Press. voanews.com
Venezuelan
authorities have used "illegal" raids on the homes of suspected
political dissenters as part of an intimidation campaign, Amnesty International
charged in a report issued Monday.
Local human
rights groups have gathered accounts "of at least 47 raids and attacks on
residential areas" across the country between April and July, according to
Amnesty's report. The raids coincide with four months of often-violent street
demonstrations against President Nicolas Maduro's socialist administration, in
which more than 120 people were killed, almost 2,000 injured and at least 5,000
arrested.
The authorities
"have taken street repression into people's living rooms," Erika
Guevara-Roasa, Amnesty's director for the Americas, said in a statement
accompanying the report's release. The report accuses state security forces of
using "disproportionate force when carrying out these raids" and
calls for an end to "arbitrary actions." The Amnesty report, "Nights of
Terror," said researchers had "interviewed more than 60 people whose
homes had been raided or attacked."
Their accounts
accuse security agents and other armed men – allegedly belonging to
government-backed groups known as colectivos – of breaking down doors, smashing
windows and demanding information about possible demonstrators. They said the
raiders sometimes indiscriminately fired pellet guns and set off tear gas
grenades, damaged or stole property and threatened additional violence. A man
in Lara state told an investigator that security forces at one building shouted
a threat to "to rape you all."
The Amnesty
report echoes findings by the Office of United Nations High Commissioner for
Human Rights, which cited similar witness accounts in a report released in
August. The Maduro administration often
contends his political foes are trying to undermine the socialist government
with help from the United States and other foreign entities. Amnesty's report said the rights group had
sought, but had not received, information from the Venezuelan attorney
general's office about complaints filed by people whose homes had been raided.
Venezuela's
former attorney general, Luisa Ortega, had denounced what she called arbitrary
raids. In August, she was removed from office by Venezuela's constituent
assembly, a super-legislature that the United States and many other countries
in the region consider fraudulent. Ortega has fled Venezuela. Earlier this month,
Ortega told the German news organization Deutsche Welle that she has sufficient
evidence of human rights abuses and extrajudicial killings to get Maduro hauled
before the International Criminal Court. She also says she has evidence of the
administration's corruption.
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