Thousands of arrests and terrorism charges: Nicolás Maduro intensifies persecution of opponents in Venezuela

María Oropeza posted an Instagram livestream of her own arrest. She is the coordinator of Vente Venezuela — the party of opposition leader María Corina Machado — in the state of Portuguesa. On Tuesday night, security forces began knocking on her door until they broke it open. They came in without a warrant, wrestled with her to take away her phone and arrested her. The recording went black when almost 8,000 people were tuned in to the live broadcast. According to the NGO Foro Penal, she is one of the 1,152 people who have been arrested in the 10 days following the July 28 presidential elections in Venezuela, in which Nicolás Maduro was proclaimed president amid allegations of fraud.

The violence of the repression and political persecution following elections is unprecedented. Investigations into human rights violations have been opened in the past before the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and the International Criminal Court (ICC). But for activists, the ruling party’s current crackdown on opponents is of an even larger scale.

“The repression that has been unleashed in Venezuela fundamentally affects the popular sectors of the entire country. At least 80% of the people who have been arrested and who are classified as terrorists belong to humble classes that came out to raise their voices against the fraud,” says Marino Alvarado, a long-time activist in Venezuela and member of the human rights organization Provea. “In Latin America, not since the times of Augusto Pinochet, has there been a repressive crackdown of such magnitude as the one in Venezuela, which has not only led to the arrests of thousands of detainees, but also the death of 23 people, who were killed by both the public force and pro-government paramilitary groups.”

Teenage “terrorists”

Amid the spiraling number of arrests, relatives seeking help have flooded into the Caracas offices of Foro Penal, an organization dedicated to defending political prisoners. Alfredo Romero, one of its directors, has tried to establish a pattern to the police raids. Most of the people in jail were detained during the mass arrests in the protests on the day after the elections. “There is clearly a pattern of arresting many people to create an intimidating effect,” says Romero.

People who were not participating in the protests, but were nearby, were also arrested. This is the case of 24-year-old soccer player María Valentina Méndez, who was on her way to training. And a man with a hearing disability who has no way of communicating where he is being held.

Within this group, the arrest of 101 teenagers has been confirmed. Like almost all those imprisoned, they have been charged with terrorism, incitement to hatred and criminal association. While there is special legislation covering detained minors, they have not received different treatment. Nor have they been allowed access to private defense. What’s more, the teenagers have appeared in courts outside the 24-hour period established for remote hearings for minors with no legal representative.

“There is no official position on the teenagers and the state’s silence on these cases is a fact in itself,” warns Carlos Trapani, a lawyer for children’s rights. “We have seen that they are also detained in police and military cells, and there is no provision for separating them from adult detainees. They have not been able to communicate with their families either, and we do not understand how, without having enough grounds for an ongoing investigation, they come to charge them with terrorism.”

Straight to prison

The teenagers are not the only ones being targeted. “There are selective arrests of people who were witnesses during the elections, who are betrayed by their neighbors or who were caught in an opposition demonstration in a video found on their phones during a police search,” says Romero, who adds that this also includes political leaders such as the heads of the opposition campaign, mayors who supported the opposition and even former lawmaker Freddy Superlano.

Activists, human rights defenders and journalists are also being targeted by Maduro’s security forces. The Penal Forum itself has a case. One of its lawyers was charged with terrorism when he went to ask about a detainee he was helping.

Also arrested was Edni López, a political scientist, university professor and humanitarian worker. Her family lost contact with her when she entered the Maiquetía airport, where she was set to fly to Argentina for a vacation. “It is not fair that a Venezuelan mother has to go through this, that no one tells me where she is, that I won’t find her, if I don’t start looking for her and that no one has given me a reason [for her arrest] yet,” her mother told the press this week, breaking down in tears.

Then there is the case of photojournalist Deisy Peña, who was arrested in Los Teques while walking down the street. Her teenage daughter recorded a video asking for her mother’s release, saying that she had been transferred to a prison three hours from her home.

The largest number of detainees are in Caracas and the states of Anzoátegui, in the east of the country, and Carabobo, in the center. Most of the presentation hearings have been carried out in groups and virtually, since the cases have been filed in the terrorism courts of Caracas. The practice of virtual presentations and hearings has been commonplace for some time. “They are held within the detention centers to deny [the prisoners] access to defense. In them, the detainee cannot speak freely, because they are in front of the people who arrested him, and, therefore, will not report whether they suffered mistreatment or torture,” says Romero.

Some of the detainees have already been sent to prison. The detainees arrested in Caracas are now in the Yare 3 prison, on the outskirts of the capital. The women are being taken to two women’s prisons in the Los Teques area. Maduro — who says more than 2,200 people have been arrested — said that he is finishing remodeling two prisons in the center of the country to hold them. “All the fascist criminals are going to Tocorón and Tocuyito, to maximum security prisons so they can pay for their crimes before the people,” he said.

The conditions at the detention centers are an additional concern. “Families who are very poor are being forced to travel miles to meet the detainees needs without being able to visit the prisoners,” says Alvarado, who insists that since the day after the elections, the case against the Maduro government in the ICC has only grown.

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