© 2025 WLRN
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Human Rights Watch: Venezuela's Maduro regime employs 'systematic' repression against critics

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro at the Supreme Court in Caracas on Aug. 9, 2024.
Matias Delacroix
/
AP
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro at the Supreme Court in Caracas on Aug. 9, 2024.

One year after Venezuela’s 2024 presidential election, the government of President Nicolás Maduro is continuing to kill, detain, torture and disappear critics in a “systematic” campaign of repression, according to a new report by Human Rights Watch.

The report, released Monday, accuses Maduro’s administration of politically motivated arrests and widespread human rights violations following an election marred by allegations of fraud.

Venezuela’s Electoral Council declared Maduro the winner hours after polls closed on July 28, 2024, but international observers widely criticized the process as lacking transparency.

The official vote tally has never been released, and opposition groups say their own counts show Maduro lost to opposition candidate Edmundo González.

Since the vote, the report says, the government has escalated repression through a nationwide campaign known as “Operation Knock Knock” (“Operación Tun Tun”), targeting protestors and political opponents, particularly in working-class neighborhoods. Thousands took to the streets after the election. The crackdown included killings, arbitrary arrests, enforced disappearances, and torture.

READ MORE: Venezuela’s authoritarian government has a new target: economists

As of July 21, at least 853 political prisoners remain behind bars, according to Venezuelan NGO Foro Penal. Human Rights Watch said detainees have often been held incommunicado and denied access to lawyers and due process. Many have been charged with vague offenses like “terrorism” and “incitement to hatred” — charges that can carry sentences of up to 30 years.

“The Venezuelan authorities are committing systematic human rights violations against critics,” said Juanita Goebertus, Americas director at Human Rights Watch, in a statement. “Recent releases of people arbitrarily detained do not conceal the fact that hundreds of political prisoners remain behind bars.”

Some high-profile detainees include opposition leaders Freddy Superlano and Jesús Armas, human rights lawyer Eduardo Torres, and 2024 presidential candidate Enrique Márquez. Victims reported beatings, electric shocks, suffocation, and solitary confinement in dark, overcrowded cells.

“The Maduro government has for years followed a ‘revolving-door’ pattern, releasing some arbitrarily detained people while arresting others,” Goebertus said. “Foreign governments, including the United States, should know that they are being played by a government that releases some political prisoners while detaining others, all the while entrenching its authoritarian rule.”

Human Rights Watch is urging the international community to demand lasting reforms and support ongoing investigations into human rights abuses. The group also called for leveraging upcoming diplomatic events, including the CELAC-EU summit in Colombia and the Vatican’s planned canonization of two Venezuelans in October, to push for broader accountability.

Elizabeth Insuasti is an intern with WLRN through the Bob Graham Center for Public Service at the University of Florida. She's a UF senior.
More On This Topic