Conclusions from AP report on fear of repression in post-election Venezuela

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — The last time anyone heard from Edni López was Sunday. The 33-year-old political science professor was preparing to board a flight to Argentina to visit a friend when, just before 10am, she sent a message from the airport that something was wrong with her passport.

What happened next remains a mystery – a mystery that contributes to the climate of fear and repression that gripped Venezuela after its disputed presidential electionthe most serious wave of human rights violations since Latin America’s military dictatorships in the 1970s.

When López’s mother, Ninoska Barrios, and her friends learned that she didn’t board the flight, they began frantically searching the detention centers. Finally, on Tuesday — more than 48 hours later — they learned that she was being held incommunicado by Venezuela’s feared military intelligence police, on unknown criminal charges, without being able to consult a lawyer or speak to her family.

“Please give my daughter back,” Barrios pleaded, in tears, on Tuesday in front of Venezuela’s main human rights office, in a video that went viral on social media. “It’s not right that a Venezuelan mother has to go through all this.”

Here are some of the findings from AP’s exclusive report on López’s arrest and the president Nicolás Maduroefforts to crush dissent.

How bad is the repression?

López’s arrest is not unique. Since the July 28 presidential elections, security forces have arrested more than 2,000 people for speaking out against Maduro or casting doubt on his claims that he won a third term despite strong evidence that he lost the vote by a margin greater than 2 to 1.

O wave of arrests – instigated by Maduro himself – is unprecedented and puts Venezuela on pace to easily overtake prisoners during the three previous crackdowns on Maduro’s opponents.

Those arrested include journalists, political leaders, campaign workers and a lawyer defending protesters. Others had their Venezuelan passports annulled. One local activist even livestreamed her own arrest by military intelligence agents when they raided her home.

The repression, much of it seemingly random and arbitrary, is having a chilling effect, said Phil Gunson, an analyst with the Caracas-based International Crisis Group.

“It’s not just about discouraging protests. People are afraid to go out on the streets, period,” he said. “There is a feeling that the police have a quota to fill and anyone can be detained and taken away as suspected subversives.”

What does Maduro say?

Threats start at the top. Maduro asked Venezuelans to Report anyone who doubts the elections through a government-run app originally created to report power outages. He also said the government was renovating two gang-dominated prisons to accommodate an expected increase in the incarceration of opponents.

“There will be no mercy,” Maduro said on state TV.

But complicating efforts to crush dissent is the changing face of opponents of the government.

Although the demonstrations have been much smaller and more subdued than previous bouts of unrest, they are now more spontaneous, often leaderless and made up of young people – some still teenagers – from Caracas’ hillside slums, which have traditionally been a solid base. support for the government.

Is the repression working?

The speed of the government’s repression is impressive. In just 10 days, security forces arrested almost the same number of people as they did over five months in 2017, according to Provea, a local human rights watchdog.

“Operation Knock-Knock is a primary tool of state terrorism,” said Oscar Murillo, head of Provea, referring to the middle-of-the-night arrests, considered a scare tactic by authorities.

In the low-income neighborhood of Catia in Caracas, once a stronghold of the ruling party, residents are even deleting videos of the demonstrations from their smartphones, fearing that the government is tracking social media posts to identify critics.

The sudden silence represents a sharp break with the hopeful mood that preceded the elections, when emboldened opposition supporters confronted security forces at anti-Maduro rallies. They served food, lent their vehicles and opened their businesses to opposition leaders, knowing that they would suffer retaliation from the police or see their businesses closed.

What is Venezuela’s human rights record?

Even before the current wave of unrest, Venezuela’s human rights record was under intense scrutiny. Maduro himself is the target of an investigation by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity allegedly committed in the past.

Maduro’s tactics have been compared to those used in Central and South America in the 1970s by military dictatorships that opponents forcibly disappeared and sometimes innocent bystanders. Many were killed and, in Argentina, some were even drugged and thrown from planes into the ocean, with no trace of having been detained.

Maduro’s alleged abuses have little in common with the “Dirty War” campaigns carried out by state security forces.

But the aim of instilling fear is the same, said Santiago Canton, an Argentine lawyer and secretary-general of the Geneva-based International Commission of Jurists, a watchdog group.

“What happened 50 years ago is unlikely to happen again,” Canton said. “But social media is a multiplier that didn’t exist before, so you can be more selective with your use of force and achieve the same results.”

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Goodman reported from Miami.