Venezuela must ensure rights ahead of Maduro inauguration: UN experts

By AFP

Venezuelan authorities must respect people's rights to life, liberty and personal security in the run-up to the start of President Nicolas Maduro's third term on January 10, UN experts said Thursday.

Venezuelan opposition leaders have called on their supporters to prepare mass protests in connection with Maduro's inauguration following contested elections last July.

"We strongly call upon the authorities to ensure that the rights to peaceful protest and free expression be exercised without fear of reprisal," Marta Valinas, chair of the UN's Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Venezuela, said in a statement.

"We remind security forces responsible for maintaining public order that they should adhere to the strictest international standards on the use of force," she said.

"Any violations of rights must be promptly, thoroughly, and impartially investigated and prosecuted by independent courts, with full respect for due process."

The statement highlighted that the fact-finding mission had documented the violent repression of the protests that erupted after Maduro was declared the winner in the July 28 elections, despite results published by the opposition appearing to show their candidate won by a landslide.

The crackdown on the protests left 28 dead, around 200 injured and more than 2,400 under arrest, sparking what the mission described as "one of the most acute human rights crises in the country's recent history".

Only a handful of countries, including Venezuelan ally Russia, have recognised Maduro as the winner.

With more demonstrations planned around Maduro's inauguration, fact-finding mission member Francisco Cox warned that Venezuela's "repressive apparatus remains fully operational".

"Between August and December 2024, authorities detained at least 56 political opposition activists, 10 journalists, and one human rights defender," he pointed out.

"Those who order arbitrary detentions and the imposition of torture or other ill-treatment, as well as those who carry them out, bear individual criminal responsibility."

The fact-finding mission pointed to the latest figures from the Foro Penal NGO indicating that 1,849 people remain detained for political reasons in Venezuela.

"Hundreds remain in prison under degrading conditions, subjected to torture, as well as inhuman, cruel and degrading treatment," the statement said, warning that "new individuals are detained daily".

"Released individuals, including children, remain subject to precautionary measures and charges for serious crimes such as terrorism or treason," mission member Patricia Tappata said in the statement.

She warned that the persecution of the government's opponents and "taken the form of a systematic attack on the freedom of those who think differently".