A picture of José Gregorio Hernández, the doctor canonized As the first Venezuelan saint, he accompanied the political consultant Luis Peche in these difficult days at the Reina Sofía clinic in Bogotá. There he recovered from the wounds from the bullets of the three hitmen who attacked him and the activist Yendri Velásquez, who was still convalescing. Monday’s attack against the two Venezuelan exiles, shot outside their home in the north of the Colombian capital, threatens to become a breaking point for the politically persecuted by the regime of Nicolás Maduro who seek refuge in the neighboring country. A before and after regarding your perception of security. Chavismo’s opponents no longer feel safe even many kilometers away. “Transnational repression is a reality,” says Peche in a video published this weekend on his social networks. “I trust in the institutions of a country with the rule of law, Colombia, my second nationality, to bring those responsible to justice and clarify this fact,” he concludes his message.
Two days after the attack, on Wednesday, the assistant of Ana Karina García, president of the Juntos Se puede Foundation, which supports migrants, refugees and returnees, was assaulted and intimidated two blocks from her house by two Venezuelan men who took her cell phone. García, a renowned activist and human rights defender, also denounced that a van with plates from the Bolivarian Republic has been monitoring both the foundation and her own home. These attacks are an example of the state of defenselessness that migrants have long denounced and have set off all the alarms. Fear spreads.
Colombia is by far the main destination of a diaspora of eight million Venezuelans who have fled hyperinflation, food and medicine shortages or insecurity in recent years. Of them, almost three million have settled on this side of a porous border. Bogotá is also, in many ways, the capital of the Venezuelan exile. More than 500 kilometers from the border line, it welcomes nearly 600,000, 20% of the total in the country, according to figures from Migration Colombia, although many experts warn that these numbers fall short.
Added to this flow is that of those who escaped repression after the Venezuelan presidential elections of July 2024. From journalists to electoral witnesses, including political leaders, student leaders and human rights defenders. Maduro proclaimed himself the winner of those elections without showing any evidence of that result, while the opposition demonstrated, with copies of the minutes in hand, that Edmundo González won widely at the polls. The Mayor’s Office of Bogotá has identified some 500 people as politically persecuted people who have since settled in the capital. Reports abound that suspicious people taking photos, vehicles following them – often with Venezuelan license plates – or extortion calls abound at exile concentrations.
“In Bogotá we receive, accompany and support those who, fleeing political persecution, have arrived in Colombia in order to safeguard their integrity, preserve their freedom and maintain their leadership,” declared the mayor, Carlos Fernando Galan. On more than one occasion, it has been distanced of Gustavo Petro‘s ideas regarding Venezuela. After a failed attempt at mediation, the president never recognized the results of the Venezuelan elections, but maintained relations and Colombian diplomacy is highly criticized for not forcefully condemning Hugo Chávez’s heir. Reception policies have lost momentum Under his government, asylum application processes have stalled and some experts warn of an increase in the presence of Venezuelan intelligence bodies.
“We thought we were safe here,” Angélica Ángel, a university leader from Mérida who fled to Bogotá after the post-election protests, laments in statements to this newspaper. That perception crumbles. The attack shook them. “It’s reliving many things. Feeling like everything is happening again. Not being able to go out to a park. Walking looking back. Waiting for the message. Reporting every hour,” he points out. “Today, all of us persecuted Venezuelan politicians are at risk in Colombia,” says Gaby Arellano, who was an opposition representative for the border state of Táchira before taking refuge, several years ago, in the Colombian capital.
Little by little, Bogotá, due to its social structure, because it is the main city receiving internal displacement, due to its characteristics and opportunities in quite particular informal economies, helped the Venezuelan population to settle, explains Ronal Rodríguez, researcher at the Venezuela Observatory of the Universidad del Rosario: “It would be very sad if violence broke this integration process.” The attack, he adds, is the final blow to a feeling of anxiety that had already begun with the elections. “Electoral fraud did generate an increase in the repressive actions of the Venezuelan regime, and those dynamics did not remain only on that side of the border.”
The Office in Colombia of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights urged the authorities this Thursday to strengthen protection for Yendri Velásquez and Luis Peche, in addition to “carrying out a prompt, exhaustive and effective investigation.” In his statement, he recalled that Velásquez, a defender of LGBTIQ+ rights, was a victim of arbitrary detention in Venezuela in 2024, when he was heading to Geneva, Switzerland, to speak before the UN Committee against Racial Discrimination. A case documented by the office in Venezuela and mentioned in several United Nations reports. “Monday’s serious attack is a wake-up call for the Colombian State to strengthen all protection mechanisms to guarantee the life, freedom, integrity and work of human rights defenders from other countries and those who are forced to flee their countries,” the statement said.
The hitman attack falls within the patterns of transnational violence against defenders who are victims of political persecution by networks linked to the Venezuelan State, indicates a report by the organizations grouped under the umbrella of Human Rights of Venezuela in Motion. The echoes have not been long. María Corina Machado, the opposition leader who has just been recognized with the Nobel Peace Prize, described the attack as “very serious” and stressed that the victims were two people “persecuted by the dictatorship of Nicolás Maduro.” What happened in Colombia “is an unprecedented escalation and we are seeing it in several countries,” she added, also alluding to the antecedent of the former dissident military man. Ronald Ojedamurdered in Chile last year. Investigators from the southern country concluded that it was a political crime, orchestrated from Venezuela and allegedly executed by the Aragua Train.
The Chilean president himself, Gabriel Boric, also referred this week to Ojeda’s crime. “Dictatorships and authoritarian leaders cross borders to impose fear when they believe they can do so with impunity,” he said at a seminar in Rome. “Without going any further, in Chile we have the case of the murder of a former Venezuelan military officer, where one of the suspects of having carried out the murder It is the same regime of the dictator Nicolás Maduro“The attacks in Bogotá have spread panic in the diaspora.
