World must confront Maduro’s ‘campaign of terror’, Venezuelan opposition leader says

Venezuela’s main opposition leader, María Corina Machado, has accused the country’s strongman president, Nicolás Maduro, of unleashing a horrific “campaign of terror” in an attempt to cling on to power.

Two weeks after Maduro’s widely questioned claim to have won the 28 July election, human rights activists say he has launched a ferocious clampdown designed to silence those convinced his rival Edmundo González was the actual winner. More than 1,300 people have been detained, including 116 teenagers, according to the rights group Foro Penal. At least 24 people have reportedly been killed.

Speaking from an undisclosed location where she is in hiding, Machado – a charismatic conservative who is González’s key backer – urged governments around the world to oppose Maduro’s intensifying crackdown.

“What is going on in Venezuela is horrific. Innocent people are being detained or disappeared as we speak,” said the 56-year-old former congresswoman, who endorsed González after authorities barred her from running.

Maduro’s regime has nicknamed part of its clampdown Operación Tun Tun – “Operation Knock Knock” – a chilling reference to the often late-night visits to perceived government opponents by heavily armed, black-clad captors from the intelligence services or police.

Tun Tun’s targets have included activists, journalists and prominent opposition politicians – but most detainees appear to be the residents of working-class areas who rose up en masse against Maduro for the first time in the two days after his disputed claim to victory.

One Tun Tun propaganda video published on the Instagram account of the military counterintelligence service, DGCIM, last week showed one of Machado’s campaign organisers, María Oropeza, being detained to the sound of the nursery rhyme from the 1984 horror film A Nightmare on Elm Street, in which Freddy Krueger attacks children in their dreams. “One, two, Freddy’s coming for you! Three, four, better lock your door!” warn the song’s sinister lyrics.

A second DGCIM video showing another arrest is soundtracked by a horror-film adaptation of Carol of the Bells, whose modified lyrics warn: “If you’ve done wrong, then he will come! … He’ll look for you! You’d better hide!”

Asked if she feared she and González would soon receive a visit from Maduro’s security forces, Machado replied: “At this moment … in Venezuela, everybody is afraid that your door could be knocked [on] and your freedom could be taken away – even your life is threatened. Maduro has unleashed a campaign of terror against Venezuelans.”

“Every single democratic government should raise their voices much more loudly,” said Machado, who believed the repression laid bare “the criminal nature” of a regime that knew it had lost by a landslide to González and was now seeking desperately to cling to power. “[Maduro’s government has] decided that their only option to stay in power is using violence, fear and terror against the population.”

Campaigners for human rights and democracy say the speed and scale of the repression is virtually unprecedented in the region’s recent history. Maduro has claimed he is pursuing criminals and terrorists who are behind a fascist, foreign-backed conspiracy to topple him.

“In Latin America, there hasn’t been a repressive crackdown of such magnitude as has happened in Venezuela since the days of [the Chilean dictator] Augusto Pinochet,” Marino Alvarado, an activist from the Venezuelan human rights group Provea, told El País last week.

Carolina Jiménez Sandoval, the president of the Washington Office on Latin America advocacy group, told the New York Times: “I have been documenting human rights violations in Venezuela for many years and have seen patterns of repression before. I don’t think I have ever seen this ferocity.”

Tamara Taraciuk Broner, the director of the rule of law programme at the Inter-American Dialogue thinktank, said the arbitrary arrests – and a social media crackdown that has temporarily blocked X and Signal – suggested Maduro wanted to take Venezuela in an even more despotic direction. “It looks as if they want to go towards [being] a full-fledged dictatorship,” she said. “You need to be very brave to take to the streets now in Venezuela … they are trying very hard to intimidate people so they don’t take to the streets.”

The government’s attempt to create an atmosphere of fear was on show last Saturday as thousands of opposition supporters gathered in Caracas to hear Machado speak despite the risk of arrest.

Unlike at other opposition marches in recent years, many protesters declined to give their names to journalists for fear of persecution, and some wore masks. After the march, at least one reporter was detained by security officials and accused of “stirring up hatred”. Machado came in disguise, wearing a sweatshirt with the hood up.

“Before I came out today, my daughter threw herself on top of me and made me promise that I would come home,” said one 28-year-old demonstrator, describing how her best friend was captured hours before.

Tellingly, the next major anti-Maduro mobilisations are set to be held predominantly outside Venezuela, where about 8 million of its estimated 29 million citizens live after fleeing abroad to escape economic chaos and political repression. Machado has called on supporters to gather across the globe on Saturday 17 August, for “a great worldwide protest … for the truth”.

Machado urged Maduro – who has governed since being elected after the death of his mentor Hugo Chávez in 2013 – to “accept his defeat and understand that we are offering reasonable terms for a negotiated transition”. Those terms included “guarantees, safe passage and incentives”.

Maduro has publicly dismissed talk of a negotiation but some believe one option for him could be exile in an allied country such as Cuba, Turkey or Iran. Panama’s president, José Raúl Mulino, last week offered him temporary asylum en route to such a destination, although Maduro quickly rejected his offer.

Machado pledged not to seek “revenge” or to persecute members of Maduro’s administration, although her campaign-trail promises to “forever bury” socialism and her past calls for foreign military intervention make many Chavistas profoundly suspicious of the right-wing politician.

Machado recognised the role the leftwing leaders of Brazil, Colombia and Mexico – who have not recognised Maduro’s claim to victory – could have in convincing him to enter “a serious negotiation for a democratic transition”.

“But we have to stop [the] repression and the cost of repression has to be increased. These are red lines that the Maduro regime is crossing as we speak,” Machado added.