By Esteban Oria -April 29, 2021
Due to the crime against Oscar Perez committed by the Maduro regime and the systematic persecution of the members of the Masonic order to which he belonged, several of these people created the International Masonic Human Rights Commission to support the victims of human rights violations and, in particular, the politically persecuted Freemasons of the tyranny that controls power in Venezuela.
The committee arises as a measure to guarantee the dissemination of cases of political violence generated by repressive governments, such as the Maduro dictatorship, because they force silence by appealing to threats, coercion, patronage, and collaboration. For this reason, people are unaware of the circumstances behind criminal cases in which the regime, whose victims are Masons, is involved.
In Venezuela, this collaboration situation with the Maduro regime led to irregularities committed by members of the Santiago Mariño Lodge N 208, affiliated with the Grand Lodge of the Republic of Venezuela. One of these is the unfair and illegal Masonic trial carried out by some members against Brother Oscar Pérez; it was so irregular that it was a trial in absentia, and its defender was a political official of the Maduro regime.
A second irregular event was denying him his right to participate in a meeting when Oscar Pérez requested it, both for him and his brother José Díaz Pimentel, who wanted to talk. On that occasion, both members were denied entry to the lodge, leaving them outside the temple, literally on the street in full view and reach of Maduro officials. Undoubtedly, it is a cowardly and criminal act perpetrated by regime operators within the lodge. If someone has to explain this matter, it is the past -venerable master of the Lodge Santiago Mariño N 208, Mr. Rubén Rodríguez. Only he can say what motivated him to prevent these brothers from entering. Why did this brother, knowing what was happening in his lodge, not contact a human rights office and report what was happening? He did the opposite: hide and silence. It is clear that the majority of the members of the Santiago Mariño N 208 lodge have told me that they were involved without knowledge in this alleged non-affiliation of Oscar Pérez, in an act that Maduro officials monitored with record in hand, so they were converted in prey to the behavior of Mr. Rubén Rodríguez and his Chavismo allies in the lodge and the Grand Lodge. If, for some reason, Mr. Rubén Rodríguez was forced to commit all these outrages, it is time for him to say who and under what circumstances.
A third irregular event was the refusal of the Grand Lodge of Venezuela under the Grand Mastery of Colonel Ubaldo Jiménez Silva to condemn the Maduro regime for the horrible crime against the brothers Oscar Pérez and José Díaz Pimentel; they produced a document riddled with confusion and complacent with the tyranny of Maduro. The difference in tone and style can be seen if it is compared with the pronouncements of the Grand Orients of Ecuador, Paraguay, Brazil, and Spain. They made an irrefutable condemnatory document from the Inter-American Masonic Confederation of that time. At the same time, the Grand Lodge of Venezuela, under the leadership of Colonel Jiménez Silva, avoided pronouncing a condemnation, but not according to the paper is full of contradictions because they deny that it had expelled Oscar Pérez from the order, when in reality that was what actually happened, as members of the Santiago Mariño N 208 lodge have said. Still, it is also an outrageous document that asks the freemasons to collaborate with the investigations of the bodies of State security, a regime that is accused of crimes against humanity but which is also designated by different essential entities in the field of human rights, such as the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, and the United Nations Fact Finding Mission, download the document here.
The document drawn up by the Grand Lodge, which does not agree to condemn the Maduro dictatorship for the massacre against members of its own East, orders that the lodges collaborate with the security organizations, saying, according to them, «the truth» and subject themselves to the Masonic secret but making the caveat that they only protect the recognition modes. The document is an outrage against human intelligence; Mr. Jiménez Silva and those who accompanied him in this horrible episode of Venezuelan Freemasonry and lent themselves to this collaboration with the Maduro regime will have much to explain.
And about Colonel Jiménez Silva, I do not understand how we never found out in the Masonic community that he was prosecuted in a Court Martial on November 4, 1999, where he was sentenced to eleven years and two months in prison for committing the crimes of theft of funds belonging to the Armed Forces, saved continuously and abuse of authority and that later the TSJ, under the presidency of Iván Rincón Urdaneta in 2001, when it was already a body under Chavismo control, ordered the holding of a new oral trial in which the freedom of the defendants was agreed and the judgment under appeal was annulled. You can see more of this information at this link.
In this message, the public prosecutor acknowledges the trial of Oscar Pérez and what were the arguments.
So this Grand Master had already had problems with the law and nothing less than a military trial, but later he was rescued by a Chavista TSJ, so there was little to be expected of his impartiality.
Another unfortunate situation produced in that Grand Lodge was the disappearance of two other members, the brothers Wilmer Muñoz and Juan Hurtado. Investigations indicate that the Maduro regime is involved in their disappearances. The Maduro regime made unfounded accusations against Brother Juan Hurtado, commander of the Casa de Armas of the Presidential Honor Guard, and it is presumed that Commissioner Wilmer Muñoz was ambushed. Their relatives reported Both cases in the Grand Lodge, and an investigation was ordered. Still, when they found evidence of the participation of the Maduro regime, they abandoned the investigator, who had to take refuge in another country. Brother Alfredo Tovar, now a refugee in Chile, is identified as responsible for commissioning the investigation; according to the witness, this brother was knowledgeable about the investigation, but he did not inform any human rights office.
Also, about this Tovar brother, he has been linked to a document that was supposedly issued to the Grand Lodge signed by him, the news of which was reviewed by the Masonic newspaper. In that document, Oscar Pérez is declared a traitor to the country and is the reason for his suspension. Until now, he denies being the document’s author; however, it must be part of an in-depth investigation. Reports of groups within the lodges made by brothers on social networks should also be investigated.
So what happened in the Grand Lodge of Venezuela is very serious, mainly during that period of Colonel Jiménez Silva. His silence has been a factor in collaboration with the dictatorship; his lack of reporting has facilitated the action of agents of the Maduro regime against the victims and those of us who denounced it. They have tried to disqualify us by censoring our posts, promoting hate against us in WhatsApp groups, and sending threatening voice messages. For this reason, we have created this International Masonic Commission on Human Rights to protect the integrity of politically persecuted Freemasons and reveal the truth of what happens with the persecution of Freemasons by the regime so that we can expose the truth through the different communication platforms and in this way create institutional channels with the other international human rights entities to inform them in detail about the violations of our human rights.
The Commission has been accompanying the complaint processes before the different entities. I thank you for your support in delivering my complaint accompanied by a report to the Independent International Mission to Determine the Facts about the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, which dealt with all these aspects that I have mentioned to you throughout this writing and which I have fully shared with this Mission, including the two chats of the Lodge Group in which brother Oscar Pérez participated, which demonstrates Oscar’s connection with the order and the possible path of reference of the regime that led him to the lodge.
It is also important to highlight that the Commission celebrates the first sentence of the National Asylum Court of the French State, which has granted political asylum to a member of the Santiago Mariño lodge because the citizen was a member of the same lodge as Oscar Pérez, and that due to what happened to him and José Díaz Pimentel, it was reason enough to fear for the life of the citizen in question. Therefore, he should be protected by the French State. Press articles are used to demonstrate Oscar’s connection to the Santiago Mariño Lodge and WhatsApp chats in which the regime’s persecution of Masons is reported and verified. This material is being disseminated among embassies and international human rights organizations, along with testimonies from victims and witnesses.
The Masonic Commission is aware of the danger that a dictatorship means, not only that of Maduro, but those of a similar nature that exist and prosper in the world, so for this reason, it acquires that international character. In addition, its board of directors includes Venezuelan Freemasons who are mostly in exile and are now joining Freemasons from other countries.
The Commission’s first board of directors is chaired by lawyer William Jiménez, a specialist in criminal law known for being the first complainant of the execution of Oscar Pérez in his capacity as former coordinator of Strategic Investigations of the Bello Monte morgue. William was also a human rights representative at the Caracas Bar Association and a member of the Inter-American Federation of Lawyers based in Washington. He is challenged to create a private platform to defend politically persecuted Freemasons. My person, Esteban Oria, accompanies you on your board of directors as your close collaborator in the Executive Directorate, a position I am honored to hold. There are also the brothers Endry Méndez in the Paraguay chapter, Lenin Morales in the Ecuador chapter, Eduardo Figueroa Marchena in the Spain chapter, William Alfredo Moreno and Tugomir Yépez in the France chapter. The Commission is a private entity; it is not an Orient, nor does it pretend to be; in any case, it is an organization that articulates actions to defend democracy and human rights and aspires to have the best relations with all the Orients of the world in their different languages, so invite members from various orients to participate in your activities.
The organization opened its portal https://comisionmasonicaddhh.com/, which is a way to receive complaints and contacts. Users will also be able to register to participate in the different areas of the committee.
