GENEVA, Switzerland —
Venezuela’s
intelligence agencies are committing crimes against humanity as part of a plan orchestrated
at the highest level of government to repress dissent, UN experts said Tuesday.
اضافة اعلان
A team tasked with probing alleged violations in
Venezuela said it had uncovered how members of intelligence services
implemented orders by President
Nicolas Maduro and others in a scheme to stifle
opposition.
“In doing so, grave crimes and human rights
violations are being committed, including acts of torture and sexual violence,”
Marta Valinas, chair of the UN’s Independent International Fact-Finding Mission
on Venezuela, said in a statement.
The mission, which was created by the
UN Human Rights Council in 2019, already warned in its first report two years ago that
Maduro and top government ministers were behind likely 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 profound human rights
crisis,” Valins said.
Maduro ‘selecting targets’
In its latest report, the
mission members delved into the chains of command, and how intelligence
services were instrumentalized to quash opposing voices.
“President Nicolas Maduro, supported by other
high-level authorities, stand out as the main architects in the design, implementation,
and maintenance of a machinery with the purpose of repressing dissent,” the
report said.
It pointed to how
Maduro himself and others in his inner circle were in some cases involved in
“selecting targets” 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 analysis of legal documents.
It said it had documented 122 cases of victims who
were subjected to torture, sexual violence and/or other cruel, inhuman, or
degrading treatment by agents with the Directorate General of Military
Counterintelligence (DGCIM).
“Torture was
carried out in its Boleita headquarters in Caracas and in a network of covert
detention centers across the country, it said.
Sexual violence as torture
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.
These cases included “opposition politicians,
journalists, protesters, and human rights defenders,” it said, adding that most
of the abuse had taken place in the El Helicoide detention center in Caracas.
Former SEBIN employees had told the investigators that
in some cases, “torture was ordered directly by President Maduro,” the report
said, listing torture methods including electric shocks, asphyxiation, and
stress positions.
“Both SEBIN and DGCIM made extensive use of sexual
and gender-based violence to torture and humiliate its detainees,” the mission
said.
The experts lamented that Venezuelan authorities had
failed to hold perpetrators of abuses accountable.
“The human rights violations by state intelligence agencies,
orchestrated at the highest political levels, have taken place in a climate of
almost complete impunity,” mission member Francisco Cox said in the statement.
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