Venezuelan forces have killed 73 protesters, UN report says
The UN yesterday said excessive force by Venezuelan security and pro-government groups was responsible for the deaths of at least 73 protesters.
The UN rights office yesterday released preliminary findings from an investigation conducted in June and last month.
“Witness accounts suggest that security forces – mainly the national guard, national police and local police – have systematically used disproportionate force to instil fear, crush dissent and to prevent demonstrators from assembling, rallying and reaching public institutions to present petitions,” the office said.
“Government authorities have rarely condemned such incidents.”
Venezuela, which is suffering an acute economic crisis and shortage of basic goods, has had four months of street demonstrations against president Nicolas Maduro in which 125 people have died.
After receiving no response to repeated requests for access to Venezuela to investigate the situation, UN rights chief Zeid Al Hussein assigned a team of officers to investigate.
They conducted 135 interviews between June 6 and July 31 with victims and their families, witnesses, civil groups, journalists, lawyers and doctors, among others.
“Since the wave of demonstrations began in April, there has been a clear pattern of excessive force used against protesters,” Mr Al Hussein said.
“Several thousand people have been arbitrarily detained, many reportedly subjected to ill-treatment and even torture, while several hundred have been brought before military rather than civilian courts.
“These patterns show no signs of abating.”
The preliminary findings suggest security forces were responsible for the deaths of at least 46 protesters, while pro-government armed groups caused 27. It is unclear who was behind the other deaths, the rights office said.
Almost 2,000 people have been injured and more than 5,050 have been arbitrarily arrested, with more than 1,000 of them still in detention, it said.
It told of “credible reports of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment by security forces of such detainees, amounting in several cases to torture”.
Tactics included “electric shocks, beatings, suffocation with gas, threats of killings, and in some cases threats of sexual violence”. Mr Al Hussein warned that “these violations have occurred amid the breakdown of the rule of law in Venezuela, with constant attacks by the government against the national assembly and the attorney general’s office”.
“The responsibility for the human rights violations we are recording lies at the highest levels of government,” he said.
Military commanders appeared on state TV late on Monday to show support for Mr Maduro, as the government hunted rebels who raided an army base and took weapons.
Surrounded by three tanks with guns raised and hundreds of soldiers, defence minister Gen Vladimir Padrino said the armed forces were “united and with very high morale”.
The attack on the base in Valencia by 20 men in uniform fuelled fears that the crisis could tip into armed conflict.
Gen Padrino said former national guard captain Juan Carlos Caguaripano and former lieutenant Jefferson Gabriel Garcia were behind the raid in Valencia. Venezuela’s opposition has repeatedly urged the military to abandon Mr Maduro.
The crisis is rooted in the collapse of Venezuela’s economy caused by a plunge in global oil prices. Public anger is spreading as people struggle for basics such as food and medicine.
Mr Maduro blames an economic war started by the rightwing opposition and the US.
Human rights office decries use of excessive force, arbitrary jailings, torture and even the threat of sexual assault