Over 3,200 detained

Over the past 10 weeks of protests in Venezuela, security forces have detained more than 3,200 people, with over a third of them remaining in custody, according to Foro Penal, a legal aid group. Allegations of mistreatment during the arrests and detention have ballooned, according to human rights groups. They come as authorities have also begun to send demonstrators to military courts, where they can face charges of treason and rebellion that carry lengthy sentences.

The government’s fierce crackdown on the demonstrations, along with its efforts to disband the legislature and change the constitution, have brought international condemnation and fueled debate over whether Venezuela is sliding toward dictatorship.

“We have to call things by their name, and what we have here is a country that, in fact, has ceased to be a functional democracy, and this is a tremendously dangerous thing for the region,” Mexico’s foreign minister, Luis Videgaray, said in May.

Nearly as many people have been detained in the past two months during anti-government demonstrations as in all of 2014, a year of intense protest in Venezuela, said Nizar El Fakih, director of the human rights organization Proiuris.

Some demonstrators say they are picked up by security forces who manhandle them and hold them in overcrowded detention centers. The worst treatment appears to be meted out by the intelligence service and the armed forces, whose prisoners have endured regular beatings and sometimes other forms of physical and sexual abuse, according to interviews with former detainees, defense attorneys and human rights advocates. While Venezuelan security forces have been accused of using excessive force in the past, the upsurge in such allegations has alarmed human rights activists.