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.
— Comando ConVzla (@ConVzlaComando) August 7, 2024
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.
Alerta!
— María Corina Machado (@MariaCorinaYA) August 7, 2024
Le pido a los vecinos de Guanare que acudan a la carrera 17 con calle 8, donde funcionarios del régimen pretenden detener a Maria Oropeza, Directora del Comando Con Vzla en Portuguesa pic.twitter.com/tBRfjATzsy
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.”
La “operación Tun Tun” es persecución política contra los venezolanos que defienden la VERDAD, y la verdad es que @EdmundoGU es el Presidente Electo de Venezuela, elegido por una inmensa mayoría el pasado 28 de julio.
— María Oropeza (@mariaoropeza94) August 6, 2024
Seguimos luchando hasta el final junto @MariaCorinaYA 🇻🇪 pic.twitter.com/3eU9mZzsd0
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