Do Not Over-simplify Our Story: Venezuelans on the Human Rights Crisis (Part I)

[Victoria Capriles is a Venezuelan feminist attorney and academic. She is currently a visiting fellow at the T.M.C. Asser Institute, where her doctoral research examines the severe Venezuelan migratory and refugee crisis.

Geraldine Chacón Villarroel is a Venezuelan attorney and public policy consultant. A former Amnesty International-designated prisoner of conscience, she has worked as a human rights consultant for organisations such as the World Organization Against Torture.

Tomás Alberto Chang Pico is a Venezuelan-born lawyer specializing in international law, development, and political economy, with over 15 years’ NGO and philanthropy experience.

Stephanie Triefus is a researcher at the Asser Institute and Academic Coordinator for the Netherlands Network for Human Rights Research.]

The  January 3 2026, US military operation to capture Nicolás Maduro has ended his time in power but raises significant questions about whether the human rights abuses occurring in Venezuela will continue and how those responsible can be held accountable. Venezuela faces one of the most severe human rights crises in the world. Following the disputed 2024 presidential election, repression escalated dramatically. International observers have documented extrajudicial killings, widespread torture, and nearly 2,000 arbitrary detentions, all of which amounts to State terrorism, according to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR).

The UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela (UN FFM) has confirmed these violations constitute crimes against humanity. In January, the US military mission (codenamed ‘Operation Absolute Resolve’) fundamentally altered the political and legal landscape. While some are happy to see Maduro gone, others believe that by bypassing the UN Charter rules on the use of force, the operation has transgressed principles of sovereignty, accountability, and the rule of law. UN Secretary-General António Guterres described it as a ‘dangerous precedent’.  

Meanwhile, the UN FFM warns that Maduro’s high-profile capture must not eclipse the broader pursuit of justice. Accountability for years of documented crimes against humanity must extend beyond the former president to include the entire network of officials who commanded security forces and perpetrated these systematic abuses. Following the public lecture and panel discussion on these issues held at the Asser Institute on 10 February, Researcher Stephanie Triefus asked three Venezuelan human rights defenders – Victoria Capriles, Geraldine Chacón Villarroel and Tomás Alberto Chang Pico – for their reflections on recent events and what they mean for Venezuelans on the ground. An interview.

What has been happening to people who speak out against the regime in Venezuela previously, and how has the situation changed for political activists in Venezuela since Maduro’s abduction? 

Victoria: For 27 years, the Venezuelan state has systematically repressed civil society. With all constitutional powers –legislative, judicial, citizen (prosecutor general, ombudsman, and comptroller general), and electoral– co-opted by the executive, along with the military and paramilitary (colectivos), the regime has evolved into a deep-rooted authoritarian structure. As a result, Venezuela is the first and, so far, only country in the region where government officials are under an open investigation by the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity.

Legal instruments have been central to this repression. The Constitutional Law Against Hatred (2017), passed by an illegally created Constituent National Assembly, established penalties of up to 20 years’ imprisonment, media shutdowns, and fines, and has been widely used to persecute real or perceived dissent. The Organic Law Against the Imperialist Blockade (2024) penalises anyone who “fail to recognise organs of public power”, effectively criminalising anyone who disputes the official results of the July 2024 elections. Penalties include prison sentences of 25 to 30 years, and disqualification from public office for up to 60 years. Analysts described it as an “unprecedented violation of the presumption of innocence” and a de facto ‘civil death’. Finally, the so-called “Anti-NGO Law”, approved in August 2024, requires government authorisation for NGOs to operate and grants authorities discretion to deny it based on political criteria. It is very similar to laws applied in Russia, Georgia, and Nicaragua to constrain civic space.

The human cost has been devastating. During the 2014 protests, NGOs documented 3,414 arbitrary detentions, 43 deaths, and over 800 injuries. In 2017, repression escalated further: 133 people were killed, 4,000 injured, and more than 5,000 arbitrarily detained, as documented by the IACHR.

Since Maduro’s abduction on 3 January, the situation has shifted but remains deeply precarious. The government announced mass releases of political prisoners on 8 January, but this has largely failed to materialise. At that date, approximately 950 political prisoners were known, though the true figure exceeded 1,300 as families previously too frightened began coming forward. By 20 February, 459 people had been released. Following the approval of the Amnesty Bill on 19 February and up until 25 February, an additional 105 liberations were documented. Crucially, many releases have been conditional with many having been fitted with electronic ankle monitors, placed under house arrest, or barred from speaking publicly.

For the hundreds still imprisoned, detention conditions remain dire. Although “El Helicoide” has become one of the most notorious torture centres in the Americas, civil society organisations have documented the existence of more than 90 such centres operated by Venezuelan State security forces. These are spread across at least 18 of the country’s 23 states and include both officially designated places of detention (temporary and long-term) as well as numerous clandestine or unofficial sites. Zona 7, a police station in Caracas designed for no more than 48 hours’ holding before presenting detainees to Court, has become one of these centres, with people held for months and even years. Given its intended nature, it has only sixteen cells, yet by January 2025 it housed 421 detainees (in previous years the number went as high as 1,000), both political and non-political. The Venezuelan Prison Observatory called for its permanent closure, describing its conditions as inhumane. After the mass releases were announced, families have maintained a permanent vigil outside, for over 40 days now, sleeping in tents on the street. In January, three mothers of political prisoners –Carmen Dávila, Yarelis Salas, and Omaira Navas– died within a single week from years of accumulated anguish and physical deterioration. On 14 February, political prisoners and their families began a joint hunger strike demanding their unconditional release. The strike ended on 20 February, after 134 hours, following the National Assembly’s approval of an Amnesty Law. However, relatives announced further actions, including scheduled fasting and continuation of the vigil, “until the last one is released.”

Even as the repressive apparatus remains fundamentally intact, NGOs continue working on the ground and journalists persist in documenting the situation. The student movement, which had been fragmented since the 2017 and 2019 crackdowns, has reorganised. On 12 February 2026, university students led the first major demonstrations in more than a year and a half, demanding a comprehensive and unconditional amnesty law. As Mario López, president of the Federation of University Centres at the University of Los Andes, put it: “What happened from January onwards shattered the idea that the country was frozen forever, and made it clear that things can change in a very short time.”

What are some of the nuances of the situation in Venezuela that tend to be over-simplified or under-reported in mainstream media? 

Tomás: One of the biggest oversimplifications is the idea that Venezuela’s crisis happened overnight. It did not. What we are witnessing today is the result of a long process of deterioration.

Some argue that everything began in 1999, when Hugo Chávez came to power. I believe it started much earlier. The democratic system that emerged in 1958 gradually eroded as traditional political elites became accustomed to governing through highly populist and clientelist practices, financed by oil revenues, without addressing the deep and growing political and economic inequality in the country. That inequality (and the political disenfranchisement that came with it) created the conditions that Chávez capitalized on to rise to power. Once in office, he slowly but systematically dismantled the rule of law: weakening the separation of powers, restricting press freedom, and eroding democratic checks and balances. Once control over state institutions and the oil industry was consolidated, the path toward authoritarianism was firmly set. Chávez, and later Maduro, were not isolated anomalies. They were mere catalysts of trends that were already present.

Another nuance that is often missed is that democratic backsliding in Venezuela goes beyond ideology. The tactics used by Chávez and Maduro are strikingly similar to those employed by leaders such as Trump, Putin, Lukashenko, Bolsonaro, Erdoğan, and Orbán, to name a few. This is not a “left versus right” story. It is a story about how power concentrates and how democratic institutions can be hollowed out from within. It’s almost a script that they all follow, and this can happen anywhere. That is why civil society must move beyond outdated political dichotomies and focus on defending democracy and human rights. Autocrats of all ideologies manipulate fear, identity, and emotion to divide societies and turn people against one another.

Geraldine: The world may feel perplexed at how many Venezuelans “celebrated” the events of January 3. Most informed audiences will be wary of the implications of what has put Venezuela on the news (bombing, abduction, foreign intervention by the US) and they should; those of us who work with Human Rights and International Law were and have been deeply concerned about what happened. But, as a victim of human rights abuses, a survivor of the systematic oppression that our domestic regime put thousands to endure, and as one of the millions displaced due to our protracted crisis, I can see the nuances and complexities that such events unlocked for a profoundly wounded population. 

The suffering in Venezuela has been largely ignored on the global stage. Despite all the many desperate yet peaceful efforts to defend and uphold human rights when they were being squashed, most of the international response, including media outlets, academics, states and international law frameworks, have failed the victims. Foreign intervention may be a concern for the international community today, but it is not new to Venezuelans: Other foreign powers have seeped into the core of our institutions, including armed forces, electoral bodies and national industries, for many years, aiding the deterioration of our civic space, and protecting perpetrators by way of political and economic capital that helps cover the realities on the ground. And yet, even today, responding to the Venezuelan crisis often takes the world awfully long.

Efforts to seek justice and accountability for the crimes being committed against our population have had a similar fate. Venezuelans have not only exhausted all domestic mechanisms but have demonstrated how the co-opting of the judicial system has rendered it not only inadequate, but actually made it into another tool for oppression. Global campaigns and cases in the various international human rights frameworks (such as the Inter-American Court for Human Rights, the UN Human Rights Council, UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, the OAS, and others) have recognised the severity of the abuses and sought to offer remedy and protection, but their authority has been undermined by the Venezuelan government over and over again. Universal Jurisdiction, one of the most robust tools of accountability for serious international crimes, has been largely ignored for lack of political momentum and interest in the Venezuelan case. Only Argentina has an active case against Venezuelan authorities, currently (as of February 2026) requesting Nicolas Maduro’s extradition to have him face prosecution for his responsibility on indiscriminate killings and violence against Venezuelans in 2014. 

Although there is a global consensus that there should be no impunity for crimes against humanity, Venezuelans have felt largely abandoned in their years of clamouring and advocacy. A key piece of justice and accountability is its timeliness. The spaces that are not taken by lawful accountability frameworks and by democratic commitments to human rights, will be taken either by other (rogue) actors or by impunity. In a context where sovereignty often protects perpetrators, victims are willing to take whatever they are given as a glimpse of justice – for many, two arrests feel better than zero arrests. The events of January 3rd unlocked a reality that seemed unachievable: The removal of a protracted and untouchable authoritarian. But what’s left for victims is a flawed and fragile relief. The risk for impunity is massive: The story we tell about Venezuela and its history of crimes against humanity is being buried in the headlines of a polarised landscape that centers the United States and, yet again, forgets about Venezuelans. Reparation and memory building will only come from a genuine, democratic regime change where the rule of law and the opening of the civic space is respected by all domestic and foreign forces.

How have international (human rights) law and institutions been able to support victims of human rights abuses, and what have their limitations been?  

Tomás: International and regional human rights mechanisms have provided important support, but their impact has been limited by enforcement constraints. Historically, the Inter-American Commission and Court of Human Rights -established under the American Convention on Human Rights- were instrumental in supporting victims of human rights abuses in Venezuela for decades. However, in 2012 Venezuela withdrew from the Convention, in an attempt to prevent its citizens from accessing those mechanisms.

In my family’s case, we were able to submit an individual complaint to the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention. In May 2012, they ruled in our favour, calling for immediate release and compensation of my uncle, who was a political prisoner. Unfortunately, the Venezuelan government never complied. We are still waiting.

This lack of compliance, combined with weak enforcement mechanisms, has affected the credibility of international human rights systems and reinforced the perception that “they do not serve any purpose.” These limitations are well known to those working in the field. They are legitimate concerns. And if we look at global developments today, it is difficult to be optimistic about stronger enforcement in the near future. This is not just a Venezuelan issue… it affects the credibility of international law everywhere.

Geraldine: As early as 2011, practitioners have recognised that the legal frameworks for accountability for serious crimes have been incomplete and outdated, and while sovereignty remains a cornerstone of international public law, more and more perpetrators of heinous crimes are State actors, who become increasingly skilled at navigating and escaping international justice. 

The ecosystem of international law has recognised the need to strengthen itself, and although it continuously iterates itself with newer instruments such as the Ljubljana – The Hague Convention, it still faces fundamental challenges as a system that relies on a legal-political structure that struggles to keep up with increasingly hostile actors. 

Venezuela has challenged and undermined such frameworks, for example, by withdrawing from international jurisdictions; something that has unfortunately gained popularity with others. But international human rights law and institutions remain a fundamental part of the fight against impunity, primarily, by validating claims independently and shedding light on issues that, domestically and internationally, are drowned by propaganda or persecution. Their independent investigations, assessments and conclusions not only reveal fundamental truths but also document what has happened, which can be, in itself, a form of reparation for many. 

Although limited, the record opened by the International Criminal Court supposes a history-making exercise that may well outlive us victims, but it is a response to a State that is unwilling to prosecute itself. Mechanisms such as universal jurisdiction provide opportunities that may well be the only meaningful chance for survivors to obtain adequate justice. 

In part II of the interview, Victoria, Geraldine and Tomás will consider the vital and precarious role of Venezuelan civil society organisations, the meaning of genuine accountability, and how the international community has responded to the human rights and refugee crisis in Venezuela.

Photo attribution: ‘Families of political prisoners are in vigil outside Zona 7, a detention and torture centre in Caracas’ (January 2026) by Rosalí Hernández Marcano (reproduced here with permission).