The latest report presented by the UN, through the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Venezuela, denounced that the Nicolás Maduro regime intensified torture in the country’s prisons and police stations, especially after the July elections, which were denounced as fraudulent.
According to investigators, torture methods were already being used against prisoners, however there was an increase in cases in the post-election period, when around 2,000 people were arrested for participating in protests against the dictatorship, including minors, who were among those tortured.
Some of the methods mentioned in the report include punching, electric shocks, including to the genitals, suffocation with plastic bags, immersion in cold water and sleep deprivation for 24 hours.
According to lawyers who work for NGOs defending human rights in the country, the main proof that the civilian population is suffering more repression from the Chavista regime are the reports of detention of adolescents since the protests began in July.
The president of the Penal Forum, Alfredo Romero, stated that the NGO has received several reports of torture, “but no complaints have been filed yet, because people are afraid.”
In this phase of systematic violence by the Maduro regime, according to Romero, the isolation of prisoners is becoming more prominent. “This makes it even more difficult to know what is happening inside the prisons.”
The first complaints in this regard were made by mothers of teenagers who had some contact with their families or who were released. One of them is Theany Urbina, whose son, Miguel Urbina, was detained on August 2 and faces charges of “terrorism.”
In interviews with Venezuelan newspapers, she stated that some young men detained by the regime reported that they had suffered electric shocks in prison. She also said that “there is something they call a ‘chive hood,’ which is when they put a person’s head inside a plastic bag with tear gas.”
According to Urbina, the torture against his son was applied to force him to record a video admitting the accusations made by the dictatorship.
The UN mission report reveals that the acts of violence are carried out by agents of the Bolivarian National Police (PNB) and the Bolivarian Intelligence Service (Sebin). The cases are reported both in prisons and in police stations across the country, in different states.
The document cites the case of a student leader, identified as John Álvarez, who was arrested on August 30. “[…] On the same day of his arrest, he was transferred to a police station in Caracas, where he was subjected to physical and sexual torture. Álvarez was subjected to blows and electric shocks to his genitals and other parts of his body to force him to admit the involvement of several union leaders, politicians and journalists in illegal acts. As a result of the torture to which he was subjected, Álvarez is now suffering physical consequences,” states the document, presented in Geneva on Tuesday (17).
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