The report that the United Nations published on Tuesday, September 17, is clear: since the re-election of Nicolás Maduro on July 28 in Venezuela, the authorities have intensified their efforts “conscious and planned actions” “aimed at silencing, discouraging and stifling the opposition”activating “the harshest and most violent form of its repressive apparatus”.
This “state policy”underlines the 21-page text, “has led to serious human rights violations and crimes, in what has been one of the most acute crises in recent years,” including the deaths of 25 people – 24 of them by bullets – during protests against the proclamation of Nicolás Maduro’s victory over the opposition candidate, Edmundo González.
More than seven weeks after the elections, the electoral authorities have still not presented the voting records that could attest to this, as requested by the opposition and much of the international community.
The text, prepared by the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, analyzes the period between 1Ahem September 2023 and August 31, 2024..
“Political persecution”
This Mission was established by the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Council in 2019. Its objective was originally to investigate human rights violations committed in the country since 2014, and in particular on the role of the Bolivarian National Guard and its chain of command. But the post-electoral crisis forced it to “redefine the direction of its investigations to take into account the increase in rapes and crimes during this period”.
In 2023, “The harshest repressive apparatus was asleep, but not dislocated,” explains Francisco Cox, one of the three members of the UN Mission. “ In the run-up to the elections, it was reactivated for selective arrests, such as that of human rights defender Rocío San Miguel in February, which had a very strong impact on civil society. tracks the Chilean expert. What we are seeing after the elections are also mass and arbitrary arrests, including hundreds of children between 15 and 17 years old, or people who simply expressed their disagreement with the official result of the elections. »
Forced disappearances, torture with sticks or electricity, sexual violence, failure to comply with the right to defense at high levels “unprecedented” EITHER “The appearance of legality, which was already minimal in previous times, has almost completely disappeared.” The Mission believes that it has “reasonable grounds” believe that some of these violations “constitute the crime against humanity of political persecution”The brutality of the repression is such, the text says, that “continues to generate a general climate of fear among the population.”
You have 30.91% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.
