Crackdown spreads fear among protesters
CARACAS, Venezuela — Jhonny Godoy had taken to Twitter to proclaim his opposition to President Nicolas Maduro, posting a video that showed him running through the streets waving the national flag as protests erupted across Venezuela’s capital.
Two days later, his family said, rifle-wielding special police agents wearing black masks stormed into their home in the Caracas slum of La Vega, pulled him outside and shot him to death.
The slaying of the 29year-old was part of a crackdown that has spread fear among young protesters in poor neighborhoods of Venezuela, where a history of steadfast loyalty to Maduro has begun to crack amid hyperinflation and shortages of food and medicine. At least 43 people have been killed in the round of protests that began last month, when Juan Guaidó, head of the opposition-controlled congress, declared himself interim president of the crisiswracked country.
Human rights groups say some of those deaths appear to be targeted slayings by the National Police Action Force, or FAES, an elite commando unit created in 2017 for anti-gang operations. Rights groups say it is now acting against disaffected youths living in the slums.
“Maduro seeks to sow fear,” said Rafael Uzcategui, coordinator of the respected rights group Venezuelan Education-Action Program on Human Rights, known as PROVEA. More than 700 opponents of Maduro have been arrested during the latest push by Venezuela’s opposition to oust the socialist leader, according to PROVEA and a crime monitoring group, Observatory of Social Conflict.
Maduro is facing more pressure than ever to cede power in the oil-rich nation. The Trump administration recently sanctioned Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, squeezing the country’s damaged economy even harder, and Guaidó has been recognized as the country’s rightful leader by the U.S. and dozens of other nations that argue Maduro’s re-election to a second six-year term last year was fraudulent. A new round of sanctions Friday targeted four highranking intelligence officials, including the heads of the FAES commando unit and the feared SEBIN intelligence police.
The country has seen the largest protests since 2017, when 120 people died in clashes with national guardsmen and pro-government civilians who fired on the masked demonstrators in middleclass neighborhoods. Now, critics say, Maduro is hitting back by sending security forces into slums to try to suppress dissent.