Cristina Ramírez was readying her sofa bed in Buenos Aires for the arrival of her friend visiting from Venezuela when she received a text message suggesting Edni López could be delayed. Officials in Caracas airport had stopped her, apparently over an issue with her passport.
Four days later, López remains under the detention of the Venezuelan authorities and her family grows increasingly worried by the minute that the university professor could be caught up in a brutal crackdown on protests over Nicolás Maduro’s apparent efforts to steal the presidential election.
“We know almost nothing. We have not been permitted to get Edni a lawyer and we still do not even know what she has been charged with,” said Ramírez, her voice cracking with anxiety. “The uncertainty is hard to describe. We just hope she can be freed soon.”
After a wave of public unrest following the disputed election, Maduro promised to “pulverize” the popular movement against him, dispatching security forces to round up opposition activists in the so-called “Operation knock-knock”.
More than 1,100 people so far have been rounded up since the election, according to Caracas-based rights watchdog, Foro Penal.
Prominent political figures have been seized, including Freddy Superlano, the national coordinator of the opposition Voluntad Popular party, who was dragged from his home by masked men.
Venezuela’s attorney general, a Maduro loyalist, announced on Tuesday that opposition leaders María Corina Machado and Edmundo González would be investigated for “incitement to insurrection” after they called on security forces to “side with the people” instead of repressing protests.
María Oropeza, a campaign co-ordinator for the opposition Vente party in the state of Portuguesa, livestreamed her own arrest late on Tuesday.
“Help me,” she pleaded live on Instagram as intelligence officers battered the lock off her front door. “I did nothing wrong, I am not a criminal. I am just another citizen who wants a different country”.
Oropeza had spoken out against the mass detentions just hours before she herself was detained.
But others with no political affiliation have also been caught up in Maduro’s dragnet, said Rafael Uzcategui, co-director of rights NGO Laboratorio de Paz, who suggested the operation was intended to terrify Venezuelans into submission.
“There were rumours that Maduro was targeting electoral observers but we investigated the arrests and they are too massive to see any real pattern. Many of those detained have no political affiliation and have not even participated in the protests. What we are seeing is simply an effort to sew a climate of terror,” he said.
Chile’s president, Gabriel Boric, condemned Maduro for committing “serious human rights violations” on Wednesday and joined the likes of Guatemala, Argentina and Peru in rejecting Maduro’s “self-proclaimed” victory.
The US – as well as other governments more sympathetic to Maduro, including Brazil, Mexico and Colombia – have called on the Venezuelan leader to publish a breakdown of the vote count, which he has so far refused.
“I have no doubt that the Maduro regime has tried to commit fraud,” Boric told reporters.
In his appearance on state television, a defiant Maduro has decried an international “fascist” conspiracy to overthrow him and accused WhatsApp of “spying” on Venezuela.
The former bus driver has shown clips of protesters in the mass demonstrations followed by their alleged confessions, promising he is “willing to do anything” to stay in power.
Many ordinary Venezuelans have deleted messaging apps on their mobile phones for fear that security forces could use their chat history for proof of dissent.
Edni López’s family say they have received information that the 33-year-old has been taken to another facility from her detention center three times, possibly for questioning, but they still have no idea what she is accused of.
López teaches management classes at the Central university of Venezuela and consults humanitarian organisations, Ramírez said, adding she has no political affiliation and did not participate in the recent protests.
“She is very empathetic, philosophic and competent, which is why she brought all these things together to help people through her work,” Ramirez said.
“Edni’s case is emblematic of what’s new about the repression that we’re seeing in post-election Venezuela,” said Adam Isacson, a director at the Washington Office on Latin America. “Usually in the past, the regime was hiding its illegitimate detentions under a veneer of legality, going through legal proceedings and allowing access to defense attorneys, for example. Now, even basic habeas corpus rights are being routinely violated.”
