Nearly a month after contested presidential elections, Venezuelans continue to face a harsh crackdown across the country, especially in lower-income neighbourhoods, but many people – including the families of detained protesters – are refusing to be cowed into submission.
The government's new wave of repressive violence started the day after the 28 July vote, when hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans took to the streets to protest the National Electoral Council’s proclamation of President Nicolás Maduro as the winner.
No detailed tally sheets have been provided to prove his victory, which was decried internationally as fraudulent and lacking in transparency. Observers from the US-based Carter Center and a panel of UN experts declared the electoral process to have been undemocratic.
Opposition activists say they managed to secure most of the voting tallies. They published these on a website showing that opposition candidate Edmundo González won a landslide victory, gaining more than two thirds of the votes.
The scale of the post-election outcry took both the government and the opposition by surprise. It began in places like Petare and Catia, two of the poorest and most densely populated parts of the capital, Caracas, but soon spread across the country.
Traditionally, neighbourhoods like Petare and Catia were strong bastions of Chavismo – the left-wing populist ideology championed by Maduro’s predecessor and mentor, the late Hugo Chávez.
But the popularity of Chavismo has worn thin after a decade of rampant inflation, growing hunger, and a lack of basic services like healthcare and education, and these areas – once Maduro’s main support base – quietly drifted towards the opposition.
From the early hours of 29 July, residents started banging pots, setting tyres on fire and blocking streets, urging Maduro to release the electoral records and acknowledge his defeat.
Protests soon spread to other areas of the capital and the country, leading to clashes with Venezuela’s National Guard and police, who tried to contain the demonstrations by launching tear gas canisters and firing rubber bullets. According to official reports, at least 25 people died in the protests. The opposition says several were killed by armed militias loyal to Maduro who shot at protesters with live rounds.
As the protests proliferated to more than 200 nationwide, Maduro rallied his loyalists – many of them members of armed militias who patrol the streets on motorbikes – to denounce and call out any election doubters. A series of mass arrests were reported in the ensuing weeks.
As of 22 August, more than 1,500 Venezuelans had been detained (Maduro’s government puts the number at 2,200), including 200 women and 129 teenagers, according to Foro Penal, a Venezuelan NGO that offers pro bono legal assistance to victims of arbitrary detention and their families.
Those detained include politicians, journalists, and witnesses to the electoral process, among others. Maduro’s regime considers many of them as “terrorists”, which means they could face sentences of up to 30 years in jail.
Relatives of those detained and rights NGOs like Foro Penal say those arbitrarily held are now political prisoners who are being poorly fed and subjected to mistreatment – sometimes torture. They are also denied the right to their own defence, with their only legal recourse being lawyers assigned by the Venezuelan state who they usually don’t trust.
“We lawyers are not allowed to see the defendants. We don't know in what physical condition they are, beyond what the police say. The same thing happens with food. Their families bring them food [at the detention centres], but we don't know if it really gets to the detainees,” a lawyer from Civilis Derechos Humanos, one of several organisations offering free legal assistance to the prisoners and their families, told The New Humanitarian. He asked not to be identified to avoid possible retaliation against him.
Gonzalo Himiob, a lawyer and vice-president of Foro Penal, said it’s vital right now to have Venezuelan citizens organising and supporting each other. There are no convictions yet, which means there is still time to pressure Maduro’s regime to release the detainees.
Maduro’s crackdown is raising international concern as well.
“It is especially troubling that so many people are being detained, accused, or charged with incitement to hatred under counterterrorism legislation” in Venezuela, UN human rights chief Volker Türk said in a 13 August statement.
Prosecutors from the International Criminal Court are closely monitoring the crackdown and say they have engaged with the Venezuelan government to underline the importance of respecting the law and human rights.
International efforts to pressure Maduro towards a peaceful political transition have failed to bear fruit, while civic space in Venezuela continues to shrink by the day.
On 15 August, the Venezuelan National Assembly approved a controversial law to more tightly regulate NGOs. It is expected to be enacted soon. Maduro has also blocked access to the social media platform X and threatened to suspend WhatsApp.
However, the regime’s determination to instil a climate of fear hasn’t succeeded in keeping Venezuelans from having their voices heard. In the past few weeks, many have continued to attend peaceful rallies in support of opposition leaders and to ask for the victims of repression to be released from prison.
The New Humanitarian spoke to the relatives of six detainees, including a woman and a 16-year old boy. Their testimonies below reflect the anguish and helplessness that many Venezuelans are currently feeling, but also their steadfast commitment to continue the fight for democracy.
‘I feel like they took my other half’
On 8 August, a wake was held to pay tribute to those who lost their lives or were arrested in the aftermath of the presidential election. Gathered in a public square in the east of Caracas, dozens of people carried candles, posters, and photos of their relatives. Among them was Abraham Gómez’s twin sister.
Gómez, who works as a barista, was arrested on 30 July in Catia. But that day, his sister says, he wasn't demonstrating; he was simply on his way to work when security officers stopped him and took him to a detention centre in Caracas.
“I feel like they took my other half. It has been days and we don't know anything about my brother,” she told The New Humanitarian. “We don't know how he is, if he is okay or if he was beaten.”
Gómez hasn’t been allowed to receive visits from his family yet. His sister said a public defender was designated to handle his case and told them that prison workers had forced him to declare that he was part of a criminal group. “But that is a lie,” his sister said.
A video of Gómez saying he was paid to protest and cause bloodshed was later posted on the web, presumably by Maduro loyalists.
Charging protesters for crimes they didn't commit and forcing them to make false confessions under threat has been commonly used by the regime to crush dissent, relatives of those detained told The New Humanitarian. Rosanna, who asked not to give her last name for security reasons, said her 25-year-old son was arrested in Guatire (50 kilometres away from the capital), taken to Caracas, and tortured.
“My son told me that they beat him and wanted to make him take the blame for something he did not do,” she said during the 8 August wake. “He did demonstrate, but the government says that there is freedom of expression, so why did they detain him and want to silence him?”
Rosanna is one of the very few people who have managed to see their relatives while they were still in temporary detention centres. Her son has since been transferred to San Francisco de Yare, a prison south of Caracas known for its violence and harsh conditions. It is typically reserved for those who have committed serious crimes such as homicide, rape, robbery or drug trafficking. Gómez is also in Yare now.
Once detainees are transferred to bigger prisons, the relatives’ level of anguish rises. Unlike in temporary detention centres, where they can be released at any time, their stay is set for at least 45 days – the minimum time for an investigation.
But human rights activists have long denounced Venezuela’s justice system as a charade that props up the regime's repression. Many of the victims’ relatives fear that months if not years may go by before any judicial process for their loved one moves forward.
‘We cannot let them intimidate us’
Human rights defenders have long been targeted by Maduro’s regime. That persecution has now intensified.
Edward Ocariz, a 53-year-old activist from southeast Caracas has been fighting for the rights of retirees and pensioners for years. He was one of the thousands of protesters who took to the streets on 29 and 30 July in Coche, another former stronghold of Chavismo.
On 2 August, a group of policemen stormed into Ocariz’s house. His sister, Mileydi, said it was 1pm and that he had just cooked lunch.
It took Ocariz’s family members five days to be able to see him and check on his health.
“He is strong and has asked us to keep up the fight and tell [the world] what he is going through,” Mileydi told The New Humanitarian after speaking to her brother on 7 August.
Two days later, Ocariz was transferred to a prison located in Carabobo state, 170 kilometres west of Caracas. His family can no longer go and see him.
“It is very complicated to go there. We don't have money. Visiting him once or twice a week represents an investment we can't make,” Mileydi explained. “The government does this to put fear in us and stop us from going out to protest… but we cannot let them intimidate us. Let's seek judicial assistance. We are going to be courageous because all these people are innocent.”
‘He went to defend people and ended up being arrested’
Arrests didn't take place in Caracas alone. They happened all across the country.
Located in the centre of Venezuela and controlled by a chavista governor, Carabobo is the state that registered the highest number of post-electoral detentions: 186 people. One of them is Kennedy Tejeda, a 24-year-old lawyer who was defending protest detainees for free.
Tejeda left his home on the morning of 2 August and headed to one of the state’s detention centres. He told his mother, Kennia Jiménez, he would be back in the afternoon. He never returned.
“He went out to defend people and ended up being arrested,” Jiménez told The New Humanitarian. “I don't understand how this is happening if he just went to do his job as a lawyer.”
Jiménez said her son, who remains in a National Guard detention centre, graduated as a lawyer about a year ago and that he has always been interested in helping people who have no access to a proper legal defence. Desperate for her son’s release, she has travelled to the capital to talk to people at Foro Penal to find out what she can do to help him. At the time of publication, she still hadn't been able to see him.
‘He told me that he is desperate’
According to Foro Penal, 129 teenagers have been arrested over the protests.
One of them is Adrián González, a 16-year-old high school student. On the night of 29 July, González went out to protest with his friends. They were walking close to downtown Caracas when police officers started chasing them. González was the only one not to escape.
Under Venezuelan law, those under 16 years of age cannot be charged with crimes. After that age, they are tried as adults. González's mother, Leticia Torrealba, still hopes that, as he is a minor, Adrián will soon be released. She and his father have only been allowed to see him once in the past two weeks.
Torrealba said Adrián’s friends told her what had happened. She then started going to different detention centres asking if he was there, until she found him in one of the facilities in eastern Caracas. A few days later, she went to Foro Penal and asked for help. Now she always walks with a folder in her hands, carrying the documents of her son’s case.
“When I was able to see him, he told me that he is desperate and that the conditions of confinement are very bad. He doesn't sleep well; there is no ventilation,” she told The New Humanitarian. “He wanted to finish high school and leave because he said the situation in the country does not offer him a decent future.”
The situation for women detainees has been especially difficult. According to Foro Penal’s report, there are 200 women among the detainees.
Venezuela only has two detention centres specifically designed to receive women. When they get overcrowded, women are sent to annexes in male detention centres. The Venezuelan Prison Observatory (OPV) reported that the women arrested during the protests are held in precarious conditions and “constantly subjected to inhumane treatment”. They lack access to basic services and are physically and psychologically abused.
Keila Gómez, a 25-year-old mother of two was detained on 30 July. After several days of uncertainty, her family learnt that she had been transferred to “La Crisálida”, a women's prison near Caracas where at least 70 women have been sent since election day.
“They give them food with worms, arepas with rotten cheese, and dirty water. There are girls who have had epileptic seizures,” Keila’s mother said during a 15 August press conference. “We have to resist and fight. We have to fight for our relatives.”
Edited by Daniela Mohor.
