UN report details crimes against humanity during Venezuelan elections

Four days after achieving a two-year renewal, the UN Independent International Mission to Venezuela published a forceful report in which it found reasonable grounds to believe that the government of Nicolás Maduro committed “crimes against humanity ” in the July elections.

The 158-page document covers the period from September 1, 2023, to August 31, 2024, and accuses security forces and pro-government armed civilian groups of murders, forced disappearances, acts of torture and sexual and gender-based violence before, during and after elections marked by the persecution of opponents and the repression of protests.

The security forces were “massively involved” in human rights violations such as arbitrary arrests, excessive use of force to repress protests, or cruel and degrading treatment, the document indicates, pointing out as responsible the civil (SEBIN) and military (DGCIM) intelligence services, as well as the Bolivarian National Guard and the National Police.

He also claims that “the statements of the highest authorities of the State, especially after July 28, incited repression and contributed to generating a climate of hostility and violence.”

Other institutions singled out in the report include the National Electoral Council, which “failed to comply with basic transparency and integrity measures,” the National Assembly, which was “instrumental in the approval of new laws contrary to human rights and restrictive of civic and democratic space,” and the justice system, which “continued to operate with a lack of independence.”

Although previous reports by the mission established in 2019 had already accused the Venezuelan State of serious human rights violations, the new document highlights that the profile of victims of repression “broadened significantly” during the electoral period, encompassing not only opposition and social leaders.

Arrests and threats

The mission, headed by Portuguese jurist Marta Valiñas, highlights in the report that in the 10 months prior to the elections at least 48 people were arrested in connection with conspiracies invoked by the Government, many of them in the so-called Operation White Bracelet, and during the electoral campaign there were another 121 arrests for collaborating in opposition activities.

Such campaigns “served as justification for the selective repression of military personnel, politicians and civil society activists,” said the report by the group of experts, which together with Valiñas is made up of Chilean Francisco Cox and Argentine Patricia Tappatá.

The repression escalated following the election results, when the authorities, according to the report, “launched an unprecedented campaign of mass and indiscriminate arrests,” with the number of arrests, which could be counted in the thousands, “comparable only to the protests of 2014, 2017 and 2019.”

Many of these arrests were part of the “Tun Tun” operation, designed to threaten and “generate fear in the population,” the mission said.

As part of this operation, houses of people perceived as opponents were marked with an X, or groups close to the government were encouraged to identify and report them using a mobile phone application that was enabled for this purpose.

Among the human rights violations highlighted in the report is the detention in the post-election period of 158 minors ” accused of serious crimes such as terrorism “, detained in most cases without informing their families or lawyers, so they remained incommunicado for days.

Deaths in the protests

The report documents at least 25 deaths, including two minors, during the first days of election protests, and notes that at least eight of those fatal incidents occurred in demonstrations where state security forces or pro-government civilian groups used firearms.

The mission also reported numerous cases of torture and sexual violence, the latter not only against detainees but also against women and girls who had gone to detention centres to visit their relatives.

The torture included “punching, beatings with wooden planks or with cans wrapped in foam, electric shocks, including to the genitals, suffocation with plastic bags, immersion in cold water and forced sleep deprivation,” it said.

“The serious human rights violations investigated during this period represent a continuation of the same line of conduct characterized as crimes against humanity in previous reports of the mission,” the document concludes.