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Hundreds of people gathered several days ago outside a detention center known as “Zone 7” in Caracas, the Venezuelan capital, huddled around lists of prisoners, as they clutched plastic bags filled with meals they had packed for the inmates inside.
Eager for information about their detained loved ones, many told remarkably similar stories of sons, daughters and siblings arrested riding motorbikes, walking home from work, coming out of a bakery or stopping by a relative’s house in the days following Venezuela’s disputed presidential election.
They described arrests both sweeping and selective. And no one had been told what criminal charge their relatives faced.
The Venezuelan government has mounted a furious campaign against anyone challenging the declared results of the vote, unleashing a wave of repression that human rights groups say is unlike anything the country has seen in recent decades.
“I have been documenting human rights violations in Venezuela for many years and have seen patterns of repression before,” said Carolina Jiménez Sandoval, president of the Washington Office on Latin America, an advocacy and research organization. “I don’t think I have ever seen this ferocity.”
The country’s autocratic president, Nicolás Maduro, claimed victory in the July 28 election, but the government has yet to provide any vote tallies to support the announcement. The opposition, on the other hand, released tallies showing that its candidate had won in a landslide.
