The organization Human Rights Watch (HRW) today confirmed the arrest of opposition leader María Corina Machado after leaving the protest she called this Thursday to demand the victory of the anti-Chavista Edmundo González Urrutia in the presidential elections on July 28 and demanded her release. .
“We have confirmed the arrest of Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado. The international community must demand his immediate release in unison,” said Juan Pappier, deputy director for the Americas of this non-governmental organization (NGO).
Machado’s party, Vente Venezuela (VV), also reported that the opposition leader had been “violently intercepted” after she left the site of the demonstration. “Regime personnel shot at the motorcycles that were transporting her,” Vente Venezuela indicated in a publication on the X network, without offering further details.
Machado reappeared this Thursday in Caracas surrounded by hundreds of followers, after remaining underground since last August 28, when she participated in another protest in favor of the claimed victory of González Urrutia, despite the fact that the National Electoral Council (CNE), controlled by Chavismo, proclaimed the victory of Nicolás Maduro.
More than four months after his last public appearance and one day before the presidential inauguration, which both Maduro and González Urrutia assure they will assume, Machado appeared on the street, as he had promised his followers last Tuesday, during a roundtable of virtual press, to claim, once again, the opposition victory in the last elections.
“I have never felt so proud in my life. Throughout Venezuela, people took to the streets,” she said upon arriving at the municipality of Chacao, in the metropolitan district of Caracas, a place where thousands of people had been waiting for her hours before.
Likewise, he assured that the next few days will be “historic and decisive for the freedom” of the Caribbean country, as part of the “impressive” citizen movement.
Read: María Corina Machado is arrested after a protest in Caracas, her party denounces
“We are, as of today, in a new phase. “We have been preparing for these days and weeks,” Machado said to the crowd.
For Machado, González Urrutia’s main supporter, “the end of the Chavista regime” will depend on what he does tomorrow, when the presidential investiture is scheduled, to which Maduro assures that he will attend to be sworn in for a third consecutive six-year term in power.
The former deputy had called on opposition supporters to remain focused on “all of Venezuela”, with “serenity and firmness”, and demonstrate for the “fight” and “conquest” of “freedom”, and with “the same energy” of the 28th. July, when she and her political movement claim that González Urrutia won by a wide margin.
With information from EFE
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