Venezuela grants amnesty to 379 political prisoners

Venezuela’s government says it is granting amnesty to 379 political prisoners, a move presented as “reconciliation” but which functions more like a promotional coupon for a system that never stopped criminalizing dissent.

According to Al Jazeera, the amnesty covers hundreds of people held as political prisoners. Dhaka Tribune’s summary of the announcement similarly frames it as a large-scale release. The headline number is meant to do the work: 379 sounds like a policy, not a confession.

But amnesty is a peculiar instrument. It does not assert that the state jailed the wrong people; it asserts that the state can jail the right people whenever it wants—and will sometimes choose not to. The government’s “forgiveness” quietly validates the premise that opposition activity is prosecutable at the regime’s pleasure.

The practical effect is to keep the core mechanism intact: selective enforcement. A prisoner released under amnesty is not necessarily exonerated, compensated, or protected from re-arrest. The state retains the ability to reopen cases, invent new charges, or simply change the definition of what counts as a crime. In countries where courts are not meaningfully independent, legal status becomes a temporary administrative setting.

Amnesties also serve a diplomatic purpose. They create a headline that can be traded for sanctions relief, access to frozen assets, or a softer international posture—without changing the enforcement architecture that produced the prisoners in the first place. The regime can point to “progress” while maintaining the leverage that comes from having a prison system calibrated for politics.

For Venezuelans, the release of any prisoner is good news in human terms. For Venezuelan politics, it is also a reminder that the government is treating liberty as something it can grant and revoke, rather than a default condition. The state’s message is not subtle: you are free because we say so.

If “reconciliation” were the real goal, the country would need transparent case reviews, independent judges, and legal limits on preventive detention and politically motivated prosecutions. Amnesty is cheaper. It costs nothing, admits nothing, and preserves everything.

The point is not merely that authoritarianism is cruel—everyone knows that—but that it is administratively rational. A government that can criminalize politics will eventually do so, because it is the most efficient way to eliminate competition. Amnesty, used periodically, is how that system pretends to have a conscience while keeping its tools sharpened.