Leroy N. Soetoro
2017-06-24 21:01:42 UTC
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/in-venezuela-prisoners-
say-abuse-is-so-bad-they-are-forced-to-eat-pasta-mixed-with-
excrement/2017/06/23/39a0c85e-4acb-11e7-987c-
42ab5745db2e_story.html?tid=pm_world_pop&utm_term=.0f2ce33b220f
CARACAS, Venezuela The headquarters of the Venezuelan intelligence
service is a vast pyramid-shaped edifice known as the Helicoide, a former
shopping mall which now functions as an interrogation pen for political
prisoners and protesters.
The 30-year-old economics student had heard enough about the infamous
building to be terrified as he was led into a dank cell in early April
his eyes blindfolded, his wrists bound by his shoelaces.
Youre going to die here, a guard informed him, he later recalled.
The student had been detained after throwing rocks at an anti-government
protest. During the 12 hours he spent inside the Helicoide, he said, the
guards pummeled his torso, gave him electric shocks and ignited a type of
powder in his cell that had the effect of tear gas, causing him to press
his face into the concrete floor to escape the fumes.
Over the past 10 weeks of protests in Venezuela, security forces have
detained more than 3,200 people, with over a third of them remaining in
custody, according to Foro Penal, a legal aid group. Allegations of
mistreatment during the arrests and detention have ballooned, according to
human rights groups. They come as authorities have also begun to send
demonstrators to military courts, where they can face charges of treason
and rebellion that carry lengthy sentences.
The governments fierce crackdown on the demonstrations, along with its
efforts to disband the legislature and change the constitution, have
brought international condemnation and fueled debate over whether
Venezuela is sliding toward dictatorship.
We have to call things by their name, and what we have here is a country
that, in fact, has ceased to be a functional democracy, and this is a
tremendously dangerous thing for the region, Mexicos foreign minister,
Luis Videgaray, said in May.
[How a new kind of protest movement has risen in Venezuela]
Nearly as many people have been detained in the past two months during
anti-government demonstrations as in all of 2014, a year of intense
protest in Venezuela, said Nizar El Fakih, director of the human rights
organization Proiuris.
Some demonstrators say they are picked up by security forces who manhandle
them and hold them in overcrowded detention centers. The worst treatment
appears to be meted out by the intelligence service and the armed forces,
whose prisoners have endured regular beatings and sometimes other forms of
physical and sexual abuse, according to interviews with former detainees,
defense attorneys and human rights advocates. While Venezuelan security
forces have been accused of using excessive force in the past, the upsurge
in such allegations has alarmed human rights activists.
Weve noted a great increase in the number of torture and cruel,
inhumane-treatment cases, El Fakih said, noting there are no definitive
numbers on the phenomenon. I can say that the increase has been
exponential.
The office of President Nicolás Maduro as well as the National Guard,
the National Police and the Ministry of the Interior did not respond to
repeated requests for comment about the allegations. But the government
has publicly defended its actions against the demonstrators and reiterated
its commitment to human rights.
The National Guard and the National Police have made a heroic effort and
should keep doing it, with no firearms, no pellets, only water and tear
gas, Maduro said on television this past week.
Interrogated while detained
The current unrest began with peaceful marches against what protesters
call an increasingly authoritarian government and an economic crisis. But
the demonstrations have devolved into chaotic street battles between
protesters hurling rocks and molotov cocktails at National Guard and
police, who fire water cannons, tear gas and rubber bullets.
At least 70 people have died, and more than 1,300 have been injured in the
demonstrations.
The economics student, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear
of retribution by the government, said that during his detention in the
Helicoide, intelligence agents interrogated him about whether he worked
with opposition political parties and scoured his social-media accounts.
At one point, after he was zapped with a stun gun three times, he begged
to borrow a cell phone to call his mother, the student recounted.
Do you think youre in Disneyland? he recalled a guard taunting him.
The student was eventually taken to a police station in downtown Caracas,
where he spent 29 days handcuffed to another detainee before being
released on a charge of public disorder, he said. The only severe physical
abuse he suffered, he said, occurred in the Helicoide, a facility that
repeatedly comes up in protesters allegations of mistreatment.
The students account, and those of the other ex-detainees interviewed for
this story, could not be independently confirmed. But they have similar
characteristics to other testimonies gathered by human rights groups.
[Stuck in a death spiral, Venezuela is borrowing money at any cost]
Maduros administration says the street demonstrations are aimed at
overthrowing the government. Authorities have begun to send protesters to
military tribunals, with more than 300 facing charges such as rebellion
against the state, which carry sentences of decades in prison. This shift
comes as the attorney general, Luisa Ortega Díaz, has emerged as a critic
of the Maduro administration.
This is a way to bypass the attorney general when shes started to
identify that security forces are committing abuses and are using
excessive force against detainees, said Tamara Taraciuk Broner, Americas
senior researcher at Human Rights Watch.
The government releases little information about those who get arrested,
and families are often in the dark about their situation.
Many of those detained say they were not involved in any violence. In
early May, two National Guardsmen converged on Ana Rosa Cisneros, a 41-
year-old single mother, as she was leaving a pharmacy near one of the
protests, she said.
I was caught in the middle of tear gas and rubber bullets, and I wasnt
even protesting, she said. They hit me, pulled my hair, dragged me to a
car and insulted me.
Cisneros, who works as a cleaner at an Italian restaurant in southeastern
Caracas, spent 16 days in a National Guard detention facility in a small
room with seven men, she said. She was charged with illegal association
and must report to court monthly.
Argenis Ugueto, 27, and five of his friends said they were detained by the
National Guard on April 19, as they walked to an afternoon protest,
wearing hats and shirts in the colors of the Venezuelan flag. The National
Guard who are part of the armed forces accused them of being
guarimberos, the name for violent, front-line protesters, he said. At the
National Guard headquarters in western Caracas, Ugueto said, the guards
planted molotov cocktails and helmets in their belongings.
They wanted us to be scared but at the beginning we werent because, you
know, we thought we were innocent, said Ugueto, a former communications
student from the port town of Catia La Mar. Thats when they started
hitting us.
Ugueto said he was held at the base for 30 days, with the guards punching
him repeatedly in the face and torso. He was charged with inciting
violence and released with a requirement to check in with authorities.
They made us sign a form where it says they didnt treat us badly, and of
course we all signed, he said, due to the fear of not knowing what would
happen.
Human Rights Watch documented a case in May in the city of Valencia in
which 40 people were arrested near a food company that had been looted the
day before, and brought before a military judge on charges of rebellion.
During the hearing, some showed bruises and said they had been beaten by
members of the National Guard with aluminum rods and baseball bats.
At least 15 said they were forced to eat raw pasta with human excrement
the officers allegedly put tear gas powder in their noses so they would be
forced to open their mouths to eat, the Human Rights Watch report read.
Detainees have reported that the prisons are dismal, with detainees forced
to sleep on dirty concrete floors and sometimes defecate in plastic bags.
One young woman arrested on her way to a protest, Yusneimi Lopez, was so
upset at the prison conditions that she tried to hurl herself out of a
window of a courthouse during her preliminary hearing, according to
Gonzalo Himiob, who attended the hearing and works with Foro Penal.
A woman detained with Lopez, Yajaira Braque, said that the woman had told
her earlier that day that her time in prison had been so miserable that if
she was convicted and sent back, she would commit suicide.
Mariana Zuñiga contributed to this report.
--
Donald J. Trump, 304 electoral votes to 227, defeated compulsive liar in
denial Hillary Rodham Clinton on December 19th, 2016. The clown car
parade of the democrat party has run out of gas.
Congratulations President Trump. Thank you for ending the disaster of the
Obama presidency.
Under Barack Obama's leadership, the United States of America became the
The World According To Garp.
ObamaCare is a total 100% failure and no lie that can be put forth by its
supporters can dispute that.
Obama jobs, the result of ObamaCare. 12-15 working hours a week at minimum
wage, no benefits and the primary revenue stream for ObamaCare. It can't
be funded with money people don't have, yet liberals lie about how great
it is.
Obama increased total debt from $10 trillion to $20 trillion in the eight
years he was in office, and sold out heterosexuals for Hollywood queer
liberal democrat donors.
say-abuse-is-so-bad-they-are-forced-to-eat-pasta-mixed-with-
excrement/2017/06/23/39a0c85e-4acb-11e7-987c-
42ab5745db2e_story.html?tid=pm_world_pop&utm_term=.0f2ce33b220f
CARACAS, Venezuela The headquarters of the Venezuelan intelligence
service is a vast pyramid-shaped edifice known as the Helicoide, a former
shopping mall which now functions as an interrogation pen for political
prisoners and protesters.
The 30-year-old economics student had heard enough about the infamous
building to be terrified as he was led into a dank cell in early April
his eyes blindfolded, his wrists bound by his shoelaces.
Youre going to die here, a guard informed him, he later recalled.
The student had been detained after throwing rocks at an anti-government
protest. During the 12 hours he spent inside the Helicoide, he said, the
guards pummeled his torso, gave him electric shocks and ignited a type of
powder in his cell that had the effect of tear gas, causing him to press
his face into the concrete floor to escape the fumes.
Over the past 10 weeks of protests in Venezuela, security forces have
detained more than 3,200 people, with over a third of them remaining in
custody, according to Foro Penal, a legal aid group. Allegations of
mistreatment during the arrests and detention have ballooned, according to
human rights groups. They come as authorities have also begun to send
demonstrators to military courts, where they can face charges of treason
and rebellion that carry lengthy sentences.
The governments fierce crackdown on the demonstrations, along with its
efforts to disband the legislature and change the constitution, have
brought international condemnation and fueled debate over whether
Venezuela is sliding toward dictatorship.
We have to call things by their name, and what we have here is a country
that, in fact, has ceased to be a functional democracy, and this is a
tremendously dangerous thing for the region, Mexicos foreign minister,
Luis Videgaray, said in May.
[How a new kind of protest movement has risen in Venezuela]
Nearly as many people have been detained in the past two months during
anti-government demonstrations as in all of 2014, a year of intense
protest in Venezuela, said Nizar El Fakih, director of the human rights
organization Proiuris.
Some demonstrators say they are picked up by security forces who manhandle
them and hold them in overcrowded detention centers. The worst treatment
appears to be meted out by the intelligence service and the armed forces,
whose prisoners have endured regular beatings and sometimes other forms of
physical and sexual abuse, according to interviews with former detainees,
defense attorneys and human rights advocates. While Venezuelan security
forces have been accused of using excessive force in the past, the upsurge
in such allegations has alarmed human rights activists.
Weve noted a great increase in the number of torture and cruel,
inhumane-treatment cases, El Fakih said, noting there are no definitive
numbers on the phenomenon. I can say that the increase has been
exponential.
The office of President Nicolás Maduro as well as the National Guard,
the National Police and the Ministry of the Interior did not respond to
repeated requests for comment about the allegations. But the government
has publicly defended its actions against the demonstrators and reiterated
its commitment to human rights.
The National Guard and the National Police have made a heroic effort and
should keep doing it, with no firearms, no pellets, only water and tear
gas, Maduro said on television this past week.
Interrogated while detained
The current unrest began with peaceful marches against what protesters
call an increasingly authoritarian government and an economic crisis. But
the demonstrations have devolved into chaotic street battles between
protesters hurling rocks and molotov cocktails at National Guard and
police, who fire water cannons, tear gas and rubber bullets.
At least 70 people have died, and more than 1,300 have been injured in the
demonstrations.
The economics student, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear
of retribution by the government, said that during his detention in the
Helicoide, intelligence agents interrogated him about whether he worked
with opposition political parties and scoured his social-media accounts.
At one point, after he was zapped with a stun gun three times, he begged
to borrow a cell phone to call his mother, the student recounted.
Do you think youre in Disneyland? he recalled a guard taunting him.
The student was eventually taken to a police station in downtown Caracas,
where he spent 29 days handcuffed to another detainee before being
released on a charge of public disorder, he said. The only severe physical
abuse he suffered, he said, occurred in the Helicoide, a facility that
repeatedly comes up in protesters allegations of mistreatment.
The students account, and those of the other ex-detainees interviewed for
this story, could not be independently confirmed. But they have similar
characteristics to other testimonies gathered by human rights groups.
[Stuck in a death spiral, Venezuela is borrowing money at any cost]
Maduros administration says the street demonstrations are aimed at
overthrowing the government. Authorities have begun to send protesters to
military tribunals, with more than 300 facing charges such as rebellion
against the state, which carry sentences of decades in prison. This shift
comes as the attorney general, Luisa Ortega Díaz, has emerged as a critic
of the Maduro administration.
This is a way to bypass the attorney general when shes started to
identify that security forces are committing abuses and are using
excessive force against detainees, said Tamara Taraciuk Broner, Americas
senior researcher at Human Rights Watch.
The government releases little information about those who get arrested,
and families are often in the dark about their situation.
Many of those detained say they were not involved in any violence. In
early May, two National Guardsmen converged on Ana Rosa Cisneros, a 41-
year-old single mother, as she was leaving a pharmacy near one of the
protests, she said.
I was caught in the middle of tear gas and rubber bullets, and I wasnt
even protesting, she said. They hit me, pulled my hair, dragged me to a
car and insulted me.
Cisneros, who works as a cleaner at an Italian restaurant in southeastern
Caracas, spent 16 days in a National Guard detention facility in a small
room with seven men, she said. She was charged with illegal association
and must report to court monthly.
Argenis Ugueto, 27, and five of his friends said they were detained by the
National Guard on April 19, as they walked to an afternoon protest,
wearing hats and shirts in the colors of the Venezuelan flag. The National
Guard who are part of the armed forces accused them of being
guarimberos, the name for violent, front-line protesters, he said. At the
National Guard headquarters in western Caracas, Ugueto said, the guards
planted molotov cocktails and helmets in their belongings.
They wanted us to be scared but at the beginning we werent because, you
know, we thought we were innocent, said Ugueto, a former communications
student from the port town of Catia La Mar. Thats when they started
hitting us.
Ugueto said he was held at the base for 30 days, with the guards punching
him repeatedly in the face and torso. He was charged with inciting
violence and released with a requirement to check in with authorities.
They made us sign a form where it says they didnt treat us badly, and of
course we all signed, he said, due to the fear of not knowing what would
happen.
Human Rights Watch documented a case in May in the city of Valencia in
which 40 people were arrested near a food company that had been looted the
day before, and brought before a military judge on charges of rebellion.
During the hearing, some showed bruises and said they had been beaten by
members of the National Guard with aluminum rods and baseball bats.
At least 15 said they were forced to eat raw pasta with human excrement
the officers allegedly put tear gas powder in their noses so they would be
forced to open their mouths to eat, the Human Rights Watch report read.
Detainees have reported that the prisons are dismal, with detainees forced
to sleep on dirty concrete floors and sometimes defecate in plastic bags.
One young woman arrested on her way to a protest, Yusneimi Lopez, was so
upset at the prison conditions that she tried to hurl herself out of a
window of a courthouse during her preliminary hearing, according to
Gonzalo Himiob, who attended the hearing and works with Foro Penal.
A woman detained with Lopez, Yajaira Braque, said that the woman had told
her earlier that day that her time in prison had been so miserable that if
she was convicted and sent back, she would commit suicide.
Mariana Zuñiga contributed to this report.
--
Donald J. Trump, 304 electoral votes to 227, defeated compulsive liar in
denial Hillary Rodham Clinton on December 19th, 2016. The clown car
parade of the democrat party has run out of gas.
Congratulations President Trump. Thank you for ending the disaster of the
Obama presidency.
Under Barack Obama's leadership, the United States of America became the
The World According To Garp.
ObamaCare is a total 100% failure and no lie that can be put forth by its
supporters can dispute that.
Obama jobs, the result of ObamaCare. 12-15 working hours a week at minimum
wage, no benefits and the primary revenue stream for ObamaCare. It can't
be funded with money people don't have, yet liberals lie about how great
it is.
Obama increased total debt from $10 trillion to $20 trillion in the eight
years he was in office, and sold out heterosexuals for Hollywood queer
liberal democrat donors.