The attack against Venezuelan activists Yendri Velásquez and Luis Alejandro Peche In Bogotá he once again put the problem of political persecution in exile on the global stage. These two men, who They fled Venezuela Seeking asylum after denouncing political persecution, they were violently shot at while residing outside their country.
The case is not isolated, it is already a common practice of autocracies. Authoritarian regimes—from Moscow to Caracas, and also Beijing—have perfected mechanisms to silence dissidents even if they cross the border. What is worrying is no longer just what happens behind walls, but what happens far from them. Exile was no longer synonymous with security.
Perhaps no regime has perfected this practice like Vladimir Putin’s. From London to Berlin, andhe Kremlin has shown that its arm reaches any corner of the world.
The most emblematic case was that of former FSB agent Alexander Litvinenko, poisoned in 2006 in London with polonium-210, a radioactive substance that could only be obtained in state laboratories. Years later, in 2018, another former spy, Sergei Skripalwas attacked in Salisbury with the Novichok nerve agent, sparking an unprecedented diplomatic crisis between Russia and the West.
In 2019, the murder in Berlin of the Chechen Zelimkhan Khangoshviliexecuted in broad daylight by a Russian agent, confirmed that extraterritorial repression was not an exception, but a state policy. German courts concluded that the crime was ordered directly by the Kremlin. Added to these cases are multiple poisoning and persecution attempts against activists, journalists and deserters in European countries, a chain of attacks that configures what is today defined as a sustained strategy of globalized state terrorism.
China, for its part, operates with a more subtle but equally intimidating strategy. Through operations such as Fox Hunt and Sky Net, the regime seeks to repatriate dissidents, critics and suspects under accusations of corruption or financial crimes, often without credible judicial guarantees.
It is a global coercion: digital harassment, surveillance, indirect threats, pressure on family members, and a political narrative that justifies repression as “restoring order” or combating “subversion.”
The Venezuelan case, although more recent, follows the same pattern. For years, the Maduro regime has tried to project its repressive apparatus beyond its borders. Complaints from exiles in Colombia, Peru, Chile and Spain point to intelligence and intimidation operations carried out by SEBIN and DGCIM agents. The kidnapping of Yendri and Peche fits into that logic: an attempt to demonstrate that dissent has no refuge. As in the manuals of Russian or Chinese authoritarianism, repression is no longer satisfied with internal control: it is globalized, externalized, exported.
An even more serious case was that of former Venezuelan lieutenant Ronald Ojeda, which occurred in Chile in February 2024. Ojeda, a political asylum in that country, was kidnapped by intelligence agents of the dictatorship in his apartment in Santiago and found ten days later buried under cement in a makeshift grave in Maipú. The Chilean justice system described the crime as political and linked the operation directly to structures of the Venezuelan State.
Regional prosecutor Héctor Barros and national prosecutor Ángel Valencia confirmed that there are testimonies and evidence that point to Diosdado Cabello as the mastermind behind the kidnapping and murder, allegedly in coordination with members of the Tren de Aragua, a criminal organization used by the regime as an operational arm abroad.
The case of Yendri and Peche should serve as an alarm: political persecution is no longer confined to the territory of the dictatorship. Exile, the dissident’s last resort, is being attacked, turned into a risk zone. And when those who violate human rights know that they can do so with impunity, when democrats look the other way out of diplomacy or convenience, what remains is complicit silence.
Democracy is not just a system of government, but a guarantee that certain boundaries cannot be crossed. One of these limits must be: respect for the right to asylum and the guarantee that those fleeing authoritarianism can feel safe. The Petro Government has not given sufficient guarantees so that Venezuelans exiled in that country can enjoy tranquility and respect for their integrity. Petro acts as another police officer for the dictatorship, allowing Colombia to become an extension of Maduro’s criminal arm.
Letelier’s memory, the cases of Russia, Venezuela and China, all converge in a warning: persecuting dissidents abroad is not a minor strategy, it is a direct attack on the very foundations of what it means to live in freedom.
