Venezuelan democracy barely alive, says UN

THE widespread rights abuses committed against protesters in Venezuela had left democracy there “barely alive”, the UN said yesterday, after France branded the Caracas regime a “dictatorship”.

A UN report warned that the human rights situation in Venezuela was at “grave risk” of unravelling further as the authorities continued to brutally repress demonstrators.

Recent actions by Venezuela’s authorities “support the feeling that what is left of democratic life in Venezuela is being squeezed”, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, the UN human rights chief, told reporters in Geneva, where the UN report was released. Democracy in Venezuela “must be barely alive, if still alive”, he said.

He did not go as far as Emmanuel Macron, the French President, who on Tuesday accused Nicolas Maduro, his Venezuelan counterpart, of creating a “dictatorship ... at an unprecedented humanitarian cost”, in one of the harshest condemnations yet of the South American regime by a European leader.

Caracas hit back against Macron yesterday, with the foreign ministry expressing “firm rejection of the deplorable comments” by the French leader. “They constitute clear interference in the internal affairs” of Venezuela, it said in a statement.

The UN report accused Venezuela of implementing a policy of repression to repel the months of street protests against Maduro. “The generalised and systematic use of excessive force during demonstrations and the arbitrary detention of protesters and perceived political opponents indicate that these were not the illegal or rogue acts of isolated officials,” it said.