‘I have seen tyranny’: Venezuelan Women Activists Recount Physical and Sexual Violence by Security Forces

Marvinia Jiménez was first detained in February 2014. An activist and regular participant in anti-government protests, she was taking a photo of Venezuelan National Guard (GNB) vehicles breaking up a demonstration near her home, in the northern city of Valencia, when she was hit with a helmet. The GNB officials assaulted her, pulling her hair, and arrested her.

Jiménez detailed cruel and degrading treatment while in police custody. She said a colonel presiding at the detention center threatened to transfer her to a cell where another activist had been tortured and raped with a rifle. After several days without food, access to medical attention, or the right to make a phone call, she was released. She was ultimately charged with public obstruction, damage to public property, resisting arrest, theft, and “public incitement to delinquency,” she told Women Under Siege.

Like many other activists and journalists, Jiménez was a target for security forces under the Nicolas Maduro regime. Venezuela’s president since 2016, Maduro’s victories in both the 2018 presidential election and the 2020 congressional elections have been widely criticized by the international community as fraudulent. International organizations have warned since 2014 that high-level state authorities under Maduro were threatening, detaining and torturing those participating in protests against the regime, as well as those documenting the human rights violations perpetrated in the country. Extrajudicial executions, arbitrary detentions, excessive use of force, and unlawful killings by security forces have continued as part of the state’s campaign to silence dissent, Amnesty International found in 2019.

Venezuela is currently facing an unprecedented political and social crisis that has led to what Human Rights Watch calls a humanitarian emergency. As a result, its population suffers from severe supply shortages of running water, electricity, and gasoline, as well as a largescale food and health crisis. With the pandemic, its impacts on the population are further exacerbated.

The United Nations Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, established by the United Nations Human Rights Council on September 27, 2019, found reasonable grounds to believe that Venezuelan authorities and security forces have, since 2014, planned and executed serious human rights violations, some of which — including arbitrary killings and the systematic use of torture — amount to crimes against humanity. The Mission’s first report, published in September 2020, urged accountability for these crimes.

The Mission has also documented various incidents of sexualized violence committed against women and girls who took part in protests or who were perceived as dissidents, as well as women relatives of alleged dissidents. These included physical groping of breasts, buttocks and genitals; direct threats of rape (including threats to transfer detainees to places where others would rape them); and targeted violence, such as electric shocks or beatings — “of women’s intimate areas,” according to the Mission. Much of this violence has been documented in Venezuelan prisons. Sexualized violence has also been perpetrated against men, the report found.

Threats, intimidation, and violence

After her first arrest, Jiménez continued to take part in anti-government protests. Over the next three years, she was routinely threatened, harassed, and attacked by security forces. Jiménez told Women Under Siege that the most serious incident with security forces occurred on May 24, 2017, when the GNB broke into her home.

“I was alone with my 10-year-old son,” Jiménez said. “GNB officers started threatening both of us. I was afraid that they would kill me. They almost suffocated my son.” She said that the officers shot her in the back and threw gas bombs at her house.

She and her son had to jump out of the window from the second floor to escape, she said. After the fall, she couldn’t move. The officers only left her neighborhood because they believed her to be dead. Jiménez hid for several days with a fractured leg, helped by a neighbor, before she felt safe to go to the hospital. She had sustained multiple fractures and other injuries. Once she healed, Jiménez left the country.

In July 2019, Violeta Santiago, a journalist and human rights defender, was documenting gasoline shortages in Mérida, a town in northwestern Venezuela, when she was followed by a GNB officer, who took pictures of her car while she was reporting. “He started intimidating me while I was taking photos of a gas station,” Santiago said. “He chased me to my car and told me that he was going to show me who was bravest, me or him.”

This is not the first time that Santiago has received threats by members of security forces, nor from other parties, including from a man involved in a rape and femicide case that she had been investigating.

Even after she reported him to authorities, Santiago kept receiving threats. “The Venezuelan State did not guarantee my safety as a defender of the human rights of a young woman who was a victim of femicide,” she said. She left the country in 2020.

Inhumane conditions in detention

Diannet Blanco, another human rights activist, was detained in May 2017 for her involvement in anti-government protests. “I was attending mainly to help injured people,” Blanco told Women Under Siege. Medical aid services had collapsed at that time, so she and other activists attended the protests to assist the elderly who had been either injured or hit with tear gas.

Shortly thereafter, a government spokesperson accused Blanco of being a member of a terrorist brigade and of destabilizing the government. “The National Executive labeled those who attended the protests as terrorists,” said Blanco.

Blanco said she was arbitrarily detained and taken to military courts even though she was a civilian. She was subsequently imprisoned for a year and 12 days at the headquarters of the Bolivarian Intelligence Service (SEBIN) in the country’s capital of Caracas. Blanco was released in June 2018 under conditions that prohibited her from leaving the country.

In prison, Blanco said she suffered from cruel and inhumane treatment and a total lack of basic sanitary supplies. “I shared a dark, poorly lit 50-square-meter cell with 26 other women, without running water or adequate ventilation,” she said. “The toilets were out of order, so we had to use plastic bags. In the worst moments, I could only think about the survivors of Nazi concentration camps and try to find meaning in that suffering.”

The Fact-Finding Mission on Venezuela has documented similar cases in which women and girls were held in formal or informal detention areas without adequate access to the most basic supplies, including hygiene products. Some of the detainees who spoke to the Mission said they were forced to remain in bloodied clothes during menstruation or had to relieve themselves in front of other men and women detainees. In at least one case, a woman was forced to shower in the men’s locker room at a police station, with men police officers present and using the same facilities.

“These cases do not appear to be outliers but rather indicative of a widespread practice of sexual violence during arrest, detention and interrogation, [as well as] the neglect of gender-appropriate, adequate detention conditions,” Marta Valiñas, the Mission’s chair, told Women Under Siege.

Jiménez also reported inhumane treatment during detention at the headquarters of the People’s Guard, or Guardia del Pueblo, the unit of the armed forces that had first detained her in 2014. “I was subjected to torture and rape threats,” she said. “I had to share a cell with other inmates who at first wanted to [harm] me, but they later showed me compassion after they saw that I had already been beaten and stunned.”

Jiménez was only able to receive medical attention when she was transferred to the headquarters of the Bolivarian National Police three days later, where she had to undergo a compulsory medical exam to corroborate that she had been injured before entering the police cell.

Sexual humiliation and torture in the prison system

Under anonymity, one woman told Women Under Siege that she spent over a year in detention where, she said, she had “seen tyranny.”

She told Women Under Siege that prison guards — even the women — continuously violated the integrity of some women detainees by touching their breasts and genitals and destroying their personal hygiene items or other personal effects.

“In prison, we were objectified, sexually exploited, and regularly searched,” she said. “[We] were also subjected to sarcasm, threats, and acts of psychological and verbal violence. Many ended up accepting this system, which reduced [our] identity to that of an object.” She herself was a victim of routine sexualized violence, detailing abuse that, she told us, deprived her of her dignity. “These methods are used to keep women in a position of inferiority,” she said.

The Fact-Finding Mission has also received accounts of repeated incidents of sexual exploitation in detention facilities in exchange for access to basic goods or privileges, Valiñas told Women Under Siege.

“During our interviews with victims, it became clear that incidents of sexual violence against women during arrest or detention are likely to be severely underreported,” Valiñas said. But because many women arrested in the context of protests were not formally charged with criminal acts, the Mission found, the violence against them was not documented in any case files.

“When individuals are arrested, detained, and charged with a crime, they can make a declaration before the judge during their initial hearing, where they can report mistreatment — including acts of torture or sexual violence — that would then be recorded in the judicial records. However, when someone is arrested, held for a few hours or days, then released without charges, this legal paperwork often does not exist,” Valiñas said, meaning that there is no existing procedure for such victims to speak to a judge.

Total impunity

The Center for Justice and Peace, a Venezuelan women’s rights organization (also known as CEPAZ), recently published an article based on the Fact-Finding Mission’s report, alerting to the fact that Venezuelan security forces systematically fail to protect victims' rights.

According to CEPAZ, the state contributes to these human rights violations when it tolerates acts of sexual and gender-based violence against women and girls; when it fails to act within domestic and international legal frameworks for victim protection; and especially when competent authorities and institutions that represent the state commit acts of sexual and gender-based violence at their own hands — and with total impunity.

A report by the International Criminal Court, published on December 14, 2020, also concluded that “the information available at this stage provides a reasonable basis to believe that, since at least April 2017, civilian authorities, members of the armed forces, and pro-government individuals have committed crimes against humanity, including rape and/or other forms of sexual violence of comparable gravity pursuant to article 7(1)(g) of the Rome Statute.” The Office of the Prosecutor will determine in the first half of 2021 whether it will open an investigation.

The Fact-Finding Mission on Venezuela is so far aware of only one trial underway, for the rape of a young man in police custody in the state of Zulia in western Venezuela in 2017. “However, the charges in this case were not extended to include the sexual violence perpetrated against young women in the same incident, as they were released without charges and chose not to file additional complaints,” the Mission found. “The charges also do not extend to the supervisors in the hierarchy, who may have been present during, or [were] aware of, the acts.”

Venezuelan women activists remain in fear of reprisals or revictimization, mostly with no protection from the authorities, and without the right to a fair and effective legal process. As a result, many try to flee the country to escape the violence.

“In Venezuela, there is no democratic and independent institution that can effectively protect women,” said Beatriz Borges, the director of CEPAZ. “Many organizations seek justice outside of Venezuela, relying on international bodies.” But, according to Borges, the Venezuelan government is unwilling to collaborate with international organizations and often does not comply with recommendations and resolutions.

“The most important thing we can do in this dark moment is to document the abuse of these forgotten victims, and alert the international community to try and end this impunity.”


Rosalí Hernández contributed to this report. She can be found on Twitter at rohernandezm_.