UN criticises crackdown on protests

VENEZUELA: The United Nations has slammed Venezuela for the use of excessive force against anti-government protesters and says security forces and pro-government groups are believed responsible for the deaths of at least 73 demonstrators since April.

Abuses of protesters, including torture, were part of ‘‘the breakdown of the rule of law’’ in the South American OPEC member country, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad alHussein said yesterday.

‘‘The responsibility for the human rights violations we are recording lies at the highest levels of the government,’’ he said.

There was no immediate reaction from Venezuela’s government.

The UN said preliminary findings from an investigation conducted in June and July ‘‘paint a picture of widespread and systematic use of excessive force and arbitrary detentions against demonstrators in Venezuela’’.

The government has increasingly turned a blind eye to critics overseas as it steps up a crackdown on street protests against President Nicolas Maduro and seeks to consolidate his leftist rule.

As part of that effort, the nation’s pro-government Supreme Court sentenced an opposition mayor to 15 months in jail yesterday, saying he had defied an order to ensure that protests in his district of the capital, Caracas, did not disrupt transit through the area.

In addition to ordering the immediate arrest of Ramon Muchacho of Chacao, a wealthy district that has been the epicentre of four months of protests, the court said he had been fired.

The order to jail Muchacho came just days after the installation of Venezuela’s new constituent assembly, an allpowerful legislative body run by Maduro’s Socialist Party loyalists.

Peru called Venezuela’s government a ‘‘dictatorship’’ yesterday after hosting the first meeting of a new, 17-member regional bloc that aims to seek a peaceful end to the country’s deepening political crisis.

In a joint declaration released after a meeting in Lima, countries including Canada, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Chile and Colombia collectively condemned the ‘‘breakdown of democratic order’’ in Venezuela and said they would not recognise any action taken by its ‘‘illegitimate’’ constituent assembly.

Chile’s foreign minister Heraldo Munoz said the group did not intend to meddle in Venezuela’s sovereign affairs. ‘‘What we want is to re-establish the broken democratic order.’’

The constituent assembly yesterday granted itself full powers over other government branches, feeding accusations that Maduro is turning the country into a dictatorship. The 545-member body, elected last week amid international condemnation, took the vote in the building of the opposition-controlled National Assembly in Caracas. Earlier, soldiers had blocked National Assembly members from entering.

Freddy Guevara, vice-president of the National Assembly, said Venezuela was on the precipice of a ‘‘hard dictatorship’’.