UN says Venezuela committing crimes against humanity
September 20, 2022
The UN says President Maduro is directing security agencies to arrest and torture political opponents. Abuses are also rife in the south, where gold mining profits have put a target on the backs of indigenous peoples.
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A United Nations (UN) report presented Tuesday claims that Venezuelan security services under the direction of President Nicolas Maduro have committed crimes against humanity in an effort to quash political opposition in the beleaguered Latin American country.
Complied by the UN's Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, the report outlines the extensive use of arbitrary arrest and torture in Venezuela since 2014.
Findings were based on interviews with 471 victims, their families and their legal representatives, as well as another 50 individuals who worked for Venezuela's General Office of Military Counterintelligence (DGCIM), National Intelligence Service (SEBIN), and other government entities.
"Real or perceived government opponents and their relatives were subjected to unlawful detention, followed by acts of torture," read the report, which then went on to list various types of torture, noting that victims were beaten with blunt and sharp objects, given electric shocks, and force-fed feces and vomit, as well as suffering sexual violence at the hands of security services.
Venezuela: A country bled dry
Venezuela will hold parliamentary elections on Sunday — in the middle of one of its biggest economic crises in decades. Daily life in the country is marked by chronic hunger and poverty.
Image: Cristian Hernandez/AFP/Getty Images
Empty fridges
Venezuela had its highest inflation rates ever in 2018: 65,374%. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) marked it even higher, at 1,370,000%. A lack of hard currency meant precious few items could be imported. Soaring prices have made it impossible for most Venezuelans to shop at the supermarket.
Image: Alvaro Fuente/ZUMA Press/imago images
Feeding the poor
Only those who can provide their own plate or bowl get something to eat here because even aid organizations cannot afford disposable tableware. The once wealthy country has been suffering a massive supply crisis for years and is now short on everything from food and medicine to everyday items like soap and diapers.
Image: Juan Carlos Hernandez/ZUMA Wire/imago images
Hungry children
Children in Caracas hold out their hands as aid organizations and church groups distribute food. Many haven't eaten for days. Statistics compiled for a study at the Catholic Andres Bello National University (UNAB) in Chile say 96% of Venezuelan households live in poverty, and 64% in extreme poverty. Few families in the country can afford meat, fish, eggs, fruits or vegetables.
Image: Roman Camacho/ZUMA Press/imago images
Health care system on the verge of collapse
People needing hospitalization, such as here at San Juan de Dios Hospital in Caracas, have to pay for their own medicine and medical instruments like catheters and syringes. More than one-third of Venezuela's 66,000 registered doctors have left the country. Overall, the ranks of medical personnel have been in decline, too, pushing the country's health care system to the verge of collapse.
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Building with mud and wood
A child plays in a Bahareque house made of sticks and mud, a building technique dating back to pre-Columbian times and now popular once again due to extreme poverty in the country's rural regions. Such houses have no plumbing or electricity.
Image: Jimmy Villalta/UIG/imago images
No electricity
Blackouts regularly paralyze the country — opposition politicians say lack of investment as well as corruption and poor maintenance of power plants are to blame for the dire situation. The crisis has also prompted the government to take drastic measures in hopes of saving energy. Experiments with a two-day work week for government employees have done little to help so far.
Image: Humberto Matheus/ZUMA Press/imago images
Life on the street
When the electricity goes out, the climate can become unbearable — air conditioners are useless. Life moves out onto the streets, like here in Maracaibo. Regional and even national blackouts have become common across Venezuela over the past several years. President Nicolas Maduro has repeatedly blamed the outages on acts of infrastructure sabotage committed by the country's enemies.
Image: Humberto Matheus/ZUMA Press/imago images
Acute lack of water
The water supply in Valencia's Santa Rosa district has collapsed. Now, people there bathe and wash themselves in puddles on the side of the road. There is no drinking water in the district.
Image: Elena Fernandez/ZUMA Wire/imago images
A river full of sewage
These days the only things flowing into the Guaire River are sewage and toxic chemicals. Electricity and water in Venezuela are precariously interconnected: Lack of electricity and maintenance has led to cracks in dams, thus leading to water loss. That has meant less power for the country's hydroelectricity plants, leading to yet more blackouts in what has become a vicious circle.
Image: Adrien Vautier/Le Pictorium/imago images
Search for potable water
A resident of the state of Carabobo pushes a canister through the streets of Guacara in hopes of finding drinking water. Some places in Venezuela only have running water for a couple of hours a week. Most families fill up anything they can to have drinking water the next time supplies are shut down.
Image: Juan Carlos Hernandez/ZUMA Wire/imago images
Contaminated waters
Venezuelans are swimming in oil, but not in a good way. Fishers floating in inner tubes from tires cast their nets into Lake Maracaibo, even though it's contaminated with oil. The coast has also been affected. Recently, an oil pipeline leak and an accident at a refinery near Puerto Cabello in the northwest caused some 20,000 barrels of crude oil to be pumped into the ocean.
Image: Miguel Gutierrez/Agencia EFE/imago images
'The people need gas'
Cars have been lined up waiting for fuel at a Guacara gas station for more than two weeks. Venezuela has been forced to import its gasoline from Iran because its own system is so decrepit that it can barely even pump oil. Ten years ago, Venezuela was pumping some 2.3 million barrels a day. Now it is pumping less than half of that.
Image: Juan Carlos Hernandez/ZUMA Wire/imago images
Collapsed energy supply
In Caracas, people wait in the streets with empty propane tanks in hopes of being able to fill them one day. Since electricity and gasoline have become scarce in Venezuela, many residents have turned to natural gas. Demand has in turn made it scarce too.
Image: Miguel Gutierrez/Agencia EFE/imago images
Fading heroes
Portraits of Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro, Evo Morales and Rafael Correra adorn the side of a building in Caracas, looking over an overflowing dumpster. Many here worshipped the socialist leaders of Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia and Ecuador like saints. But in Venezuela, the socialism of the 21st century has been unable to deliver on its promise of prosperity for all.
Image: Miguel Gutierrez/Agencia EFE/imago images
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Maduro personally involved in abuses
The report clearly condemns President Maduro's hands-on role in the well-organized system designed to crush dissent. It also rebukes Venezuelan authorities for failing to hold abusers accountable.
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"The Venezuelan authorities have failed to hold perpetrators to account and provide reparations to victims in a context where judicial reforms announced from 2021 have failed to address the justice system's lack of independence and impartiality," the UN mission said.
The report says Maduro and United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) leader Diosdado Cabello regularly give orders to intelligence services to target specific individuals — often opposition, student and protest leaders, journalists and people working for NGOs. These people are often surveilled, investigated and then subjected to "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment," sometimes for days or weeks on end.
Marta Valinas, a Portuguese legal expert and head of the mission, said in Geneva, Switzerland, Tuesday, "Venezuela is still facing a profound human rights crisis."
Venezuela's illegal gold mines
Although working in the mines of eastern Venezuela is dangerous, diggers from all over the country head underground daily, pushed by the rise in gold prices and the severe economic crisis affecting the country.
Image: Getty Images/AFP/J. Barreto
Mafia war in Venezuelan gold mines
There is a bloody mafia war raging for control of the unlicensed gold mines in the Venezuelan state of Bolivar. Miners get killed regularly, their bodies mutilated or riddled with bullets. They have flocked to this region as President Nicolas Maduro's Socialist government has struggled with a three-year recession, spiraling inflation and food shortages.
Dangerous life in the mines of El Callao
A worker descends into an underground mine on the bank of a river in El Callao. It is believed, that 90 percent of the gold produced in the South American nation comes from illegal mines. In a country where a crushing economic crisis has fueled an epidemic of violent crime, such mines are "primarily in mafia hands," says Venezuelan Mining Chamber head Luis Rojas.
Image: Getty Images/AFP/J. Barreto
"I'll probably do this till I die"
A narrow mine shaft is filled with water and the smell of gases. The handmade wood supports to prevent a collapse look precarious at best. But Ender Moreno is unfazed. At 18 years old, he has already been doing this job for eight years. "I'm not afraid," he says as he climbs through the pitch black, his headlamp lighting the way through the hazardous maze 30 meters (100 feet) underground.
Image: Getty Images/AFP/J. Barreto
Assault rifle shootouts common
Ender knows three young men who were killed in his neighborhood. "They were miners, but they started running around with gangsters." A while ago, his boss at the mine was killed because he refused to let mobsters take over the business. Two months before that, 28 workers were massacred at a nearby mine, in what authorities called a turf war between rival gangs.
Image: Getty Images/AFP/J. Barreto
Polluting mining
A miner shows a gold-mercury amalgam he found prospecting. At the nearby Nacupay gold mine, workers dig the earth from the bed of a contaminated river as others pour mercury into pans of extracted sediment. The open-pit mine is known as one of the most violent and polluting in the region.
Image: Getty Images/AFP/J. Barreto
Desperate situation
Ender looks for gold in an open pit. After returning back to the surface, he contemplates his future during a short break. "My mom says this is no kind of life. But I can't stop because I need the money to help her," the teenage miner says. Workers make somewhere between 260,000 and one million bolivars a month ($95 to $360 or €88 to €334) - which, they point out, is far higher than minimum wage.
Image: Getty Images/AFP/J. Barreto
Workers sleep on-site in malaria-ridden camps
Venezuela was the first nation worldwide to eradicate malaria in its most populated areas, even preceding the United States in 1961. However, the situation now has changed for the worse, as the country has reported an increase in the incidence of malaria cases every year since 2008. The state of Bolivar accounts for the majority of these cases.
Beyond terrorizing political opponents, lawlessness and abuse in rural regions of the country were also investigated.
Mission researchers found that the area known as the Arco Minero del Orinoco, established as a gold mining center in southern Venezuela last decade when oil sales plummeted, was rife with abuse.
"The Mission has reviewed publicly available information indicating that members of the Venezuelan military and political elite have benefited and continue to benefit financially from gold mining-related activities in the Arco Minero," said the report.
In its first report two years ago, the mission accused Maduro and his government of committing crimes against humanity. In its latest report, the mission investigated chain of command structures and the role of intelligence services in repressing political opposition in the country.