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UN investigators said on Tuesday that an “unprecedented” crackdown, including arbitrary use of power, has plunged Venezuela into a severe human rights crisis as the country steps up efforts to crush all opposition.
Protests by opposition groups and parts of the international community against the re-election of President Nicolas Maduro in July have left 27 people dead, 192 injured and around 2,400 arrested, government sources said.
The crackdown, which has reached “unprecedented levels of violence”, has been “orchestrated by civilian and military officials at the highest levels of government, including President Maduro”, the mission’s head, Marta Barinas, said at a news conference to release the latest report.
“Some of the human rights violations we investigated during this period are a continuation of what we have previously described as crimes against humanity,” Vallinas said.
“The Venezuelan government has dramatically intensified efforts to crush all peaceful opposition to its rule, plunging the country into one of its most serious human rights crises in recent history,” the UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission said in its report.
The expert mission, which Caracas has refused to cooperate with, condemned the “repressive state response” to the protests since July as “marking a new stage in the deterioration of the rule of law.”
Vallinas further elaborated on the violations documented in the report, saying they were “not the result of isolated or random acts, but were carried out as part of a systematic plan to silence, disrupt and crush opposition to President Maduro’s government.”
“We are witnessing a strengthening of the state’s repressive apparatus against critical voices, dissent and what is perceived as dissent,” she said.
The UN stepped up its scrutiny of the country in September 2019 after the UN Human Rights Council established a mission to investigate “extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, arbitrary detention, torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment since 2014.”
The mission’s mandate has since been renewed twice, once in 2020 and once in 2022.
“Key public institutions abandoned all appearance of independence and openly deferred to the executive,” the report said.
“In practice, many judicial guarantees have become ineffective, leaving citizens powerless against the arbitrary exercise of power.”
Between September last year and the end of last month, the committee conducted remote and in-person interviews with 383 people, while examining dozens of case files and other documents and audiovisual materials.
After the election results were announced, “the repression continued to focus on silencing opposition politicians but also became large-scale and indiscriminate in nature, targeting all those who voiced opposition to the voting results or demanded transparency.”
The team found that after the vote “a system of harassment and violent repression against actual and perceived opponents was reactivated in an intense and accelerated manner.”
“Victims and large sections of the population are subject to the arbitrary exercise of power, with arbitrary detentions systematically carried out with serious violations of due process,” said Mission expert Francisco Cox.
“The severity of the repression, the flaunting of achievements through imprisonment, and the use of ill-treatment and torture have created a widespread atmosphere of fear among the population, further limiting their space,” added Patricia Tappata, the mission’s fact-finding expert.
European Union countries have refused to recognise Maduro as the winner of the election, while Washington has recognised his rival, Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, who claimed victory.
Fearing imprisonment in his home country, Urrutia had been granted asylum in Spain, where he fled a week earlier.
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