UN alarmed at arrests in Venezuela ahead of protest

The United Nations has expressed its alarm after it received reports of arbitrary detentions and intimidation in Venezuela ahead of opposition marches on Thursday.

The office of the UN Human Rights Chief, Volker Türk, wrote on X that “now is the time to work to ease tensions and reduce the risk of more violence”.

It highlighted the arrest of Carlos Correa, the head of an NGO promoting press freedom, who was seized by unidentified hooded men on Tuesday.

The government of Nicolás Maduro has deployed thousands of police officers in the capital Caracas ahead of Friday’s inauguration ceremony, in which the government-allied National Assembly plans to swear Maduro in for a third term in office.

The opposition for its part has called on its supporters to turn out in droves to nationwide protests on Thursday in an effort to thwart Maduro’s swearing-in.

In the city of Valencia, police fired tear gas at protesters, according to Reuters.

In western Caracas, 70-year-old Niegalos Payares told the news agency that “I’m not afraid, I lost my fear a long time ago”.

And in the city of Maracay, in central Venezuela, Roisa Gómez told a Reuters reporter that she was “fighting for my vote, which I cast for Edmundo González. They cannot steal the election.”

Maduro was declared the winner of July’s presidential election by the government-dominated National Electoral Council (CNE) but the CNE has to this day failed to provide detailed voting data to back up this claim.

Venezuela’s opposition and many democratic governments around the world, including the US, have reject the result as fraudulent and recognised opposition candidate Edmundo González as the legitimate president-elect.

González fled Venezuela in September and has been living in Spain, but this month he went on a tour of the Americas to rally international support.

In Washington, he met with US President Joe Biden, who said that Venezuela deserved a “peaceful transfer of power”.

In Panama, González deposited thousands of voting tallies which the opposition collected in the country’s bank for safekeeping.

The tallies have been the key evidence offered by the opposition to show that González, not Maduro won the election.

With the help of official election witnesses, they managed to collect 85% of the tallies and uploaded them to the internet.

Independent observers and media organisations which reviewed them say they show González beat Maduro by a landslide.

In the immediate aftermath of the election, many countries said they would refrain from recognising Maduro until the CNE had made the tallies public.

With the CNE showing no sign of doing so and with less than 24 hours until Maduro’s planned inauguration, more and more countries have been throwing their weight behind Edmundo González.

The Maduro government, meanwhile, has issued an arrest warrant for González and is offering a $100,000-reward for information leading to his detention.

With González abroad, those close to him have been targeted. On Tuesday, his son-in-law was seized by hooded men in Caracas.

María Corina Machado, the opposition leader whom González replaced on the ballot after she was barred from running herself, has also been targeted.

Machado, who has been in hiding within Venezuela since shortly after the election, said security agents had surrounded the house of her elderly mother in an attempt to intimidate her.

Rights groups have also denounced the arrest of opposition politician Enrique Márquez, who ran against Maduro in July’s election before throwing his weight behind Edmundo González.

Officials from the government have accused him of plotting a coup against Maduro with the help of “mercenaries” they arrested on Tuesday, among which were a number of US citizens.

On Thursday, the US State Department dismissed accusations by Venezuelan officials that it was plotting to overthrow Maduro as “categorically false”.