On September 22, 2025, a grim new United Nations report cast a harsh spotlight on the deepening political repression in Venezuela, painting a picture of a nation where dissent is met with abduction, torture, and a judicial system bent to the will of those in power. The findings, presented by a special mission of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, chronicle a year of escalating crackdowns following the disputed presidential election of July 28, 2024—a contest that, opposition figures and much of the international community claim, was stolen.
The official result handed President Nicolás Maduro a third six-year term beginning in January 2025. Yet, opposition leader Edmundo González, now living in exile in Spain, presented electoral records indicating he had actually secured a resounding victory by a margin of 67% to 30%. The regime-controlled National Electoral Council, however, never released the full precinct-by-precinct breakdown required by law. Instead, the government swiftly declared Maduro the winner, triggering a wave of protests that swept across the country in the days and weeks that followed.
According to the UN Fact-Finding Mission’s 165-page report, what ensued was not a series of isolated abuses, but a systematic campaign of repression—one that amounts to crimes against humanity. “The detentions in 2025 continued against opponents or those perceived as such, just as in 2024, with arrests lacking legal basis or court order, often carried out by masked individuals without official identification,” explained Chilean lawyer Francisco Cox, a member of the mission, in remarks reported by Havana Times.
Arbitrary detention, the mission concluded, is not an accident of state power but a cornerstone of Venezuela’s repressive apparatus. The report documented 243 arbitrary detentions between late July and December 2024, and another 200 between January and August 2025. Those targeted included opposition leaders, journalists, human rights defenders, relatives of politicians, and ordinary citizens accused of dissent. Arrests were typically executed by hooded, armed men in unmarked SUVs—sometimes in broad daylight, other times during nighttime home raids. Victims were rarely shown warrants or informed of charges. “Criminal cases continue to be fabricated, and the principles of a fair trial gravely violated with total impunity and judicial complicity,” Cox said.
One such case was that of Jesús Armas, an opposition activist abducted on a December night in Caracas by at least five masked men. He was forced into a gold SUV with no license plates and disappeared for weeks, his family left searching for answers. Only later did they learn he had been transferred to El Helicoide, the notorious intelligence prison run by Venezuela’s feared Bolivarian National Intelligence Service. His ordeal is just one among dozens detailed in the UN’s latest findings.
The crackdown extended to the streets. The mission investigated 25 protest-related deaths on July 29 and 30, 2024, finding security forces involved in at least 12 fatalities. In Maracay, members of the Bolivarian National Guard and the Army’s 99th Brigade fired live rounds at demonstrators, killing six—one victim shot with a shotgun from less than 10 meters away. Yet, the Prosecutor’s Office has not publicly reported on any progress or conclusions from its supposed investigations. Instead, it pointed fingers at the opposition, a stance the mission’s evidence contradicts. “All the deaths remain in impunity,” said Portuguese jurist Marta Valiñas, president of the mission.
The repression was not limited to protesters. The mission found that five people detained during the 2024 and 2025 protests died in state custody. In two cases, the state failed to provide timely and adequate medical care, subjecting detainees to cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment. “The State has a heightened obligation to guarantee the life, personal integrity, and safety of every person in its custody,” emphasized human rights expert Patricia Tappatá. She warned that these deaths amounted to arbitrary deprivations of life.
Authorities gradually released 2,006 of the 2,220 people detained in the post-election protests of 2024, but repression and selective arrests continued. The mission documented at least 200 new arrests of critical voices in 2025. An unprecedented number of foreign nationals—mostly Colombian, Spanish, and Italian—were held in prolonged strict incommunicado detention, some for more than six months, amounting to enforced disappearances under international law.
As of September 15, 2025, the Venezuelan human rights organization Foro Penal counted 815 political prisoners, including 170 military personnel, 101 women, four adolescents, and 89 foreigners. The crackdown has also swept up minors: at least 220 children and adolescents aged 13 to 17 were detained after the July 2024 election. During their detention, children were subjected to incommunicado confinement, cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment, acts of sexual violence, and due process violations. Four adolescents remain in custody, the report noted.
“Security forces used plastic bags to suffocate detainees and beat them with fists, kicks, or bats, regardless of age or gender,” the mission reported. Sexual torture, including threats of rape and the application of electric shocks to the genitals, was also documented. Complaints of such acts were ignored by courts, the Ombudsman’s Office, and the Public Prosecutor’s Office, which launched no investigations.
The UN report also highlighted the use of solitary confinement and incommunicado detention, practices banned under international law when prolonged. The case of Josnars Baduel, son of the late Defense Minister Raúl Isaías Baduel, stands out: he was held incommunicado for 112 days at Rodeo 1 prison after his family denounced prison conditions. At other prisons, detainees endured repeated periods of solitary confinement, with devastating psychological effects. One detainee, Lindomar Bustamante, took his own life after 15 days in isolation—a tragedy the mission linked directly to these conditions.
The repression has not spared families. Relatives of opposition figures have been detained as a form of collective punishment, the mission found. On January 7, 2025, Rafael Tudares Bracho, son-in-law of opposition candidate González Urrutia, was abducted while taking his children to school and held incommunicado for more than eight months. Other cases involved extortion: families were forced to pay large sums to secure the release of detained loved ones, with some foreign nationals extorted for as much as $10,000 to avoid arrest at checkpoints. For women in detention, extortion sometimes took the form of sexual coercion.
The judicial process itself has become a tool of repression. Hearings often take place inside detention centers, sometimes in the middle of the night or even via WhatsApp audio calls. Defendants are routinely represented by state-assigned public defenders, even when they request private counsel. Families attempting to appoint private lawyers are denied, and detainees often do not know the names of their assigned defenders. The mission concluded that Venezuela’s courts and prosecutors have abandoned any semblance of independence, functioning instead as instruments of political persecution.
“The crime of persecution based on political motives continues to be committed in Venezuela, without any national authority demonstrating a willingness to prevent, prosecute, or punish the serious human rights violations that constitute this international crime,” Valiñas said. With the judiciary subordinated to the executive, Cox added, “the only hope of finding justice for victims in Venezuela rests with international bodies.” The International Criminal Court is now conducting a preliminary investigation into alleged crimes against humanity committed by Venezuelan authorities since 2014, while the UN mission continues its work documenting abuses.
As Venezuela’s machinery of repression grinds on, the world is left to reckon with the chilling evidence laid out in the UN’s report—a nation where fear is wielded as a weapon, and justice remains a distant hope for countless families.