15 May 2025 | Europe and Central Asia, News, United Kingdom
This article first appeared in Volume 54, Issue 1 of our print edition of Index on Censorship, titled The forgotten patients: Lost voices in the global healthcare system, published on 11 April 2025. Read more about the issue here.
For those regularly subjected to racial discrimination, it can be exhausting to encourage people without this firsthand experience to see things from their perspective. Convincing others that certain behaviours or attitudes are harmful can be frustrating, difficult and ultimately lead to hostility – and nowhere more so than within large organisations, where prejudice may be deeply embedded.
The National Health Service (NHS) is one of the UK’s most loved and largest institutions, employing more people than any other organisation in the country. But, as a result, it is not exempt from societal issues.
Institutional racism within the NHS, impacting both staff and patients, has been well documented. A report compiled last year by Middlesex University and the charity Brap found that “racial prejudice remains embedded in the health service despite initiatives to remove it”.
The NHS has failed to “provide a safe and effective means for listening to and dealing with concerns” raised by Black and minority ethnic (BME) staff, and it noted a “culture of avoidance, defensiveness or minimisation of the issue from their employer if they did so”.
Nearly three-quarters of UK- trained staff had complained of race discrimination, according to the study. A survey commissioned by the membership body NHS Confederation in 2022 also reported that more than half of its surveyed BME NHS leaders had considered leaving in the three years beforehand as a result of racist treatment they had experienced while doing their jobs. Black patients also often find their concerns ignored by healthcare professionals, with potentially deadly consequences.
Dr Annabel Sowemimo, a doctor of sexual and reproductive health and author of the book Divided: Racism, Medicine and Why We Need to Decolonise Healthcare, has spent many years facing and exploring this prejudice, and has seen her own concerns ignored as both a patient and a practitioner. Speaking to Index, she told a story from her time as a junior doctor working in the paediatric accident and emergency department, when a Somali child came in experiencing abdominal pain but with “atypical symptoms”. An experienced nurse said the child needed to go home with antibiotics, as they had a urinary tract infection. But Sowemimo was not convinced by this diagnosis.
“I saw the patient and I said, ‘I don’t really think that this child has an UTI’,” she said. “The dad didn’t really speak great English so it was difficult to communicate.” Ultimately, the child was diagnosed with severe appendicitis and needed surgery. “If they had not had surgery [the appendix] probably would have ruptured – that’s what the surgeon said to me,” Sowemimo added. “It was really hard, because I was a really junior doctor, I had been in the department for only a few weeks, and the nurse was quite senior and I didn’t want to be seen to be going against what she said.”
Sowemimo, who is from a Nigerian background, believes that a combination of cultural bias from staff and culturally influenced self-censorship by patients can play a collective role in misdiagnoses. “I don’t think that nurse was being racist, but there were certain things that made this child more vulnerable,” she said. “Culturally, I think the child had probably been raised in an environment like mine.
“I would, as a kid, never make a scene in public because my Nigerian parents just wouldn’t stand for that kind of thing. So sometimes, if I was uncomfortable, even around adults, I’d just hold that energy in, whereas other children could probably express that more.”
Sowemimo believes that self-silencing can be particularly pervasive among Black patients, who may have fears around their expressions of pain or discomfort being construed as “aggression” by healthcare professionals. “We change our behaviour,” she said. “We’re worried about being seen as ‘angry, Black women’ in particular. So even if I am in pain, I’m not going to feel comfortable yelling and writhing around. It doesn’t mean that I’m [less] in pain [than] the next person, just that I’m acutely aware that sometimes things get misread.”
A misguided belief that Black women “exaggerate” their symptoms has also proven to be fatal, and nowhere more so than in maternity care. Black women in the UK are nearly four times more likely to die in pregnancy and childbirth than their white counterparts. In 2023, an investigation into the death of a pregnant Black woman in Liverpool found “cultural and ethnic bias” played a part in her late diagnosis and death. Hospital staff had neglected to take some observations because she was “being difficult”, according to comments in her medical notes. This delayed her diagnosis and treatment and led to her baby dying, and then to her own death two days later.
Such biases are endemic in many countries, and ethnic minorities faced higher mortality rates during the pandemic. Black American doctor Susan Moore documented on social media how her pain and requests for medicine were ignored when she was in hospital with Covid-19 in 2020. She said she was made to feel like a “drug addict” for requesting remdesivir, the antiviral drug used to treat Covid patients. She later died due to complications from the virus. In May 2020, the British Medical Association (BMA) reported that more than 90% of all doctors and consultants who had lost their lives from Covid- 19 up until that point had been from minority ethnic backgrounds.
Sowemimo believes that “biology” is weaponised in healthcare settings, with doctors and nurses often concluding that Black people are more likely to die from certain illnesses due to genetics. There are many complex factors that play into higher death rates, she said, including later diagnoses and a lack of clinical research.
“With some reproductive cancers or endometrial cancer, it seems that Black people present later, and with prostate cancer we have worse outcomes,” she said. “We’re trying to direct research towards these issues to actually work out what is going on, but ultimately [research isn’t funded] towards groups that are not seen as politically mobile, who are more disenfranchised and impoverished.
“Often, people keep telling you that it’s biological, that we’re all biologically flawed in some way, and this is making us more predisposed to all these things. I think that’s actually even more sinister – how people keep on pathologising Blackness rather than addressing the systemic problems that exist.”
Beyond the treatment of individuals, systemic issues around resource allocation “compound” the discrimination facing minority groups, she says. In what think-tank The King’s Fund refers to as the “inverse care law”, those who most need medical care are least likely to receive it. For example, people who live in the most deprived areas of England are twice as likely to wait more than a year for non-urgent treatment, and there are fewer GPs per patient in more deprived areas. BME people are over-represented in the most deprived areas, and are two to three times more likely to be living in persistent poverty.
Disparities in care are caused by complex societal problems that reach far beyond the realms of healthcare services alone. So changing the behaviour of NHS staff is only the first hurdle, and a high one at that. “I make this argument a lot in my work, that it’s really hard to change something that has been embedded for such a long time,” said Sowemimo. “And I think a key part of why we have a lot of these issues [is that] people are just not willing to change their practice.”
Broaching inappropriate behaviour can be difficult, given that most NHS staff have good intentions and want to help people. “People… feel like they’re underpaid, and they do work particularly altruistically,” Sowemimo said. “So telling them that they’re not being altruistic, that they might be being biased or discriminatory, people are going to [think that’s] quite rude.”
In recent years, there has been increasing political scepticism from the government surrounding the need to address inequalities in the NHS. In 2023, for example, the then health secretary Steve Barclay ordered the NHS to stop recruiting for roles by focusing on diversity and inclusion. Health equity commitments have also been discarded – the Maternity Disparities Taskforce set up under former Prime Minister Boris Johnson in 2022 met only twice in 2023 rather than the scheduled six times, and reported little progress.
But there is hope on the horizon: the current Labour government has committed to a Race Equality Act, which includes several provisions around improving healthcare outcomes for BME people, including closing maternal health gaps and improving diversity in clinical trial recruitment. However, the current geopolitical climate could reverse efforts. US president Donald Trump’s executive order banning diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programmes across the federal government may have a ripple effect for UK organisations, from which the public sector may not be exempt.
“There’s a lot of momentum around the push-back; we’re very much influenced by US politics,” Sowemimo said. Despite the hurdles, she isn’t going to stop banging the drum about healthcare inequalities. “I’ve always said that, sometimes, the work we’re doing is just to stand still,” she said. “It’s really hard when you’re in a time where you’re not actually fighting for progress, and no one’s going to say, ‘You’re the person that got that bill [or] that got these people their rights’. In fact, you just fought to make sure their rights weren’t removed.”
14 May 2025 | Asia and Pacific, Burma, News, Volume 54.01 Spring 2025
This article first appeared in Volume 54, Issue 1 of our print edition of Index on Censorship, titled The forgotten patients: Lost voices in the global healthcare system, published on 11 April 2025. Read more about the issue here.
Four years ago, the military junta in Myanmar overthrew the government in a coup following a national election. While the liberal democratic National League for Democracy won by a landslide, the military alleged widespread fraud, justifying its seizure of power.
Tens of thousands of people took to the streets for mass protests, and the military responded with brutal violence.
Civil defence forces were formed in a huge movement of resistance, including by ethnic minority rebel groups that have fought with the government for decades. Violence has escalated, and the coup continues to claim the lives of thousands of civilians (a conservative estimate) and displace millions more.
In post-coup Myanmar, the internet has become a weapon and the military government has carried out hundreds of internet shutdowns and heavily censored social media in an effort to curb insurgency.
Before 2021, several peace organisations operated in the country, including those advocating for a gender-inclusive process to end the conflict between the government and ethnic armed groups. These include the Alliance for Gender Inclusion in the Peace Process (AGIPP), the Mon Women’s Network, and the Gender Equality Network.
But the websites for these organisations are now broken or no longer exist. The women who run them have had to shift their attention towards a more urgent fight to stop the widespread sexual and gendered violence being committed by the current regime while attempting to operate within a “digital dictatorship”, as labelled by UN human rights experts. Many of these women have fled their home country.
Unable to return to Myanmar, they have built remote digital activism movements, such as the Sisters2Sisters campaign – an online organisation working to build global solidarity for Myanmar’s women and orchestrate online campaigns from outside the country. This includes exposing mass sexual violence, often against ethnic minority women and girls, extrajudicial killings of young people, and violence towards other marginalised communities, such as LGBTQ+ groups.
Among the millions of young people who have left the country are Flora and Elle (not their real names), who fled from Myanmar to neighbouring Thailand in 2023. Both worked in gender and youth-focused resistance movements and now do advocacy work from abroad. In order to work within the confines of Myanmar’s censorship and Thailand’s amenability to the junta, they take refuge in pseudonyms, discreet meeting rooms and virtual private networks (VPNs). I spoke to them both over a joint call, secured via VPN.
Elle, from Sagaing Region, told Index: “Because of the fighting between the resistance forces and the military, the military shuts down the internet intentionally because they don’t want [news of] the killings or massacre to spread online.”
I first met Elle in Thailand at a meeting about gender-focused advocacy in Myanmar. I asked her about the countless organisations whose websites have been deleted or have stopped posting online.
“[This] is one of the major problems with organisations working on women’s rights [and human rights],” she said. “When we publish or announce cases, we have to be aware of the sensitivities of the data and [the danger of] publishing from official websites and social media.
“The Myanmar military has tracked down these posts. They don’t target every post but they have a team that specifically looks at data and news from [these] organisations – and if it’s within their reach, the [organising] in that township will be shut down.”
Flora comes from Kayin State, a district largely populated by Kayin people (also known as Karen people) – an ethnic minority group that has become a hub for the resistance movement and has been targeted by the military since 2021. She herself is Kayin.
“As active [resistance organisation] members, we face a lot of difficulties and challenges,” she said. “Because of the internet shutdowns, we don’t have internet access, and … the military banned VPNs.”
In January this year, the junta passed the Cybersecurity Law which, it claims, aims to “protect and safeguard the sovereignty and stability of the nation from being harmed by cyberthreats, cyberattacks or cyber misuse through the application of electronic technologies”.
Within the wide-reaching law is an official ban on unauthorised use of VPNs, with a prison sentence of up to six months and a fine if someone is found with one on their device.
“This impacts every organisation that has supported democracy,” Flora explained. “If we use a VPN and they find it on our phones, they will arrest and prosecute us.”
Digital access has been a crucial part of the resistance movement, and organisers and protesters have been targeted for digital communications since the February 2021 coup, leading to arrests and shutdowns.
“Look at history,” said Flora. “In 1988, there was no internet and information was locked down. We didn’t know what really happened on the ground so it was easy for the government to control information.”
That was the year of the 8888 Revolution, which saw youth-led resistance to the government and nationwide protests in support of democracy and human rights. A violent response saw more than 3,000 people killed (with particular cruelty inflicted on ethnic minorities such as the Kayin) and hundreds of thousands displaced. The similarities between today and 1988 show how Myanmar has both a turbulent past and a longstanding legacy of community action.
But Flora said there was a difference between then and now. “Since the beginning, the military has tried to control the internet but the young generations know the effects of technology,” she said. “We have VPNs and we have strategies to continue our activities. Youth groups spread knowledge about democracy even with the military trying to cut the internet.”
Pro-democracy groups organise largely through encrypted online platforms such as Signal, using VPNs and burner phones. They gain information on the crimes of the junta against civilians, which includes mass rape and forcing women to become domestic labourers when their husbands have been killed or sent to war.
Platforms such as Sisters2Sisters also continue to publish these crimes and call for the international community to take action.
There is another unexpected way that Myanmar’s citizens can continue to communicate freely with the outside world – by using Starlink, the global satellite internet system owned by Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
The system is not licensed in Myanmar, but illegal services still operate and Elle and Flora use it to talk to their families back home.
“It’s the only way, so there are secret shops for locals – our families go to these shops to call us,” said Elle.
In Thailand, safe spaces in Bangkok offer hubs for exiled female activists to reconvene, holding inter-ethnic dialogues and combining the efforts of groups that were previously divided on lines of ethnicity and religion. These conversations, along with communication with groups within Myanmar, have helped to consolidate organising efforts into mass insurgencies of rebel fighters who are continuing to gain ground in Myanmar’s jungles.
Digital organising is key to gaining international awareness, and Elle has been working hard to get multilateral bodies to recognise and act on the atrocities.
“No matter how much we are trying to support the rights of women and LGBTQ+ communities, we need support from the international community,” she said. Even though the UN has a special mission to Myanmar, Western governments have shown relatively little outrage at the ongoing abuses, and there has been very little military aid for resistance forces.
For campaigners such as Flora and Elle, their activism represents more than a political stance – it’s a deeply personal pursuit, with their livelihoods and the safety of their families hinging on it. Their work is fuelled by the hope that by exposing the junta’s crimes and continuing to grow insurgency movements, it will pressure global leaders to act and the junta’s rule will be shortened.
But even though they are no longer in the country, the new Cybersecurity Law shows that they are increasingly under threat.
“We will be prosecuted because we are working on human rights,” said Flora. “If [you] share information against the military, you are criminalised. I am so worried about this. Even if we are outside Myanmar, the law applies to every Myanmar citizen. I am really worried about our activities because access to information is so important.”
When asked if they could safely return to Myanmar to visit their families, both of them give painful laughs. “In Myanmar, everyone has a list of criminal charges. If they want to arrest you, they will always have a reason to do so,” said Elle.
Within the sanctuary of (relative) freedom in Thailand, Flora and Elle are continuing their movement online.
“We need to know what is happening in Myanmar,” said Elle. “Right now, every youth and woman is living in fear because [the junta] restricted the internet … to cover [up] all the injustices.”
12 May 2025 | Europe and Central Asia, News, Turkey
Young people in Turkey have a lot to feel enraged about, from worsening living conditions to the government’s rampant corruption. Since 2015, I have felt my own fair share of rage.
That was the year my father, Can Dündar, a journalist and former editor-in-chief of the opposition daily newspaper Cumhuriyet, was imprisoned on trumped up terror charges.
Pro-government press outlets told lies about him and our family, and prosecutors sought multiple life sentences for his “crime” of reporting on covert arms shipments to Syria. Although he was released nearly 100 days later thanks to public solidarity and a Supreme Court decision, my family was eventually forced into exile, with my parents now living in Germany and myself in the UK.
My father likens Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s tactics to those of Vladimir Putin and multiple other global dictators. “Arrest the opposition, weaponise the judiciary, silence the media, spread fear and disinformation, protect your throne,” he has told me.
Now, ten years later, I have hardly been able to sleep since youth-led protests erupted across Turkey last month following the arrest of Istanbul’s mayor and President Erdoğan’s main rival, Ekrem İmamoğlu. He has been sent to Silivri Prison (also known as Marmara), the same jail my father was imprisoned in.
Once again, this represents a devastating attack on Turkey’s democratic rights and freedom of speech. I’ve been following reports from the handful of independent media that are still operating. According to Reporters Without Borders (RSF), 90% of the media in Turkey is now under government control, which has allowed pro-government disinformation to run riot.
After 22 years in power, Erdoğan’s regime has left the economy in ruins, corrupted institutions, and suppressed basic rights. Since 2016, close to 150 local mayors have been dismissed or detained, and replaced with government-appointed bureaucrats. Leaders from three major political parties are now in prison. İmamoğlu and 91 elected officials from the Istanbul Mayor’s office face false corruption charges. It’s a mockery of justice – especially as so much of the ruling party’s corruption avoids scrutiny, and journalists, lawyers and anyone else who draws attention to the government are prosecuted.
Whilst protests continue despite blanket bans in major cities, digital censorship is rife as social media networks have been stifled by low bandwidth. X complied with government requests to shut down hundreds of accounts; TV news coverage has been cut and channels have been threatened with the cancellation of their licences. Meanwhile, 1,133 protestors have been arrested, with many beaten and detained. More than 300 of those arrested are students, and face potential jail sentences and a ban from ever running for political office, not to mention missing their studies. Footage of police brutality continues to fill my social media feeds – crowds of young people beaten and wounded, or shot with tear gas and rubber bullets, some directly in the eye.
The student demonstrations in İstanbul have ignited mass protests in nearly all Turkish cities. Young people have united across ideological and economic divides and catalysed a fractured political opposition into action, symbolised by the chant, “No liberation alone, all of us or none”. At one rally, Özgür Özel, the leader of the main political opposition the Republican People’s Party (CHP), thanked young people for ignoring his caution and taking the lead. A young man was pictured carrying his father on his back to the polls that had been set up to support the detained Istanbul mayor’s candidacy as a presidential candidate against Erdoğan; 15 million people turned out to vote for him in a day.
The spirit of solidarity continues to grow against increasing cruelty. Mothers who have spoken out for their children’s arrest have been detained themselves. Teachers supporting their students’ rights have been sacked, and students at hundreds of high schools have organised sit-ins to show solidarity with them. Thanks to the mobilisation, nearly half of the young people arrested have been released but 48 remain in prison. The political opposition has organised a nationwide boycott of pro-government businesses, and people have been detained for promoting it.
But people continue to show dissent. The CHP holds weekly peaceful gatherings across different cities and municipalities of Istanbul to keep the momentum going. The government recently blocked the access of spotlights to one major gathering in the Beyazıt district. Thousands of people pulled up their phone’s flashlights instead, defying the darkness and lighting up the town square and each other’s faces.
Despite digital censorship, the internet is also being used as a convening space. The Istanbul mayor’s account is currently banned from posting on X, so supporters have reacted by changing their profile photos to his, sprouting countless İmamoğlu accounts across the platform. When X started shutting these down for “likeness” complaints, they got creative by making alternative, hilarious versions of his photo instead. A whack-a-mole scenario has unfolded where every act of oppression creates its own act of resistance.
Today, one in four people aged 15 to 24 in Turkey is neither working nor in school. Youth unemployment has hit a record high in the country. Gallup’s Global Emotions Report conducted across 116 countries found that Turkey scored near the bottom of its rankings for “positive experiences” in 2024, as it has done since 2020, with high levels of unhappiness and anger. This social environment has no doubt fueled the protests.
A tweet from author, editor and teacher Taner Beyter sums it up: “Young friends, we have nothing to lose. We won’t be able to buy a car or a house. We won’t have stocks. Even if we succeed in the exams, we’ll be singled out in interviews. If we are taken to court, we don’t have ‘our guy’ to bail us out. We won’t get rich in this corrupt economy. Let’s carry on resisting against those stealing our future.”
For many Turkish youths, this is their first protest movement against a government they’ve only ever known as Erdoğan’s – just as mine was during the 2013 Gezi Park protests, a wave of demonstrations that began with the demolition of Istanbul’s Gezi Park. It quickly sparked into a movement against mounting injustices. At their core, both movements have their roots in inequality and crackdowns on free expression, and have been driven by a hope for change.
The millions who came out to the streets during the Gezi Park protests have since been separated and many were individually targeted. Once the crowds dissipated, no longer linked arm-in-arm, people were easier to subdue and prosecute with chilling effects.
But decades of crackdowns have failed to silence young people in Turkey. A photo on my X feed shows a poster raised by a young protester. Under the names of those who were killed during Gezi Park, a note reads: “I was nine years old then when my brothers stood up for me. I may have missed meeting them, but they’ve all gained a place in me. I promise I won’t let this be.”
There’s hope in collective reaction. Youth movements propel frustrations into action, catalysing a fractured opposition to work together for common goals. Established political parties may struggle to meet their demands at first, but they are slowly being shaped by them and changing their approach.
Around the world, young dissidents are speaking out to demand a better future in the face of mounting challenges from inequality to global conflict, state corruption to environmental decline.
Still, pressures against them are mounting. Their legitimate demands are being criminalised across the world from Iran to Palestine, USA to Belarus, Serbia to Myanmar, and more.
This is why at PEN International, the world’s largest association of writers, we’re building a youth network called the Young Writers Committee with representatives from 58 countries. We launched our web platform Tomorrow Club last week along with a podcast series, to amplify the stories of brave young people from around the world, and to create spaces for them to collaborate, learn about each other’s lives and struggles, and discuss how to cope with them.
It’s clear to see the shared experience across borders. We are all suffering from a shrinking space for free expression, and we want to uplift each other, exchange tools and tales, and establish supportive links for a shared future.
There is a common pride in the word “youth”. Although it paints a massively diverse group with a single brush, it can also help us come together against urgent challenges.
Cihan Tugal, a sociology professor at Berkeley University in California, USA, recently noted: “When Erdoğan fights for himself, he is also fighting for Trump, [Narendra] Modi, [Javier] Milei and Orbán, even if their interests do not always align. When the students and others in the street struggle against Erdoğan, they are also fighting for the rest of the world.”
That type of togetherness is demonstrated by young people protesting in Turkey and other countries. We should support and empower them to keep going. Their strong stance for justice and a better, fairer future can bring together fractured masses and pave the way against rising tides of authoritarianism.
1 May 2025 | Americas, News, Venezuela
This article first appeared in Volume 54, Issue 1 of our print edition of Index on Censorship, titled The forgotten patients: Lost voices in the global healthcare system, published on 11 April 2025. Read more about the issue here.
When lawyer Perkins Rocha was seized by forces while leaving a pharmacy in Caracas on 27 August 2024, his family found out he had been taken only when they saw a post on social media platform X.
A frantic investigation began to find out where Rocha, the legal co-ordinator for Venezuela’s election campaign for the political opposition, was being held – and to speak to those who had seen what had happened.
“Witnesses told us that hooded men approached him and a strong struggle began. They hit him and dragged him to one of the unmarked vehicles they were in, and took him away,” his son Santiago told Index. The family haven’t seen or heard from him since.
The highest number of political prisoners in Latin America
Rocha’s case is far from an isolated one. According to human rights organisation Foro Penal, Venezuela had 1,196 political prisoners as of 3 February 2025. The country has the most political prisoners in Latin America – followed by Cuba with 1,150 – and has a history of using repression and arbitrary detentions as a means of silencing and punishing those with anti-government views.
This pattern has intensified following the July 2024 presidential election, which incumbent Nicolás Maduro insisted he won despite evidence from voting tally receipts showing opposition candidate Edmundo González Urrutia won by a landslide with 67% of the vote.
Protests demanding that the state acknowledge the opposition’s legitimate win followed, and with them a swathe of arrests and detentions during random street searches by police looking for content on people’s phones that criticised the government. Others were detained during Operation Knock Knock, where security forces arrived at people’s houses (often late at night) to arrest them and take them to prison.
Arbitrary detentions designed to force dissenters to stay silent started well before last year’s election. But according to human rights group The Venezuelan Education-Action Programme on Human Rights (Provea), the sheer number of arrests in a short space of time during the 2024 crackdown was on a different level from previous years. Between 29 July and 13 August, roughly 2,400 people were arrested, which is an average of 150 arrests a day.
It is not only the scale of detentions that highlights the intensified repression but also the charges against those being held. According to Marino Alvarado, legal action co-ordinator at Provea, all the prisoners were initially charged with terrorism, including children and teenagers. Maduro referred to those detained as “terrorists” in a televised address.
“In some cases, in addition to the crime of terrorism, [they were charged with] treason, criminal association and other crimes, but all were tried by anti- terrorism courts,” Alvarado told Index. Legal representation is also unsatisfactory, with public lawyers being “imposed” on political prisoners rather than them having the option to choose a “trusted, private lawyer”. “In addition to having a lot of work, public lawyers receive direct orders from the state, and detained people are left without the right to a defence,” said Alvarado.
Dire conditions within prisons
Conditions within prisons are notoriously grim. Some do not permit visits from families, but others allow them every 15 days – although sometimes these are cancelled by the authorities. When people do see their loved ones, it is often a heart- wrenching experience. “I noticed he was shaky and nervous and I asked him what was wrong,” said Maritza, whose name has been changed for her own safety and for that of her son, who was detained a few days after the July 2024 protests. She described him as a young man who was normally calm and confident.
“Eventually he said to me, ‘Mum, when I get out of here I’m going to tell you everything I’ve been through, but while I’m here I’m going to keep quiet and endure what I’m living [through] because I don’t want to anger [the authorities].’” A report from the Committee for the Freedom of Political Prisoners (CLIPPVE) highlighted that food rations inside the prisons were often tiny and insufficient, sometimes contained insects and were rotten or not sufficiently cooked. The information is based on testimonies from families of those in jail, as well as ex-prisoners. Many of the prisoners have lost weight and have experienced stomach illnesses. One woman whose son has been held in Tocuyito Prison said she couldn’t even recognise him when she saw him. “He was so thin and malnourished that I had him in front of me and I wouldn’t know it was him,” she said.
In November and December, three political prisoners died. One of them, Jesús Manuel Martínez Medina, was detained on 29 July and allegedly mistreated and denied the necessary medical care to treat his Type II diabetes, according to CLIPPVE. The NGO says the 36-year-old’s health deteriorated rapidly due to lack of treatment. Although he was transferred to hospital, he died on 14 November during an operation to amputate his legs.
Medical attention is severely lacking in the prisons. Santiago Rocha said he was constantly worried about the health of his father, who suffers from hydrocephalus – a build-up of fluid in the brain. He has a fitted valve connected from his brain to his stomach to drain the fluid.
“We always have this fear that no one is watching him, no one is checking on him. Any blow or movement that is abrupt could alter the functioning of that valve and the hose,” the 30-year-old said. He eventually discovered his father had been taken to el Helicoide, a notorious jail known for holding political prisoners and for its use of torture. “We don’t know if my dad has seen the sun in days, weeks or months, if he has eaten well or if they have tortured him,” he added.
Erosion of a democratic state
Some of those taken have been tortured. One of those is Jesús Armas, an engineer, human rights activist and member of the opposition campaign team, who was taken by hooded individuals on 10 December 2024 while leaving a restaurant in Caracas and whose whereabouts were not known for days. “His girlfriend managed to see him for 15 minutes before he was transferred to el Helicoide prison. He told her he had been held in a clandestine house, suffocated with a bag and left tied to a chair for several days,” said Genesis Davila, a lawyer and founder of Defiende Venezuela, an organisation that presents human rights violations in Venezuela to international legal institutions.
As is the case with many political prisoners, public prosecutors, judges and defence lawyers denied knowing about Armas’s detention for days. “But while they said this, Jesús had already been presented before a court, there was already a prosecutor who knew the case and there was also a public defender who had been assigned to [his]’ case,” Davila said.
Repression has intensified under the socialist regime. When Hugo Chávez first took office in 1999, he did so on a wave of popular support and spent huge amounts on social programmes such as adult literacy projects and free community healthcare for impoverished communities, largely funded by the country’s oil wealth.
But alongside this he started to concentrate power, taking control of the Supreme Court and undermining the ability of journalists, human rights defenders and other Venezuelans to exercise fundamental rights, according to a Human Rights Watch report that reflected on his legacy.
Maduro took over the presidency when Hugo Chávez died of cancer in 2013. A drop in oil prices, mismanagement of resources and corruption led to a dire economic and humanitarian crisis (exacerbated by US sanctions, according to many analysts). Brutal state crackdowns on anti- government protests in 2014, 2017 and 2019 led to deaths and mass detentions. For Phil Gunson, a senior analyst at the think-tank International Crisis Group, repression has worsened significantly in Venezuela since 1999. The less popular the government became, the more it used repression to stay in power, which became even clearer in its use of heavy-handed tactics in the 2024 protests.
“The government is entirely dependent on the army and the police,” said Gunson. “That doesn’t just mean harassing and detaining dissidents but treating them so badly that no one dares to protest.” The analyst says impunity is another reason for rising repression. “Venezuelans have no recourse if they suffer abuse at the hands of the government, and members of the security forces can be fairly certain there will be no consequences if they commit human rights abuses.”
For those with families in prison, their daily nightmare is unbearable – yet they say giving up hope for their loved ones’ release and a free Venezuela is not an option. “I try to keep him in mind as I go about my day-to-day life, asking myself what he would want me to do at this moment,” Santiago Rocha said, describing his dad as a loving father and a man with strong ideals. “I keep him like this so I don’t feel far away from him and remember that all the work he – and the people who have worked with him – have done will not be in vain.
