Venezuela ramps up global outreach in Jakarta amid Maduro arrest claims

Venezuela will continue rallying international support, including from Indonesia, to defend its national sovereignty, Venezuela’s Ambassador to Indonesia Enrique Antonio Acuna Mendoza said.

Speaking at a focus group discussion at Prof. Dr. Moestopo (Beragama) University in Jakarta on Thursday (Feb. 12, 2026), Mendoza accused the political administration of Donald Trump of making what he called a grave misstep by deploying US military forces and later arresting Venezuela’s democratically elected president.

Mendoza said military operations around the Caribbean Sea had damaged a number of Venezuelan facilities—an act he argued was not permissible under international law.

He further claimed the military deployment, which he said began last year, was followed by what he described as the illegal arrest of President Nicolás Maduro earlier this year. “The arrest of Venezuela’s president is also a violation of international law,” he said, rejecting allegations linking Maduro to “narco-terrorism” as unfounded and unsupported by evidence.

According to Mendoza, the Venezuelan government has dispatched legal practitioners and experts to the United States to pursue Maduro’s release through legal channels.

He added that Caracas has also formed a special team to file complaints at various international organizations, including the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, the Netherlands.

Beyond those steps, Mendoza said Venezuela is expanding academic cooperation with universities worldwide to examine the dispute through the lenses of international law, international relations, politics and geopolitics—work he said would help strengthen Venezuela’s arguments on the global stage.

“We hope this scientific discussion forum at Prof. Dr. Moestopo University can reinforce our efforts to free our president and defend our sovereignty,” he said.

Kesi Yovana, executive director of the Center for Latin America (CeLa), said academics who have long maintained close ties with Latin American countries, including Venezuela, were deeply shaken by developments in the country.

Echoing Mendoza’s view, Yovana said the United States under Trump had acted wrongly and that the situation required a smart and serious response from the international community.

She said CeLa would continue pursuing constructive efforts, particularly through academic channels, including providing input to Indonesia’s Foreign Ministry so that the country’s policy response could be more solution-oriented in supporting Venezuela’s sovereignty.

Meanwhile, forum moderator and Moestopo University international relations lecturer Ahmad Mulyadi said what Venezuela and President Maduro had experienced was not justifiable under international law.

Such actions, he said, would not only injure Venezuela but also other nations because they touch on human rights and undermine international legal norms.

If left unchecked, Mulyadi warned, the international order could be destabilized, with consequences—direct and indirect—for other countries, especially those in the Global South.

“Indonesia and many other countries in the Global South are developing nations, third-world countries, and middle powers that geopolitically do not have guarantees they can avoid similar situations in the future,” he said.

The geopolitics expert—who earned his doctorate from National Research Tomsk State University in Russia—argued that preventing similar cases requires Global South countries to strengthen solidarity and cooperation across multiple areas, including diplomacy, the economy, politics, academic research and even defense cooperation.

“Indonesia and Venezuela are friendly nations and both part of the Global South, so Indonesia—together with other countries in the group—should increase both the quantity and quality of its support for Venezuela across all sectors,” he said, adding that the discussion hosted by Moestopo University and CeLa, supported by the Indonesian Association of International Relations (AIHII), reflected Indonesian solidarity with the Venezuelan people.

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