The price of justice

JORGE ANTONIO BARRIOS was just nine years old in 1998 when the Aragua state police came looking for his father, Benito. He watched as the officers beat him and took him away. Later that day Benito died from multiple gunshot wounds. The police said they shot him in self-defence after he opened fire on them. As is customary in Venezuela, no one was prosecuted. The country has one of the world’s highest murder rates, and according to academic studies, 96% of homicides go unpunished.

Many murders are committed by security forces, and the Aragua state police are among the worst offenders. Between 2000 and 2008 the public prosecution service registered over 7,000 extra-judicial killings, around half involving state police forces. The Barrios family case, however, is exceptionally horrific.

Five years after Benito’s death, his brother Narciso had a violent row with a state policeman who reportedly had refused to pay for drinks. The police later raided the homes of four family members, stealing possessions and in two cases starting fires. Two weeks later they arrested Narciso’s nephew. After Narciso protested, they shot him dead. Despite being warned to drop the case, the family began an arduous search for justice in Venezuelan courts. Their woes were just beginning.

Over the nine years since Narciso’s death, another seven men in his family have been fatally shot. The latest was Jorge Antonio, who was killed by an unknown assailant on December 15th while riding a motorcycle. There is no proof that state police are behind the murders, but the Barrios clan says police have threatened, arrested and beaten family members. And the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) has found that “in the majority of these acts, members of the same police force of the state of Aragua appear to be clearly implicated.”

The IACHR has directed the national government to provide official protection to family members, and says it has not complied. “The Barrios family is being exterminated in the face of inaction by the State, which has ignored the [IACHR’s] entreaties, decisions, recommendations and orders”, the commission said in a statement on January 18th. Venezuela’s public prosecutor, Luisa Ortega Díaz, insists that the government did order protection for the family—even though Hugo Chávez, the president, announced last year that the country would withdraw from the regional human-rights system, which he accuses of “complicity with Washington.” Even once the withdrawal takes effect this August, the government must still fulfil its legal obligations in existing cases.