Concerns include attacks against journalists, political persecution, harassment of human rights defenders, poor prison conditions, torture, extrajudicial executions by death squads, and forced disappearances.

[4] The report continues that in 2016, the Bolivarian National Intelligence Service (SEBIN) detained dozens of people on allegations of planning, promoting, or participating in violent anti-government actions, including some that were, in fact, peaceful protests.

[5] Since 2014, the enduring crisis in Venezuela has resulted in hyperinflation, an economic depression, shortages of basic goods, and drastic increases in unemployment, poverty, disease, child mortality, malnutrition, and crime.

Both failed, and in the process of resisting the coup attempts, government agents were reported to have killed forty people, both civilians and surrendered rebels, either as extrajudicial executions, or through the use of disproportionate force.

A series of demonstrations in March and April calling for the resignation of President Carlos Andrés Pérez and the restoration of constitutional guarantees were met with state violence including indiscriminate police firing into crowds, with a total of 13 deaths.

[27] In 2004, Amnesty International criticized President Chavez's administration's handling of the 2000 coup, saying that violent incidents "have not been investigated effectively and have gone unpunished" and that "impunity enjoyed by the perpetrators encourages further human rights violations in a particularly volatile political climate".

[28] Amnesty International also criticized the Venezuelan National Guard and the Direccion de Inteligencia Seguridad y Prevención (DISIP) stating that they "allegedly used excessive force to control the situation on a number of occasions" during protests involving the 2004 Venezuela recall.

[32][33] In 2011, NGO PROVEA criticized the fact that the government party PSUV selected as candidate for congress Róger Cordero Lara, who was militarily involved in the Cantaura massacre in 1982.

UN experts were dissatisfied with the Venezuelan government's delegation that was led by Deputy Interior Security Law and Policy, José Vicente Rangel Avalos and questions asked by the UN Committee were not answered accurately by him.

In the five-year-old case of Judge María Lourdes Afiuni Mora, a Venezuelan delegate stated, "The prosecution did not receive complaints about the alleged rape told in a book.

[55] A report of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights specified that non-lethal weapons were used systematically to cause unnecessary injuries, explaining that security forces had fired tear gas canisters directly against protesters at short distances.

The Wall Street Journal reported that a young men had already been tortured at an army base when soldiers piled them into two jeeps and transported them to a wooded area just outside the Venezuelan capital.

[67] On 27 September 2018, six states parties to the Rome Statute: Argentina, Canada, Colombia, Chile, Paraguay and Peru, referred the situation in Venezuela since 12 February 2014 to the ICC, requesting the Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda to initiate an investigation on crimes against humanity allegedly committed in the territory.

[70] United Nations' investigators reported on 16 September 2020 that Nicolás Maduro and other high-ranking officers ordered the systematic killing and torture of critics, violating human rights.

[85] The final published report addressed the extrajudicial executions, torture, enforced disappearances and other right violations allegedly committed by Venezuelan security forces in the recent years.

[89] Another concern in her speech was a proposed law to criminalize human rights organizations that receive money from abroad, a measure that according to Associated Press, "could further erode democracy in Venezuela".

[94] Thought not legally binding, signing the ICCPR represents and understand and signifies adherence to human rights standards expected of all United Nations member states.

in 2015, the ICCPR concluded that Venezuela has been unable to uphold the agreements made upon the signing of the document and recommend that the country adopt measures to increase awareness of the covenant.

Díaz told his wife that during the search, the intelligence agents beat him with his helmet, took away his phone, computer and cash and threatened him to plant a corpse in his house and accuse him of homicide if he spoke about the arrest to anyone.

[132][133] In 2007, Eligio Cedeño, then President of Bolivar-Banpro Financial Group, was arrested in a crackdown by Venezuelan officials on individuals circumventing government currency rules to gain U.S. dollars.

"[151] Hours after the arrest, President Maduro addressed a cheering crowd of supporters in red, saying that he would not tolerate "psychological warfare" by his opponents and that López must be held responsible for his "treasonous acts.

[157] On 8 October 2014, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention ruled that López was detained arbitrarily and that the Venezuelan government "violated several of their civil, political and constitutional rights" while demanding his immediate release.

[citation needed] In the early morning of 21 March 2019, SEBIN officials first broke into the home of Roberto Marrero's, chief of staff to Juan Guaidó,[171] neighbor, National Assembly deputy Sergio Vergara.

In 1913, during a rubber boom and the dictatorship of Juan Vicente Gómez, colonel Tomas Funes seized control of Amazonas’ San Fernando de Atabapo, where 100 settlers were killed.

[197] During Nicolás Maduro's presidency (Chávez's successor) and after the creation of the Orinoco Mining Arc, the development of an area rich in mineral resources, several Venezuelan institutions, including the Academy of Physical, Mathematical and Natural Sciences, the Venezuelan Society of Ecology and the National Assembly, publicly expressed their concern at the non-compliance with environmental and sociocultural impact studies and the violation of rights to prior consultation with indigenous communities.

[198][199][200][201][202] From early 2018 the Pemon people, an indigenous community that live in the Gran Sabana grassland plateau in southern Venezuela, started coming into conflict increasingly with the Maduro administration.

On 8 December, Directorate General of Military Counterintelligence (DGCIM) officials killed a person and injured two Pemons of the Arekuna community after arriving in the Campo Carrao sector, in the Canaima National Park.

[203] On 22 February 2019, on the onset of that year's shipping of humanitarian aid to Venezuela, members of the armed forces loyal to Maduro fired upon the inhabitants of Kumarakapay with live ammunition, killing two and wounding fifteen.

[207] Salvador Franco, a Pemon arrested in December 2019 accused of having participated in a barracks assault in Bolívar state, died on 3 January 2021 due to lack of medical attention.

[215] A 2010 OAS it also indicated "blistering" concerns with freedom of expression, human rights abuses, authoritarianism, press freedom, control of the judiciary, threats to democracy,[216] political intimidation, and "the existence of a pattern of impunity in cases of violence, which particularly affects media workers, human rights defenders, trade unionists, participants in public demonstrations, people held in custody, 'campesinos' (small-scale and subsistence farmers), indigenous people, and women",[217] as well as erosion of separation of powers and "severe economic, infrastructure, and social headaches", and "chronic problems including power blackouts, soaring crime, and a perceived lack of investment in crucial sectors".