Repression in post-election Venezuela worsening: report

ELECTION DISPUTE:
The Maduro government has reactivated its harshest and most violent tools of repression, members of a fact-finding mission said

Independent UN human rights experts said in a new report yesterday that their findings show Venezuela’s government has intensified the use of the “harshest and most violent” tools of repression following the disputed July 28 presidential election.

The official results have been widely criticized as undemocratic, opaque and aimed to keep Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in power.

In its report, the fact-finding mission on Venezuela, commissioned by the UN Human Rights Council, denounced rights violations, including arbitrary detentions, torture, and sexual and gender-based violence by the country’s security forces that “taken as a whole, constitute the crime against humanity of persecution on political grounds.”

Photo: AP

“During the period covered by this report, and especially after the presidential election of July 28, 2024, the state reactivated and intensified the harshest and most violent mechanisms of its repressive apparatus,” said the experts in the report, which covered a one-year period through Aug. 31.

The findings echo concerns from UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Human Rights Watch and others about Venezuela and its democracy, including repression before and after the highly anticipated vote and the subsequent flight into exile of Venezuelan opposition leader Edmundo Gonzalez.

Marta Valinas, head of the experts team, said that from July 29 to Aug. 6, Venezuelan authorities acknowledged they arrested more than 2,200 people.

“Of these, we have confirmed the arrest of at least 158 children — some with disabilities,” Valinas told reporters at a news conference yesterday in Geneva, Switzerland, adding that some had been accused of serious crimes, such as terrorism.

“This phenomenon is something new and extremely worrying,” she said. “We are facing a systematic, coordinated and deliberate repression by the Venezuelan government which responds to a conscious plan to silence any form of dissent.”

The Venezuelan National Electoral Council, which is stacked with Maduro loyalists, said he won the election with 52 percent of the vote. However, opposition supporters collected tally sheets from 80 percent of the nation’s electronic voting machines, and said those indicated Gonzalez had won the election — with twice as many votes as Maduro.

The independent experts, who do not represent the UN, comprise a fact-finding mission created in 2019. They have been reporting on rights violations, including alleged crimes against humanity, under Maduro for years.

This report, the fifth of its kind, decried the government’s efforts to crush peaceful opposition to its rule.