Venezuela: Video Footage Exposes Brutal Repression

(New York, July 24, 2017) – Human Rights Watch issued a multimedia report today that shows the scale and brutality of violent repression of protests by Venezuelan security forces in recent months. Since early April 2017, tens of thousands of Venezuelans have taken to the streets to protest the government’s growing authoritarianism. The government has responded with a brutal crackdown. Security forces have shot demonstrators at point-blank range with riot-control munitions, run over demonstrators with an armored vehicle, brutally beaten people who offered no resistance, and broken into homes of suspected opponents. The security forces have also arbitrarily arrested hundreds of demonstrators, bystanders, and critics and prosecuted them in military courts.