Maduro's Venezuela and the misuse of military courts

The Caracas Chronicles reports:

On Tuesday morning, Dgcim officers made Rubén González’s family leave court. He was the secretary general of the Ferrominera Orinoco Workers Union and he has been in jail at La Pica prison for over eight months. Mid-afternoon, the military court sentenced González to five years and nine months in prison for assaulting the Armed Forces and the guard, after they detained him on November 2018 when he was coming back from a protest to demand Nicolás [Maduro] that he’d respect the workers’ collective agreements, those Maduro disregarded when he imposed in August 2018, the public administration salary tabs, deteriorating every agreement contemplated in the contracts. González’s lawyer, Miguel Ekar, assured that the Military Prosecutor’s Office didn’t present a single convincing piece of evidence that proved that he was guilty and that this was the “most abhorrent military trial in Venezuela.” According to Article 49 of our Constitution, judging civilians in military trials is illegal, another step in Nicolás’s repressive policy, who still calls himself “el presidente obrero”.

Venezuela has a long record of using military courts to try civilians. The practice violates the jurisprudence of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.