A team tasked with investigating alleged abuses in Venezuela said it had uncovered how members of the intelligence services were carrying out orders from President Nicolas Maduro and others in a plan to crush the opposition. “In this way, serious crimes and human rights violations are being committed, including acts of torture and sexual violence,” Marta Valiñas, head of the UN’s Independent International Investigative Mission on Venezuela, said in a statement. The mission, which was created by the United Nations Human Rights Council in 2019, had already warned in its first report two years ago that Maduro and top government ministers were behind possible crimes against humanity. And the situation has not improved since then, according to the mission, which will face a council vote in early October on whether it can continue its work. “Venezuela is still facing a deep human rights crisis,” Valinias said. In its latest report, mission members delve into the chains of command and how intelligence services were used to suppress dissenting voices. “President Nicolas Maduro, supported by other high-level authorities, stands out as the main architects in the design, implementation and maintenance of a machine aimed at suppressing dissent,” the report said. It showed how Maduro himself and others in his inner circle were in some cases involved in “target selection” for detention by intelligence agents, including political opponents. The mission – which has never been granted access to Venezuela – based its findings on nearly 250 confidential interviews, as well as an analysis of legal documents. It said it had documented 122 cases of victims subjected to torture, sexual violence and/or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment’ by agents of the Directorate General of Military Counterintelligence (DGCIM). “Torture took place at Boleita’s headquarters in Caracas and in a network of secret detention centers across the country, it said. The mission said it had also investigated at least 51 cases of torture and ill-treatment of detainees by the Bolivarian National Intelligence Service (Sebin) since 2014. Those cases included “opposition politicians, journalists, protesters and human rights defenders,” it said, adding that most of the abuses took place at the El Helicoide detention center in Caracas. Former Sebin employees had told investigators that in some cases, “torture was ordered directly by President Maduro,” the report said, citing torture methods including electric shocks, suffocation and stress. “Both Sebin and DGCIM made extensive use of sexual and gender-based violence to torture and humiliate his detainees,” the mission said. Experts lamented the failure of Venezuelan authorities to hold perpetrators of abuses accountable. “Human rights abuses by state intelligence agencies, orchestrated at the highest political levels, took place in a climate of almost complete impunity,” mission member Francisco Cox said in the statement. In a separate report on Tuesday, the mission also focused on rights abuses against local populations in gold-mining areas in Venezuela’s southern Bolivar state. “Both state and non-state actors have committed human rights abuses and crimes against the local population in the struggle for control over mining areas,” it said, pointing to murders, disappearances, extortion and sexual violence. Experts lamented that the authorities not only failed to prevent and investigate such abuses, but appeared to be in active collusion with non-state actors in parts of the region. Mission member Patricia Tappatá Valdez described the situation in Bolivar as “deeply troubling.” “Local populations, including indigenous peoples, are caught in a violent battle between the state and armed criminal groups for control of the gold.”
