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Torture, sexual violence and inhuman treatment: the UN Independent International Mission on Venezuela published this Tuesday a report on the repression in Venezuela and the crimes against humanity committed against opponents by the two main intelligence services that are the SEBIN and the Directorate of military counterintelligence -DGCIM. An investigation document that will be presented next Monday to the UN Human Rights Council.
Venezuela’s intelligence services commit crimes against humanity under orders from the highest echelons of the government to repress the opposition, the UN said in a report on Tuesday.
The document highlights acts of torture and sexual violence among the human rights violations committed by SEBIN, the Venezuelan intelligence service, and the DGCIM, the military counterintelligence.
The torture methods include “beating with objects, electric shocks, suffocation with plastic bags and stress positions, as well as forms of psychological torture, such as ‘white torture'”, the text details.
His victims: “Journalists, social leaders, NGOs, political opponents and also a good number of members of the Armed Forces who are potential people who can act against the structure that makes the Nicolás Maduro regime maintain power,” explains to RFI one of the three members of the international mission that carried out the investigation, Patricia Tappatá.
“This plan was orchestrated at the highest political level, led by President Nicolas Maduro (…),” Marta Valiñas, president of the UN Independent International Mission on Venezuela, said at a press conference.
“In some cases he selects them directly [Nicolás Maduro]God given hair, [Tareck Zaidan] El Aissami, the Minister of Industry, the general directors of both intelligence services (civilian and military). It must be said that they have fluid communication with the president, and they always receive orders orally -never in writing-, but there is a chain of command that responds directly to the highest authority in Venezuela,” says Tappatá.
Any mechanism designed to repress a network of secret and not so secret offices in the country.
“El Helicoide, which is a building that was an old shopping center and that today is an establishment that today houses people arbitrarily detained opponents and, in the case of the DGCIM, their main establishment is a place called Boleíta, which is , again, a space particularly intended to systematically apply torture not only to the people who have been detained, but in many cases to family members or relatives to increase the feeling of fear. It is one of the causes, at least to which we attribute a certain decrease in arbitrary arrests”.
Patricia Tappatá’s mission is not authorized to enter Venezuelan territory, so they interviewed dozens of sources from a distance and from the border. These are “people who are in Venezuelan territory, who have left Venezuela, former officials, victims, witnesses, social leaders, politicians, many relatives of victims.”
The mission documented 122 cases of victims who were “subjected to torture, sexual violence and/or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment” perpetrated by DGCIM agents from 2014 to the present.
This Monday the report will be presented to the United Nations Human Rights Council.
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