Venezuela warned this Tuesday before the member countries of the International Criminal Court (ICC) that regional stability in the Caribbean is “threatened” by “an unprecedented US military deployment”a situation that, he said, “puts a peace-loving region at risk.”
In his speech before the Assembly of States Parties of the ICC in The Hague, the ambassador, Héctor Constant Rosales, opened his intervention by warning of the “unprecedented” deployment that seeks to destabilize the environment of Venezuela and affect the country’s sovereignty.
“We come on behalf of the people and the Government of Venezuela, chaired by the constitutional president Nicolas Maduro“to warn and condemn these hegemonic actions that today threaten regional peace,” he said, later comparing the consequences of the US sanctions on ICC officials with the effects of the measures imposed against Caracas.
The diplomat focused part of his intervention on the situation in Palestine and assured that there is a “moral, legal and human debt” accumulated over decades towards the Palestinian people, and demanded that the ICC “look squarely at the dimension of horror, impunity and complicity that are destroying the credibility of the international justice system.”
The Venezuelan representative also pointed out that the ICC operates under “a climate of unprecedented intimidation,” the product of “sanctions, threats and political pressure” directed against the Prosecutor’s Office and judges to stop their investigations. The United States issued several sanctions this year against nine ICC officials in retaliation for the arrest warrants issued for the situation in Palestine, which also affects the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
In this sense, Constant assured that Venezuela “knows what it means” to use sanctions as an “instrument of coercion and political blackmail, even at the cost of the suffering of the population” and asked the Court to determine the “punishable nature” of these measures and not allow “its decisions to be conditioned by external reprisals.”
“Eight decades after the Nuremberg trials, humanity once again finds itself facing a moment that tests the credibility of International Criminal Law,” he said, recalling that, in 1945, the world recognized that the most serious crimes could not be subordinated to “geopolitical balances” or “diplomatic conveniences,” a principle that, he said, “today is threatened” by the return “to coercion and intimidation.”
Constant also reiterated that his country, as a “sovereign State”, has the right to conduct its own criminal processes “without external interference”, in a criticism of the investigations that the ICC itself is carrying out on the alleged crimes against humanity in Venezuela.
Likewise, he criticized the decision announced yesterday to close the Prosecutor’s Office in Caracas, ensuring that this will not alter “the spirit of cooperation” of the Government. “The Court must stop allowing justice to become a weapon of selective domination, maintaining a double standard that is intolerable, serves the powerful and punishes those who fight for their sovereignty, freedom and independence,” he stated.
The ICC opened the investigation into Venezuela in 2018 following a referral from several countries. He Maduro government It repeatedly tried to stop the case, alleging that its judicial system is carrying out internal investigations, but the Court rejected that position in 2023 and authorized the resumption of investigations into crimes against humanity committed since 2017.