Martina Jaureguy At least six people were killed, 84 were wounded and 132 were arrested during the protests in Venezuela Sunday night and early Monday, human rights organizations following the situation are reporting. A group of university students also remain missing after claiming they were pressured to vote for President Nicolás Maduro.
Foro Penal, a non-governmental organization that helps people who have been arbitrarily detained, revealed in its latest report that as of 10 a.m, Tuesday, it had registered six fatalities. Two of the victims were 18 years old and younger. The organization also tallied 132 arbitrary detentions for protesting.
“It’s very hard to verify the conditions the detained people are in right now,” Foro Penal’s vice president Gonzalo Himiob told the Herald. “Access to the jails where they are detained is largely restricted.”
According to Himiob, none of those arrested had broken the law. The government, meanwhile, has accused the protesters of acts of “terrorism” and “inciting hatred,” among other offenses.
The protests’ true death toll may be even higher. The National Hospitals Survey (ENH, by its Spanish initials), a network of doctors and medical students from all over Venezuela, has registered 11 victims thus far. Most of those were killed from gunshot wounds, either to the head or the chest, although the details behind several deaths remain unknown.
ENH data indicate that most of the 84 wounded were shot.
Human rights NGO Provea warned that as many as 25 students had gone missing after accusing their university director of leaning on them to back the sitting president. However, two of those have since been located at separate prisons, according to the Venezuelan reporter Luna Perdomo.
“They are being accused of treason to the homeland and inciting hatred,” Perdomo wrote on X.
The students attend the National Experimental Security University in Caracas and had been protesting outside the school’s building in the Catia neighborhood of the capital.
“Forced disappearances, arbitrary arrests, torture and other systematic cruel actions are crimes against humanity,” Provea wrote in a separate X post. “Venezuela is under investigation by the International Criminal Court for these crimes.”