July 23, 2022 | Keymer Ávila
This July 14, the PNB Special Actions Force (FAES) celebrates five years of its public activation . Since its inception, this division has been accused by various organizations and institutional actors of committing serious human rights violations in the country. What follows is an extract of the conclusions of the investigation: “ The FAES does not depend on anyone. Death as currency ”, which we published a few weeks ago, in an attempt to answer various questions related to the “FAES” phenomenon.
One of the debates that have been generated about this division is its supposed dissolution, as a consequence of its lack of control, which has even touched the interests of government sympathizers, various versions have circulated, compatible with each other. The main and most general one is that the members of the FAES are being integrated, distributed, distributed among different directorates of the PNB. This is what has historically been called “recycling of civil servants”. With this, they fade a bit until the issue is lowered in the national and international public debate, and in turn, it is about capillarizing the entire GNP with these logics and practices.
Some officials assured that the FAES would remain only in Caracas because it is the political center of the country, where it would operate in a more controlled manner by its commanders. In this sense, several officials of the FAES have already been sent to the DCDO (Directorate against Organized Crime). Inside, they present themselves as the BTI (Territorial Intelligence Brigades), about which there is not much clarity regarding the areas of police service they provide, everything indicates that they are also small residual groups that end up complying with the discretionary orders of their boss. In the traditional special groups of the PNB, the UOTE and Public Order, there was resistance to receive them, due to their lack of professionalism, preparation and discipline,
Other spaces that are receiving them are the DIE (Intelligence and Strategy Directorate) and the DIP (Criminal Investigation Directorate), which is contradictory and conflictive, conceptually, substantively, operationally and functionally; since the FAES have shown that, more than intelligence or investigation work, their actions are ostensive and are fundamentally based on the use of lethal force. And even in the latter, their institutional performance has been highly questioned, which is why they do not qualify to be established as an elite tactical group. In order to perform intelligence, investigation, or specialize in the use of high-intensity force, rigorous selection, training, professionalization, discipline, and control processes are essential, which are non-existent for FAES officials. For many, these attempts to absorb the FAES and the changes in acronyms are just a media simulation to lower public pressure. In the operational reality, the discretionary policy of extermination would be maintained.
The FAES are a residual group, which clearly does not carry out any of the formal areas of the police service, nor specialties described in the legal block. His specialty lies in fulfilling the discretionary and conjunctural will of his bosses, who are in high police and political command.
The officials describe the FAES as a police force in itself, as a group parallel to the PNB itself, which is managed arbitrarily and autonomously, which does not report to its immediate natural commanders but only to “higher-up commanders.” The FAES then operate as a “separate fiefdom”, from which multiple private and group functions, legal and illegal, formal and informal, economic and political, are activated, with high costs in human lives, with harmful social and institutional consequences for all. . Despite their dualities, in no case do they stop representing and being part of the State.
It is important not to see only the FAES. Tomorrow they will change their name or they will continue to infiltrate them within the entire PNB, in an attempt to reduce damage and public resonance, but the policy of killing will continue. Before it was the PM in the AMC, now it is the PNB throughout the country; before it was also the PLO as in the so-called fourth republic it was the well-known operatives Plan Unión or Operation Vanguardia. The FAES are just the tip of the iceberg , all the security forces participate in this trickle-down massacre , focusing only on this division distorts and reduces the real magnitudes of what is happening with lethal institutional violence in the country.
The dissolution of the FAES is not enough if the rest of the institutional system that promotes, protects and tolerates this type of policy remains intact; if there is no justice and reparation for the relatives of the thousands of fatalities they have generated. The strengthening, independence, and autonomy of institutions such as the Ombudsman’s Office, the Public Ministry, and the Justice System are fundamental; that the Attorney General and the courts serve as a counterweight and real limits to the Executive power and its security forces. Otherwise, the government will limit itself to eliminating police forces and creating others equal to or more powerful and uncontrolled than their predecessors, as has already happened.
Publicado originalmente en Provea.
