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Human Rights

VIDEO: Maduro regime kidnaps María Oropeza, regional coordinator of María Corina Machado's opposition coalition

In the middle of a live broadcast, opposition leader María Oropeza took video of Chavista forces bursting into her home without a search warrant

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August 7, 2024 10:34am

Updated: August 8, 2024 12:22am

María Corina Machado’s opposition coalition reported Tuesday night that her regional coordinator, María Oropeza, was kidnapped in the state of Portuguesa, taken at the hands of the regime’s forces.

In the middle of a live broadcast agents from the Directorate of Military Counterintelligence of Venezuela (DGCIM) can been taking María Oropeza into custody. The kidnapping was confirmed and denounced by the opposition on its social networks.

“Urgent. Regime officials kidnapped María Oropeza, head of the ConVenezuela Command, in Portuguesa. This happens in Guanare. We hold the regime responsible for anything that may happen to it,” the organization reported.#Urgente | Funcionarios del régimen asedian a María Oropeza (@mariaoropeza94), Jefe del Comando ConVzla en #Portuguesa. Esto ocurre en Guanare.

Responsabilizamos al régimen de cualquier cosa que pueda ocurrirle.

Machado had urged the residents of Oropeza to stop his kidnapping. “Alert! I ask the residents of Guanare to go to Carrera 17 and Calle 8, where regime officials intend to arrest María Oropeza, director of the ConVzla Command in Portuguesa,” the opposition member warned in a publication by to the Chavista forces knocking down the door of the home without a search warrant.

After the kidnapping, Machado said on the same social network that María Oropeza is “an extraordinarily brave, intelligent and generous young woman. She is the Coordinator of the ConVenezuela Command in Portuguesa and has done an extraordinary job uniting and organizing the citizens of her state.”

“I ask everyone, inside and outside Venezuela, to demand his immediate freedom,” she said.

For his part, the Secretary General of the Organization of American States (OAS), Luis Almagro, spoke about what happened and noted that “the detention of María Oropeza adds to the file of complaints of crimes against humanity of the Maduro regime,” which has “more than 1,000 arrests as a result of political persecution. This repressive irrationality must be stopped now.”

Hours before her kidnapping, Oropeza denounced that “Operation Tun Tun,” a campaign carried out by the dictatorship to persecute those who protest against electoral fraud, which she said “lacks any legal argument and is part of a witch hunt by a regime that lost the presidential elections on July 28.”

Fast-File Reporter

Marielbis Rojas

Marielbis Rojas is a Venezuelan journalist and communications professional with a degree in Social Communication from UCAB. She is a news reporter for ADN America.