Venezuela's main opposition leader Maria Corina Machado has accused the country's strongman President Nicolas Maduro of waging a deadly “campaign of terror” to cling to power.
Two weeks after Maduro claimed victory in a July 28 election that was widely discredited, human rights activists say he launched a fierce crackdown to silence those who believe his rival, Edmundo Gonzalez, is the actual winner. More than 1,300 people have been detained, including 116 teenagers, according to the human rights group Foro Penal. At least 24 people have been reported killed.
Machado, a charismatic conservative who is Gonzalez's main supporter, spoke from an undisclosed location and urged governments around the world to oppose Maduro's intensifying repression.
“What is happening in Venezuela is horrifying. At this very moment innocent people are being detained and disappeared,” said the 56-year-old former congressman, who supported Gonzalez after authorities barred him from running.
The Maduro regime has dubbed part of the crackdown “Operation Tun Tun,” or “Knock-Knock,” a reference to the frightening, frequent late-night visits by heavily armed, black-clad captives from intelligence and police agencies to perceived opponents of the government.
Tuntun's targets have included activists, journalists and prominent opposition politicians, but the majority of those detained appear to be residents of working-class areas that first stormed into large anti-Maduro uprisings two days after Maduro claimed victory.
A Tun Tun propaganda video published last week on the Instagram account of the military's counterintelligence agency, DGCIM, shows one of Machado's campaign organizers, Maria Oropesa, being detained while listening to a nursery rhyme from “A Nightmare on Elm Street,” the 1984 horror film in which Freddy Krueger attacks children in their dreams. “One, two, here comes Freddy! Three, four, you'd better lock the door!” the ominous lyrics warn.
A second DGCIM video shows another arrest, set to a horror movie-style version of “Carol of the Bells,” with altered lyrics warning, “If you do bad things, he'll come! … He'll look for you! You'd better hide!”
Asked if he worried he and Gonzalez might soon receive a visit from Maduro's security forces, Machado replied, “At this moment in Venezuela, everyone is afraid that there will be a knock on their door, that their freedom will be taken away, that their lives may even be threatened. President Maduro has launched a campaign of terror against the Venezuelan people.”
“All democratic governments should speak out more,” Machado said. He believes the crackdown exposes the “criminal nature” of a regime that, knowing it had been defeated by González, is desperately trying to hang on to power. “It has decided that the only way to stay in power is to use violence, fear and terror against its people.”
Human rights and democracy activists say the speed and scale of the crackdown is virtually unprecedented in the region's recent history. Maduro says he is pursuing criminals and terrorists hatched a foreign-backed fascist plot to topple him.
“Latin America hasn't seen such widespread repression as what's happened in Venezuela since the days of (Chilean dictator) Augusto Pinochet,” Marino Alvarado, an activist with Venezuelan human rights group ProveA, told El Pais newspaper last week.
Carolina Jimenez Sandoval, director of the Washington office of the Latin American advocacy group, told The New York Times: “I've been documenting human rights abuses in Venezuela for years and have seen patterns of repression before. I've never seen anything quite this brutal.”
Tamara Tarachuk Bronner, director of the rule of law program at the Inter-American Dialogue think tank, said the arbitrary arrests and the crackdown on social media, which has temporarily blocked X and Signal, show Maduro wants to steer Venezuela in an even more authoritarian direction. “They seem to be heading for a total dictatorship,” she said. “It takes a lot of courage to take to the streets right now in Venezuela… They're trying really hard to intimidate people so they don't take to the streets.”
Last Saturday, thousands of opposition supporters gathered in Caracas, risking arrest, to hear Machado speak, revealing the government's attempt to create a climate of fear.
Unlike other recent opposition demonstrations, many protesters refused to give their names to journalists for fear of persecution, and some wore masks. At least one journalist was detained by security forces after the demonstration and accused of “inciting hatred.” Machado attended the demonstration disguised in a hooded sweatshirt.
The words “Freedom and Peace” are written on a candle during an opposition rally calling for the release of political prisoners in Caracas on August 8. Photo: Hilside Gomez/AFP/Getty Images
“Before I went outside today, my daughter hid me and made me promise she would come home,” one protester, 28, said, describing his best friend being arrested just hours earlier.
Interestingly, the next big anti-Maduro protests will be held primarily outside Venezuela, where about 8 million of the estimated 29 million people who fled the country to escape economic turmoil and political repression. Machado has called on his supporters around the world to come together on Saturday, August 17, in a “global protest for the truth.”
Machado called on Maduro, who has been in power since being elected in 2013 after the death of leader Hugo Chavez, to “accept his defeat and understand that we are offering reasonable terms for a negotiated transition,” including “guarantees, safe passage and incentives.”
Maduro has publicly denied talk of negotiations, but some believe seeking asylum in an allied country such as Cuba, Turkey or Iran could be an option. Panamanian President Jose Raul Mulino last week offered Maduro temporary asylum en route to one of those countries, an offer Maduro quickly rejected.
While Machado has vowed not to seek “revenge” or persecute members of Maduro's government, many Chavistas are deeply suspicious of the right-wing politician, who promised during the election campaign to “bury forever” socialism and has in the past called for foreign military intervention.
Machado acknowledged the role that leftist leaders in Brazil, Colombia and Mexico, which do not recognise Maduro's claimed victory, could play in engaging him in “serious negotiations towards a democratic transition.”
“But we must stop the repression and the costs of repression must increase. These are lines that the Maduro regime is crossing as we speak,” Machado added.
