Five Venezuelan opposition figures holed up in Argentina's Embassy in Caracas said Saturday that they had been left without electricity for over a month, denouncing a "siege" by the government of President Nicolás Maduro.
The activists have been sheltering in the Embassy since March, after prosecutors issued arrest warrants accusing them of attempts to destabilise the country. In late November, the opposition figures allege, the government cut power supply to the building.
"It is a violation of our human rights," Magalli Meda, a close advisor of opposition leader María Corina Machado, wrote on X.
"Thirty-five days without electricity," she added, had turned the building into an "embassy prison."
Water supplies have also been disrupted, according to the opposition.
Venezuelan interior minister Diosdado Cabello insists there is no "siege," and blamed the cut-off on a lack of payment for services.
A sixth Maduro opponent who had been also been sheltering in the Embassy, Fernando Martínez Mottola, surrendered a week ago and is on conditional release.
The Machado-led opposition insists that its candidate, Edmundo González Urrutia, won presidential elections on July 28 – and not Maduro.
The country's electoral commission, accused of serving Maduro's interests, declared him the winner, but dozens of countries questioned that outcome.
Argentina's diplomatic personnel in Venezuela left the Embassy in August after President Javier Milei publicly questioned the election results, leading to a rupture in the relationship.
Meda said the Maduro government has hindered other nations' diplomats from coming to meet with them.
"No ambassador has come to this Embassy, not one. Have they tried? Surely some would like to," she said.
Meda asserted that Venezuelan authorities have threatened to expel foreign diplomats if they get involved in the case.
Argentine-Venezuelan ties were further strained this month by the arrest in Venezuela of an Argentine Gendarme (Border Guard) officer on charges of terrorism.
Venezuelan prosecutors said the officer, Nahuel Agustín Gallo, was part of a group planning "terrorist actions... with the support of international far-right groups."
But Gallo's family insist he had traveled merely as a tourist to visit his girlfriend and their son who were in Venezuela.
The Milei government angrily denounced the arrest as an "abduction" based on "a big lie."
– TIMES/AFP
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