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In the history of countries there are periods of darkness that must be documented. A group made up of different human rights NGOs took on the task of compiling in a 132-page report the horrors that have been experienced in Venezuela in the midst of the electoral context in which Chavism, seeing its position in power threatened, used all its repressive arsenal to prevent its exit from Miraflores. The report “Post-electoral and Human Rights Crisis 2024 in Venezuela” reviews the events that, since July 28, have led to the imprisonment of more than 1,500 Venezuelans, the death of at least 25 and the exile of various actors and members of civil society.
The “Black Book of the Dictatorship 2024”, as this report was also named, evokes a continuation of the book “Venezuela under the sign of terror” that in 1952 José Agustín Catalá, published clandestinely and that would be known as “the Black Book of the Dictatorship”. On this occasion, it documented the outrages of the tyranny of Pérez Jiménez, the censorship, the torture and the names of the victims, the description of the concentration camps and the courageous conduct of the resistance. The 2024 report is a continuation of those yearnings for democracy and dignity for all Venezuelans.
This report is not signed. For the first time, since their appearance as part of the country’s associative fabric, different national human rights organizations refrain from signing a unitary report on the situation of human dignity due to State reprisals.
Terror has also reached the organizations whose leaders are being persecuted, detained and threatened. However, it is a sign of the commitment that human rights defenders have with the country and how the formula of the “Three D’s” (document, denounce and disseminate) remains intact despite the persecution of the Maduro regime.
“Sharing this document, processing it into more pleasant and viral communicational products, will be part of that resistance movement that does not abandon its hopes for a democratic Venezuela, dignity and inclusion for all who live in it,” the report’s introduction notes.
From ProBox we summarize 10 keys of what this report points out and invite you, finally, to read it in full to not only know how the repressive machinery of the regime is operating, but also to recognize the work of human beings who, from the underground, risk their physical integrity in order to denounce what is happening in the darkest hours of today’s Venezuela.
1. Media blocked and journalists captured
According to data of the National Union of Press Workers (SNTP) up to July 28 four journalists had been arrested: Gabriel González, arrested on June 17 in Caracas; Luis López, arrested on June 14 in La Guaira; Carlos Julio Rojas, arrested on April 15 in Caracas. Previously Ramón Centeno had been arrested on February 2, 2021 in Caracas.
The SNTP counted another 10 journalists and media workers arrested after the 28-J elections. Of these, only one was released from prison on August 26, Carmela Longo, after being charged with the alleged crimes of terrorism and incitement to hatred. She has been banned from leaving the country, is under a reporting regime and is prohibited from testifying and writing about her case.
Regarding the media, the regime blocked most of the independent information portals in Venezuela. According to data from Ipys Venezuela and Laboratorio de Paz, as of July 28, 2024, at least 58 websites and information portals had been blocked by telecommunications operators, making them inaccessible to the public within Venezuela.
2. Persecuted NGOs
On August 15, 2024, the National Assembly approved the Law for the Control, Regularization, Performance and Financing of Non-Governmental Organizations and Non-Profit Social Organizations (Ley de Fiscalización, Regularización, Actuación y Financiamiento de las Organizaciones No Gubernamentales y Organizaciones Sociales Sin Fines De Lucro). According to an analysis by a human rights NGO, this law presents several violations to the Venezuelan Constitution and international human rights standards:
Article 13 establishes the content of the articles of incorporation, violating organizational autonomy, and also establishes the duty to adapt the bylaws for organizations that already have legal personality within 180 days, otherwise these NGOs would be annulled.
“This provision violates a basic principle of the rule of law such as the principle of non-retroactivity of the law contemplated in Article 24 of the Constitution,” the report notes.
3. Electoral irregularities
The report notes that in a private communication to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), different Venezuelan human rights organizations summarized the situation following the announcement of this first electoral bulletin as follows:
“The electoral body presented partial results that could not be verified, since they have not published the balance disaggregated by each voting center and voting table, nor have they presented the minutes issued by the electoral machines. A citizen demand has been generated, accompanied by an international call demanding transparency in the publication and auditing of the tally sheets, which has not been heeded. Instead, the CNE proclaimed Nicolás Maduro as president-elect, without having offered any support for the announced results and without attending to technical audits that could clarify reasonable doubts regarding the electoral results”.
In addition to this, violence also played a leading role in the presidential elections. According to data processed by Laboratorio de Paz, during July 28 there were at least 86 actions by groups of motorized persons (known as “Colectivos”), often armed, which acted with the purpose of terrorizing people who wished to exercise their right to vote or who wished to remain in the vicinity of the voting centers. In 6 actions, people were wounded by gunshot and one person died. The actions occurred in 17 states of the country, suggesting both a level of coordination and tolerance on the part of the authorities.
4. Witness persecution and arbitrary detentions
It is estimated that the opposition managed to form a team of 90,000 electoral witnesses to participate in the July 28 elections. The report states that there were aggressions and persecution by irregular groups and police officers against witnesses of opposition parties and table members, some of them were forcibly removed from their residences without any search and arrest warrant. This practice was intended to sow fear among the people who played this role in the electoral process.
Regarding arbitrary detentions, according to data processed by the Peace Laboratory during the first 7 months of the year 2024, before July 28, at least 169 people had been arbitrarily detained for political reasons. 52 people (30.7%) before the formal start of the presidential campaign, which began on July 4, while 117 were deprived from that date.
The report states that, according to data from the Penal Forum, from July 29 to August 29, 2024, 1,590 arbitrary detentions occurred, of which 1,369 were men (86.1%) and 221 were women (13.9%). When disaggregated by age we have that 131 were adolescents (8.2%) and 1,459 were adults. The distribution by state is shown below:
*** As of the date of publication of this article, the number of detainees reported by Foro Penal has increased. As of September 9, the total number of political prisoners amounts to 1,808 people.
5. Deaths in protests
The demonstrations of July 29 and 30 were confronted by the authorities with disproportionate and differentiated use of force, which resulted in the death of several demonstrators. The organization Monitor de Víctimas has reported 24 people killed, while “Justice, Encounter and Forgiveness” counted 25 people killed, of which one died after his arrest.
“According to Provea, an element that serves to understand the rise in the lethality of protests in Venezuela is that, in 2014 of the total number of people injured (1,094) that year, 138 were victims of bullet impacts (12.6%). In 2019, when 984 wounded were registered, 271 of them were gunshot wounds (27.5%), while, in 2024, of the 93 wounded registered by the National Hospital Survey, 40.8% correspond to gunshot wounds”, the report notes.
6. The culture of terror
The report shows how the Venezuelan state has used terror as a weapon to restrict civic space. It has executed this objective with different strategies. One of them was the update of the VenApp application with “a new window” of denunciation to identify anyone who was part of groups that the government described as “fascists”; thus initiating the largest digital persecution to date in the country, revealing the identity of ordinary citizens and without verifying whether these denunciations had any basis.
This gave way to the intensification of the already known “Operation Tun Tun”. All citizens who published on social networks something against Chavismo or Maduro’s supposed victory could be arrested in their own homes by police forces, especially if they were denounced in VenApp.
ProBox has investigated this issue, unraveling this multiplatform digital operation: among pro-government spokespersons, proxy media and civilian and military institutions, technological applications, publications in social networks (X, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook) and messaging applications (such as Whatsapp and Telegram) were used to generate #TerrorOnNetworks exposing and persecuting protesters; massifying the threat of imprisoning anyone who questions the CNE’s announcement of Maduro as the winner during the electoral process.
7. Restriction on social media
The report notes that, following the July 28 presidential elections, there has been violent repression by police, military and paramilitary groups; as well as allegations of harassment and persecution strategies enabled by the use of technology. The State has intensified its surveillance and digital censorship measures, using tools such as the VenApp application to report dissident activities and reveal confidential information to protesters, video surveillance to monitor protests, and drone patrols to provoke widespread fear.
On Thursday, August 8, Nicolás Maduro ordered the blocking of the social network X (Twitter), which was a particularly critical event with extremely serious consequences in a country like Venezuela, where the media ecosystem is weakened and social networks have been the space for disseminating information and expressing opinions with a certain degree of freedom.
Other social networks and internet programs blocked were Reddit, Signal, Microsoft Teams and Cloudfront, which left without functionality the access to different websites such as icij.org, latimes.com, caracoltv.com, csmonitor.com, drudgereport.com, dailysabah.com, binance.com, mercadolibre.com.ve and entertainment platforms such as Disney+, Max, Amazon Prime Video and Epic Games; seeking the isolation of citizens and fencing access to information not controlled by the State.
8. The Executioners: PNB chain of command
On April 18, 2024, a joint resolution was issued by the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Interior and Justice to the Strategic Operational Command of the Bolivarian National Armed Forces (CEOFANB) to issue instructions on the security operation to be carried out during the electoral process in July and the following days.
Article 7 of the resolution states that the Bolivarian National Police (PNB), as well as the state and municipal police forces, would be “under the direction, operational control and supervision” of the CEOFANB.
The report exposes by name and surname those responsible by state for the persecutions and acts of arrests in the context of the elections.
A review of the X profile of the officer in charge at the national level of the implementation of the citizen security electoral operation, Brigadier General Rubén Darío Santiago Servigna (@rubensantiagos_), reveals the ideological de-professionalization of the official.
“On July 4, 2024, the day of the formal start of the campaign, the General amplified 6 messages in support of Nicolás Maduro’s candidacy, in violation of the electoral law,” the report states.
After July 28, the General’s messages endorsed the results announced by the National Electoral Council, reinforcing the stigmatizing narrative and justifying repressive actions.
9. Violation of labor rights
The report’s compilation of data also shows an increase in unjustified dismissals in relation to Election Day:
“The dismissed workers are being denied due process, being even coerced with security agencies such as the SEBIN. The labor inspectorates are not receiving the documentation of the dismissed, leaving them in legal defenselessness and without the possibility of having their benefits liquidated in accordance with their seniority as established by the Organic Law of Labor, Workers and Women Workers”.
The National Union of Press Workers (SNTP) denounced that at least 40 workers of Venezolana de Televisión (VTV) and Radio Nacional de Venezuela (RNV) have been fired for “liking” opposition messages on social networks or writing “fraud” in their WhatsApp posts. More than 100 employees of the Venezuelan state-owned oil company PDVSA, in addition to others in the Ministry of Petroleum and other areas of the public sector, were forced to resign for not endorsing the alleged triumph of Nicolás Maduro.
10. Cancellation of passports
After the disregard of the will of the people, expressed on July 28, 2024 in the presidential elections, dozens of people have denounced the cancellation of their valid passports by the Administrative Service of Identification, Migration and Foreigners (SAIME).
Prior to that date, it had been denounced that different political and social leaders in the country had had their identity documents annulled as a measure of reprisal and reprimand. “However, the recent situation does not seem to follow a clear pattern that could suggest its political motivations, except for its massiveness. The cancellation of passports as a measure of intimidation could qualify as one of the soft methods of repression denounced by the United Nations Independent Mission for Venezuela,” the report notes.
This is only a part of it…
The report covers specific cases and delves much deeper into the issues of persecution, assassinations, detentions and human rights violations in Venezuela.
“The use of generalized fear as a mechanism of social control also characterizes the actions of the authorities as “State Terrorism”, updating a way of repression that had had a leading role and its own characteristics during the Latin American dictatorships of the 20th century”, the report concludes.
The reading and dissemination of this report should be considered in itself an act of rebellion against a dictatorial regime that seeks to silence critical voices, hide what is happening and build a disinformative narrative that confuses citizens and annuls their possibilities of reaction.
Like the Black Book of the 1958 Dictatorship, we at ProBox believe that this report serves as a testimony of what we lived through and we hope that, as in the case of Marcos Pérez Jiménez, it will serve as a basis for the construction of a robust democratic system that will not allow any more violations of the fundamental rights of all Venezuelan citizens.
