- Name: Gabriel Blanco
- Position: Human Rights activist
- Deprived of liberty from: July 7, 2022
- Judgment: Awaiting trial
- Country: Venezuela
- Place of confinement: Bolivarian National Police Station
- Health condition: Normal
- Torture complaint: Due process violations
Blanco is a human rights activist, and trade unionist, who worked as a case manager in the HIAS Venezuela organization that serves refugees at risk by providing them with vocational training, he also was a counselor for the protection of the rights of children and adolescents for the National Assembly, as well as a street educator that worked with children in a situation of indigence and abandonment.
Blanco’s sentimental partner is also an activist and politician, her name is Diannet Blanco, she is a close collaborator of Provea and other human rights organizations. She was freed from her arbitrary detention in 2018. The couple were aware of the risks their activism put them in and even so decided to stay in Venezuela to carry on with their missions.
Gabriel’s detainment came after the arrest of five other trade unionist and leaders of the political party “Bandera Roja”, a party to which Blanco belonged up until 2014. Blanco’s wife assumes that when the other detained trade unionist cell phones were checked by the government, the police found her husband’s name and that was enough for them to go look for him. it would not be the first arrest made in Venezuela because of that, after all in Venezuela, sharing a WhatsApp group with someone uncomfortable for the government can mean “association to commit a crime” and “conspiracy.”
On July 6, 2022, at approximately 7:30 p.m., DGCIM officials dressed in civilian clothes and without identification or credentials ambushed Blanco, wanting him to accompany them, which he refused, leading to a situation in which about 50 officials surrounded the area where he was, witnesses report that the scene looked like a movie. On July 7 at midnight, officials of the Directorate of Strategic Investigations of the PNB presented themselves with an arrest warrant signed by the Fourth Court with Competence in Terrorism of the Criminal Judicial Circuit of the Metropolitan Area of Caracas, in which the crimes of “conspiracy” and “association to commit a crime” were charged.
Gabriel Blanco is currently detained at the Bolivarian National Police Station located in the La Yaguara sector.
Sponsors
Name : Mariana Gómez del Campo
Position: President of the ODCA
Observations
Gómez is a Mexican parlamentarian, for the political party PAN.
She became a Senator of the Republic where she was elected as president of the Committee on Foreign Relations, Latin America and the Caribbean, secretary of the Committee on Mexico City, as well as the Metropolitan Development Commission and member of the Human Rights, Culture and Mobility Commissions.
She was appointed vice president for Mexico before the Latin American and Caribbean Parliament, where she actively participated and chaired the Drafting Commission that modified the Statutes of the parliamentary forum.
In 2019, she was elected Vice President of the Christian Democratic Organization of America and the Central Democrat International. From this position she continued pointing out the human rights violations in Bolivia, Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela.
In 2021 she was elected as a federal deputy in the LXV Legislature of the Chamber of Deputies. Currently she is the President of the Christian Democratic Organization of America.
