comes shortly after Rocio San Miguel, a human rights attorney, was detained on Friday while trying to leave the country. San Miguel, who was with her family at the time, was apprehended at an airport near Caracas while awaiting a flight to Miami, United States.
In response this, the now expelled U.N. Office expressed a deep concern about the attorney’s detention, triggering much criticism for the Spanish-speaking country.
Phil Gunson, a Caracas-based Venezuela expert for International Crisis Group, said the expulsion of the human rights agency, combined with Ms. San Miguel’s arrest, “marks a drastic hardening” by Mr. Maduro’s government of its actions against political opponents and critics.