A ‘revolving door’ for Venezuela's political prisoners?
As President Nicolas Maduro begins his third term, families continue to call for the release of activists and dissidents.
In August, activist and engineer Jesus Armas attended a vigil for Venezuela’s political prisoners: some who had been swept up in a recent postelection crackdown and others who had languished in jail for years.
The then-37-year-old listened to impassioned speeches, gazed at posters emblazoned with the faces of those behind bars, and silently lit a candle in their honour.
But four months later, on December 10, Armas was carted off to prison himself.
Witnesses saw hooded men seize him from a cafe in the capital Caracas and bundle him into a silver vehicle with no licence plates. For days, no one knew where he was. Only in mid-December did his family discover he was in government custody.
Now, his loved ones are among those attending vigils, wistfully lighting candles for him.
“We feel incomplete. Every day is exhausting,” said his girlfriend, Sairam Rivas.
She described Armas as an affectionate person who loves music and helping people. “It’s distressing to have a person who is missing, to never be able to see them, to not know how they are or what conditions they are in.”
In the lead-up to this month’s inauguration of President Nicolas Maduro, Venezuela released hundreds of political prisoners, many rounded up in last year’s post-election unrest.
But human rights groups warn this does not signal an easing of Venezuela’s repression. New prisoners, including Armas, have been added to the state’s collection of detainees.
“The effect is a revolving door,” said Genesis Davila, a lawyer and founder of Defiende Venezuela, a human rights organisation that presents evidence of rights violations to international organisations like the United Nations.
Venezuela has not stopped arresting political dissidents, she explained. “The government is just being more selective about who it takes.”
Continuing arrests
Last year’s contested presidential election shone a spotlight on Venezuela’s human rights record — and its track record of politically motivated arrests.
On July 28, Venezuelans cast ballots for their next president, and shortly after polls closed, election officials declared Maduro, the two-term incumbent, the winner.
But the result was announced without the usual breakdown of voting statistics, and the opposition coalition quickly cried foul. It released what appeared to be copies of the official voting tallies, showing that Maduro had lost by a wide margin.
Protests erupted, calling for Maduro to step down. But Venezuelan security forces attempted to stifle the demonstrations with a heavy-handed crackdown, resulting in 25 people killed and nearly 2,000 detained.
Still, in the lead-up to Maduro’s inauguration on January 10, the government touted the fact that it had released nearly 1,515 of those swept up in the post-election violence.

But arrests have continued. On January 7, Enrique Marquez, one of Maduro’s election rivals, was taken.
That same day, the leading opposition candidate in the race, Edmundo Gonzalez, announced his son-in-law Rafael Tudares Bracho had been abducted in front of his children. His whereabouts remain unknown.
As of January 20, there were 1,601 political prisoners held by the state, according to the Venezuelan human rights group Foro Penal. It logged 83 new arrests in the first 12 days of January alone.
Gonzalez himself remains in exile, after Venezuelan authorities issued a warrant for his arrest in September on charges that include usurping power.
‘State terrorism’ to instil fear
Armas had been part of Gonzalez’s campaign for the presidency last year.
An outspoken activist with a broad smile, warm eyes and a crop of dark brown hair, Armas had long wanted to see change in Venezuela — a country that was once the richest in South America.
Bountiful oil reserves had brought record prosperity to Venezuela in 1970, but in subsequent decades, notably in the 1980s and 2010s, oil prices dropped.
The country’s economy has since struggled with issues like high inflation, corruption, crumbling infrastructure and foreign sanctions.
Decrying the decline of Venezuela’s institutions, Armas founded a nonprofit, Ciudadania Sin Limites, in 2012 dedicated to improving access to essential public services in underserved communities.
But his family believes it was his role in the 2024 presidential campaign that led to his arrest — and subsequent torture.

Rivas said she spent six days looking for Armas after his abduction, only to be met with denials from public prosecutors, judges and other officials. No one seemed to know where he was.
She found out later that Armas had already gone before a court. He had not been allowed to choose his own lawyer: A public defender had been assigned instead.
Rivas was eventually able to see Armas for a 15-minute visit at a detention facility known for rats and other unsanitary conditions.
“He told me he’d first been in a clandestine house for three days, suffocated with black bags and they asked him where opposition leaders were,” Rivas said.
Armas has since been transferred to El Helicoide, a shopping centre turned detention facility in Caracas with a reputation for torture.
According to a December report, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights found that Venezuela had used “state terrorism” to instil terror in citizens after the election.
Among its tactics were extrajudicial killings, arbitrary detentions and “cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment”.
‘I have cried too much’
Diana Sosa, who is using a pseudonym for fear of repercussions, said she spent a month searching for her 18-year-old son, a student, after he was arrested in the days after the election.
Eventually, she too discovered he was in a government detention facility, not far from the city of Maracay.
Sosa now rents a room near the detention facility, five hours away from her home, so she can take him food and attend the visiting sessions permitted once every 15 days.
This month’s flurry of new detentions has left her overwhelmed with panic. Sosa has become apprehensive about her own safety and that of her family at home.
“I wonder if they will kidnap me without my relatives knowing where I am. I’m so afraid for my other son back home, away from my protection and care,” Sosa told Al Jazeera.

But she also continues to fear for her son in prison. Through tears, she recalled how his lips were white when she recently visited him. He told her he had resorted to eating balls of rolled-up toilet paper to treat the diarrhoea he had contracted.
“I saw him dehydrated, his eyes sunken and his gaze vacant. It was a dull, faraway look, and that killed me,” Sosa said. “I have cried too much for what my son has lived through and for how vilely they have treated him.”
The Committee for the Freedom of Political Prisoners in Venezuela (CLIPPVE) has collected similar testimonies from ex-prisoners, as well as the friends and family of those still detained.
In a report released in December, the committee raised serious concerns about the conditions inside Venezuela’s prisons.
Pasta in some detention centres was allegedly topped with rotting meat. Strands of hair were found in plates of beans. And some food was reportedly served in a state of decomposition, with cockroaches and worms mixed in.
The report said prisoners developed stomach problems from the food. Many also didn’t have access to drinking water.
False promises
Despite the recent announcements of prisoner releases, representatives from CLIPPVE remain sceptical. Some, like Sosa, were promised their loved ones would be freed, but that has yet to happen.
“There is a lot of anger because the authorities have used the releases in a very opaque and obscure way,” a representative from CLIPPVE, who also has a family member in prison, told Al Jazeera on the condition of anonymity.
Some families have even faced reprimand and threats of arrest for protesting the continued detention of their loved ones.
Rivas, who is part of CLIPPVE, underscored that continuing to fight is imperative. As attention fades, so too does the pressure on the government to release the prisoners.
“I am very aware that the worst thing that can happen to a political prisoner is oblivion,” Rivas said.
For Davila, the need to raise awareness is at the heart of her mission at Defiende Venezuela. She has documented Armas’s case as well as many others.
“At least by reporting to international organisations, we make sure that there is a record of the human rights violations that are occurring, because if we only relied on the organisations in Venezuela, we wouldn't have any record,” Davila said.
Rivas, meanwhile, has not heard from her boyfriend in a month. He is no longer allowed visits or calls.
Worse still, the threat of arrest now hangs over Rivas too. Minister of the Interior, Justice and Peace Diosdado Cabello called Rivas out by name in his weekly television show, Con El Mazo Dando — a religious reference that loosely translates to “hitting with a club”.
Critics have accused Cabello of using the platform to identify targets for political repression.
“This has been quite distressing,” Rivas said. She added that she currently takes care of Armas’s elderly parents. “If we were both arrested, his parents would have no one to turn to.”
Despite the risks, Rivas is resolute that silence is not an option.
“Those who are detained are in that situation for defending the truth, for defending democracy,” she said. “Every day I am thinking about what we can do for the freedom of Jesus and other political prisoners — and to ensure the creation of historical memory in the country, so that these kinds of things never happen again.”