CARACAS (Reuters) – Detention, defamation, stigmatization and harassment of charities and rights activists in Venezuela increased 157% between 2019 and 2020, a group of non-governmental organisations said on Tuesday.
“The cases seem to confirm the existence of a state policy of persecution,” said the group of three local and foreign organizations in a report documenting 216 attacks in the first 10 months of 2020, compared with 84 in all of 2019.
Venezuela’s Information Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment. President Nicolas Maduro’s government rejects constant accusations of widespread rights abuses, saying it is the victim of a foreign-led smear campaign.
The government “is not convincing anyone at international level that all the people with any kind of critical vision or who even give humanitarian aid are destabilizers,” said Miguel Martin, of the World Organization Against Torture, during an online press conference presenting the findings.
The report highlighted the case of five members of Azul Positivo (Blue Positive), which works on HIV prevention in the northwestern state of Zulia. They were arrested on Jan. 12 by military counterintelligence agents and charged with crimes including money laundering, according to local media.
Those detentions followed a spate of police raids on non-profit organizations, which the United Nations High Commission on Human Rights condemned last week.
(Reporting by Vivian Sequera; Writing by Sarah Kinosian; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne)
