CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — The last time anyone heard from Edni López was Sunday. The 33-year-old political science professor was getting ready to board a flight to Argentina to visit a friend when she sent a text message from the airport just before 10 a.m. that something was wrong with her passport.
What happened next remains a mystery, a mystery that contributes to the climate of fear and repression that has engulfed Venezuela in the wake of the disputed presidential electionthe worst 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 she hadn’t boarded the flight, they began frantically searching detention centers. Finally, on Tuesday — more than 48 hours later — they learned she was being held incommunicado by Venezuela’s feared military intelligence service on unspecified criminal charges, and that she could not see a lawyer or speak to her family.
“Please give me back my daughter,” a sobbing Barrios pleaded Tuesday outside Venezuela’s top 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.”
Here are some of the key points from the exclusive AP report on López’s arrest and the presidential Nicolas Maduroattempts to suppress dissenting opinions.
How serious is the repression?
López’s arrest is not unique. Since the July 28 presidential election, security forces have detained more than 2,000 people for protesting against Maduro or questioning his claims that he has won a third term, despite strong evidence that he lost the vote by a margin of more than 2 to 1.
The series of detentions — which Maduro himself instigated — is unprecedented and puts Venezuela on track to easily surpass the number of prisoners locked up during three previous crackdowns against Maduro’s opponents.
Those arrested include journalists, political leaders, campaign workers and a lawyer defending protesters. Others have seen their Venezuelan passports revoked. One local activist even live-streamed her own arrest by military intelligence officers as they stormed her home.
The repression, which appears largely arbitrary and random, is having a deterrent effect, said Phil Gunson, a Caracas-based analyst with the International Crisis Group.
“It’s not just about discouraging protests. People are afraid to go out on the streets, period,” he said. “There’s a sense that the police have a quota to fill and that anyone can be arrested and taken away as suspected subversive.”
What does Maduro say?
The threats start at the top. Maduro has called on Venezuelans to to accuse election skeptics via a government-run app originally created to report power outages. He also said the government was refurbishing two gang-dominated prisons to accommodate an expected increase in the incarceration of opponents.
“There will be no mercy,” Maduro said on state television.
What makes the suppression of dissent more difficult is the changing face of the government’s opponents.
Although the demonstrations are much smaller and tamer than previous unrest, they are now more spontaneous, often leaderless and drawn by young people — some as teenagers — from the hillside slums of Caracas, who have traditionally provided a rock-solid base of support for the government.
Is the repression successful?
The speed at which the government is cracking down is astonishing. In just 10 days, security forces have arrested almost as many people as they did in five months in 2017, according to Provea, a local human rights watchdog.
“Operation Knock-Knock is a major instrument of state terror,” said Oscar Murillo, the head of Provea, referring to the midnight detentions that officials touted as a fear-mongering tactic.
In the poor Catia neighborhood of Caracas, once a stronghold of the ruling party, residents are even deleting videos of the protests from their smartphones, fearing that the government is monitoring social media posts to identify critics.
The sudden silence is a sharp break from the hopeful pre-election mood, when bold opposition supporters confronted security forces at anti-Maduro demonstrations. They served food, lent their vehicles and opened their businesses to opposition leaders, knowing they would face police reprisals or have their businesses closed.
What is the situation with human rights in Venezuela?
Even before the current wave of unrest, Venezuela’s human rights record has been under intense scrutiny. Maduro himself is the target of an investigation by the International Criminal Court for humanitarian crimes reportedly committed in the past.
Maduro’s tactics have been compared to those used in Central and South America in the 1970s by military dictatorships that Opponents who were forced to disappear and sometimes innocent bystanders. Many were killed, and in Argentina some were even drugged and thrown out of planes into the ocean, with no trace of an arrest ever found.
Maduro’s alleged abuses have little in common with the “Dirty War” campaigns of state security services.
But the goal of sowing fear is the same, says Santiago Canton, an Argentine lawyer and secretary general of the Geneva-based International Commission of Jurists, a watchdog organization.
“What happened 50 years ago probably won’t happen again,” Canton said. “But social media is a multiplier that wasn’t there before, so you can be more selective with the use of force and still get the same results.”
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Goodman reported from Miami.
