Venezuela ramped up repression after disputed vote, UN says

17/9/2024 19:17

        President Nicolas Maduro's government escalated repressive tactics to crush peaceful protests and keep power after Venezuela's disputed election in July, a U.N. report said on Tuesday.
        
        Electoral authorities awarded the vote to Maduro, without showing all tallies, but the opposition said its candidate Edmundo Gonzalez won by a landslide with counts proving that. More than two dozen people died in protests with 2,400 arrested.
        
        The U.N. fact-finding mission, which interviewed several hundred people remotely or in third countries as it is denied access to Venezuela, said authorities tried to dismantle the opposition, block independent information, and stop protests.
        
        "We are facing a systematic, coordinated and deliberate repression by the Venezuelan government, which responds by a conscious plan to silence any form of dissent," mission head Marta Valinas told journalists in Geneva.