UN-appointed investigators reported on Dec. 11 that Venezuela's Bolivarian National Guard (GNB) has over the past decade carried out a pattern of killings, arbitrary detentions, torture, and sexual violence against protesters and political opponents of President Nicolás Maduro.

Venezuela entered 2025 under intensified international attention, after a wave of repression followed the July 2024 presidential election. Protesters took to the streets that month to challenge the confirmation of Nicolás Maduro's victory. Security forces, led by the GNB, responded with mass detentions, violent crowd-control operations, and expanded surveillance measures. Human rights organizations documented at least 24 deaths during the early-August crackdown, and more than 2,000 detentions in the weeks that followed.

The post-election raids, known as "Operation Tun Tun," marked a significant escalation, as authorities used "terrorism" and "incitement" charges to detain political activists, community organizers, and members of opposition parties, often without warrants. Many detainees were held incommunicado for days, denied access to independent counsel, and transferred to special counterterrorism courts whose procedures lack judicial guarantees. Human rights groups reported that children detained during the protests faced pressure to record self-incriminating statements, and families of detainees continued to experience harassment by security agents.

The GNB's pattern of abuses first emerged in 2014, when nationwide protests over economic hardship and disputed elections were met with mass detentions and excessive force. Similar crackdowns in 2017 and 2019 entrenched these methods, as authorities expanded intelligence operations and used counterterrorism laws to target dissent. UN investigators say these repeated cycles formed a consistent state policy enabled by a justice system that rarely holds members of the the security forces accountable.

These developments have unfolded against broader concerns about the country's detention system. Prisons and police holding cells remained severely overcrowded through 2024, with limited access to water, sanitation or medical care. Rights observers recorded preventable deaths linked to illness and malnutrition, while women in custody continued to report sexual abuse and coercion. Civil society organizations faced heightened restrictions as authorities applied the Constitutional Law against Hate to silence journalists and critics. New regulatory measures gave the government wider authority to intervene in or dissolve domestic NGOs, tightening the pressure on independent monitoring.

The UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission (FFM) emphasized that these post-election actions fit within the documented pattern of violations attributed to the GNB since 2014. Over the past decade, the mission has identified recurring practices of arbitrary detention, torture and persecution based on political opinion, supported by judicial structures that rarely investigate or prosecute abuses. Venezuela ranked last in the 2024 World Justice Project Rule of Law Index, underscoring the deep-rooted nature of impunity in the country.

The UN Human Rights Council renewed the FFM's mandate in October, despite the Venezuelan government's continued refusal to grant it access to the country.

From JURIST, Dec. 12. Used with permission.

See our last reports on the post-electoral repression, and the protests of 2014, 2016, 2017 and 2019.