CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — The last time anyone heard from Edny Lopez was Sunday. The 33-year-old political science professor and award-winning poet was getting ready to board a plane to Argentina to visit a friend when she texted from the airport that there was something wrong with her passport.
“Immigration took my passport because it appears to be expired,” she wrote to her boyfriend in the message, which she shared with The Associated Press. “I pray that I am not being scammed because of a system error.”
What happened next remains a mystery — and it contributes to the climate of fear and repression that has swept Venezuela after the election. disputed presidential electionthe most serious wave of human rights violations since the military dictatorships in Latin America in the 1970s.
When López’s mother, Ninoska Barrios, and her friends learned that she hadn’t boarded the plane, they frantically searched detention centers. Finally, on Tuesday — more than 48 hours later — they learned that she was being held incommunicado by Venezuela’s feared military intelligence police on unknown criminal charges, unable to see a lawyer or speak to her family.
“Please give me back my daughter,” Barrios pleaded in tears in front of Venezuela’s human rights office in a video that went viral on social media. “It’s not right that a Venezuelan mother has to go through all this.”
López’s arrest is not unique. Since the July 28 presidential election, security forces have arrested more than 2,000 people for demonstrating against President Nicolás Maduro or casting doubt on his claim to a third term despite opposition opposition. Strong evidence that he lost the vote. By a margin of more than 2 to 1. Twenty-four others were killed, according to local human rights organization Provia.
the A wave of arrests These repressive measures, instigated by Maduro himself, are unprecedented, and put Venezuela on a path that could easily surpass those imprisoned during the three previous campaigns against Maduro’s opponents.
Among those arrested are journalists, political leaders, campaign staff and a lawyer representing protesters. Others have had their passports revoked as they tried to leave the country. One local activist even live-streamed her arrest by military intelligence officers as they stormed her home with an iron bar.
“You entered my home arbitrarily, without any search warrant,” Maria Oropeza, the opposition campaign leader in the rural state of Portuguesa, said in the live broadcast that ended abruptly after three minutes. “I am not a criminal. I am just an ordinary citizen who wants a different country.”
FILE – Police officers on a motorcycle leave the Pulita National Police detention center where some people arrested during recent protests against the official results of the presidential election are being held, in Caracas, Venezuela, Aug. 1, 2024. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix, File)
The repression, which appears mostly random and arbitrary, has a chilling effect, said Phil Johnson, a Caracas-based analyst with the International Crisis Group.
“It’s not just that protests are discouraged, people are afraid to go out into the streets, period,” said Gonson, adding that parents of teenage boys are particularly concerned. “There’s a sense that the police have a quota to fill, and that anyone can be stopped and taken away as a suspect in vandalism.”
Threats start at the top.
“They are hiding rats but we will catch them,” Diosdado Cabello, leader of the ruling Socialist Party, said in a speech to the Maduro-controlled legislature a day after the election.
Meanwhile, Maduro called on Venezuelans To denounce the election skeptics He said the government was renovating two gang-dominated prisons to accommodate an expected increase in the number of guarimperos incarcerated — the term he uses for middle-class protesters who barricaded themselves in the streets for weeks in 2014 and 2017.
“There will be no mercy,” Maduro said on state television.
But what complicates efforts to crush the opposition is the changing face of the government’s opponents.
While the demonstrations have been smaller and quieter than during previous bouts of unrest, they are now more spontaneous, often leaderless and made up of young people — some barely in their teens — from Caracas’s hillside slums who have traditionally formed a solid base of support for the government.
“I don’t care how many people have to die,” said Clever Acuna, a 21-year-old tattoo artist, at one of the recent popular marches where protesters climbed lampposts to tear down Maduro’s campaign posters.
“What I want is my freedom and my homeland. I want to live in the Venezuela that my grandparents once told me about.”
Family members of people arrested during recent protests against the re-election of President Nicolas Maduro gather outside the Pulita National Police detention center as they wait for news of their loved ones, in Caracas, Venezuela, Aug. 1, 2024. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix, File)
Francesca Opunte writes a letter to her brother outside the Pulita National Police detention center after his arrest during recent protests against the re-election of President Nicolas Maduro, in Caracas, Venezuela, Thursday, Aug. 1, 2024. “God bless you, son. Your mother and sister are here. We love you,” the letter from Opunte and her mother reads in Spanish. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix, File)
Maria Corina Machado, opposition force Who rallied Venezuelans behind him? last minute replacement candidate After being barred from running against Maduro, she also called for restraint, reflecting the fear many feel.
“There are times to step out, times to come together, to show all our strength and resolve and embrace each other, just as there are times to prepare, organize, reach out and consult with our allies around the world, and they are many,” she said in a recorded message posted online Tuesday.
“Sometimes a practical pause is necessary.”
But the government’s swift action appears to be paying off. In just 10 days, security forces arrested roughly the same number of people as they did in five months in 2017, according to Provia.
“Operation Knock Knock is a major tool of state terrorism,” said Oscar Murillo, the head of Provea, referring to the surprise midnight arrests that Cabello and others have promoted as an intimidation tactic.
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In Catia, a low-income neighborhood in Caracas that was once a stronghold of the ruling party, no one talks about politics these days. One woman closed her store when protests broke out nearby and fled home. Videos of the demonstration flooded her phone over the next few hours, but she deleted them out of fear that the government was tracking social media posts to identify critics.
“I could get arrested just for having them,” she said.
The sudden silence is a sharp break from the upbeat mood that preceded the election, when brave opposition supporters faced down security forces trying to block anti-Maduro rallies. They gave food, lent vehicles to the opposition leader and opened their businesses to him despite knowing they would face police retaliation or be shut down.
Even before the current unrest, Venezuela’s human rights record was under intense scrutiny. Maduro is the target of an investigation by the International Criminal Court for war crimes. crimes against humanity It is alleged that it was committed in the past.
Some have likened Maduro’s tactics to those used in Central and South America in the 1970s, when military dictatorships rounded up dissidents and sometimes innocent bystanders. Many were killed, and in Argentina some were drugged and thrown from planes into the ocean, with no trace of their arrest.
Maduro’s alleged abuses bear little resemblance to the “dirty war” campaigns waged by state security forces.
Maritza Fernandez stands outside a Pulita National Police detention center after her partner was arrested in recent days during opposition protests against the official results of the presidential election in Caracas, Venezuela, Aug. 1, 2024. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix, File)
But the goal of spreading fear is the same, said Santiago Canton, an Argentine lawyer and secretary general of the International Commission of Jurists, a Geneva-based watchdog group.
Canton said the Lopez case reminded him of a woman who disappeared in Argentina in 1977. Activist removed from plane He was on his way to Venezuela and was never seen again. At the time, oil-rich Venezuela was the richest country in South America and a democratic haven for exiles fleeing military regimes across the region.
“It’s unlikely that what happened 50 years ago will happen again,” said Canton, who previously chaired the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. “But social media is a multiplier that didn’t exist before, so you can be more selective in your use of force and achieve the same results.”
Machado tried on Thursday to pressure other countries to help her end the repression. “I feel there is a lack of firmness on the part of all governments, from all sectors, to demand an immediate end to the madness that is happening,” she told reporters.
Meanwhile, Lopez’s friends and family are still at a loss to explain why she was targeted.
Since 2020, she has been doing relief work in poor communities, which is why she was honored as one of the “100 Heroic Women” in Venezuela by the Dutch Embassy in Caracas. The work is purely humanitarian, and Lopez does not belong to any political movement.
A woman sits outside the Pulita National Police detention center where her boyfriend is being held after being arrested during recent protests against the official results of the presidential election, in Caracas, Venezuela, Aug. 1, 2024. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix, File)
Ha Social Media Profile The book contains no anti-government content, and consists mainly of whimsical drawings of butterflies, poems she wrote, and photos of beaches and sand dunes from her travels across Venezuela.
Cristina Ramirez, who moved to Argentina from Caracas eight years ago, has joined more than 7.7 million Venezuelans The women who fled the country said she bought Lopez’s ticket in May so her friend could enjoy a much-deserved vacation.
The two were looking forward to catching up after a long separation and a difficult year for Lopez, whose family is struggling financially. She worries that her friend, who takes medication for diabetes, is suffering in prison without knowing what led to this nightmare.
“This was her first trip outside Venezuela, and I’m still waiting for her,” Ramirez said in a phone interview.
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Goodman reported from Miami.
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