The socialist dictator of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, announced over the weekend that his regime has detained at least 2,000 Venezuelans as part of the ongoing crackdown on protests against Maduro’s attempts to steal the July 28 presidential election.
“We have 2,000 prisoners captured and from there they will go to Tocorón and Tocuyito [Venezuelan prisons], maximum punishment, justice. This time there will be no pardon, this time there will be no pardon, this time there will be Tocorón,” Maduro said on Saturday during a rally alongside his sympathizers.
The socialist dictator accused the protesters of allegedly burning down polling stations and one of the regional headquarters of the National Electoral Center (CNE). Maduro did not provide evidence for his accusations against the dissidents.
“They all confess, all of them, because there has been a strict legal process, led by the Attorney General’s Office, with full guarantees and they are all convicted and confessed,” Maduro said.
Venezuela is experiencing a new political crisis following the sham presidential election held on Sunday, July 28. The Venezuelan National Electoral Center — controlled in its entirety by the Maduro regime — claims that the socialist dictator “won” the sham election with roughly 51 percent of the votes and has been “reelected” for a new six-year term.
The Venezuelan opposition contested CNE’s “results,” claiming its candidate, Edmundo González, was the actual winner of the sham election. The opposition claims to be in possession of roughly 80 percent of vote tallies collected from voting stations across the country that, according to them, can demonstrate González achieved a landslide victory against Maduro, with an over 35-percent vote difference between González and Maduro.
Maduro has also requested that Venezuela’s top court, the Supreme Tribunal of Justice (TSJ) “review” the sham election’s claimed results. TSJ is another institution controlled in its entirety by the ruling socialists and openly loyal to Maduro.
The situation has led to nationwide protests, featuring dramatic instances of crowds toppling some of the statues of late dictator Hugo Chávez that the ruling socialists have erected all over the country. The Maduro regime responded to the protests with its characteristic brutal repression. Non-government organizations registered roughly a dozen deaths and confirmed 988 arbitrary detentions as of Sunday, of which 91 were of teenagers.
The Maduro regime’s crackdown has also seen the socialist dictator order that smartphone applications his regime operates, such as the VenApp social media platform, be updated with features that allow users to report dissidents so that they “can go against them.”
Additionally, the fierce crackdown has seen a relaunch of the “Operation Tun Tun” dissident crackdown campaign first introduced in 2017 by socialist strongman and suspected drug lord Diosdado Cabello.
Operation Tun Tun (“Knock Knock”), named after a Venezuelan Christmas song that invites people to open the doors of their homes to “people of peace,” involves Maduro regime security forces hunting and persecuting Venezuelan dissidents who have carried out purported “hate” campaigns in person or through social media against the authoritarian regime. The Maduro regime urges citizens to denounce dissidents, who then receive a visit from security officials in their homes, and get arrested.
After being arrested, the Maduro regime forces the detained individuals to “confess” and issue an “apology” to dictator Maduro and his socialist regime, which is then published by Maduro regime officials across their social media accounts.
La FANB en el municipio Maracaibo del estado Zulia, tras labores de investigación, análisis audiovisual y de trazas telefónicas, capturó a una ciudadana identificada como Iris Margarita Rincón Villasmil, a quien se le incautó un (01) teléfono celular con material de interés… pic.twitter.com/d5nBnEpv5A
— M/G Elio Estrada Paredes (@ElioEstrada18) August 3, 2024
“Operation Tun Tun is just beginning. Report if you have been the target of a physical or virtual hate campaign through social media,” CICPC police force director Douglas Rico posted on his Instagram account.
Last week, Maduro said that his regime would take the detained protesters and send them to the Tocorón and Tocuyito prisons — two penitentiary facilities that the ruling socialists emptied of its inmates in late 2023. The Tocorón prison is known for having served as the main headquarters of the Tren de Aragua transnational criminal organization before it was “raided” by Venezuelan security forces in September 2023, leading to the “disappearance” of Tren de Aragua’s leader Héctor “the Child” Guerrero.
Maduro said that the two prisons would become “re-education centers” for the detained protesters and said he would “make a bet” to see if the dissidents are re-educated.
“We are making a bet to see if these maximum security prisons achieve re-education and they become productive farms, that they get to produce and work, as in those days, when they were taken out to build highways,” he continued.
CNE has refused to publish vote tallies that can corroborate Maduro’s alleged “victory” and as a result, the socialist dictator’s claimed victory has been called into question by international organizations and several governments across the world, with countries such as Argentina and Chile calling the claimed results as fraudulent.
Countries such as the United States, Peru, Ecuador, Costa Rica, Uruguay, Panama, and others have recognized González as the winner of the election, while the European Union announced on Sunday that the tallies published by the opposition indicate that González “would appear to be the winner of the Presidential elections by a significant majority.”
In contrast, Russia, China, Cuba, Nicaragua, North Korea, Bolivia, Honduras, and Caribbean nations historically aligned with the Venezuelan socialist regime such as Dominica, Grenada, and Antigua and Barbuda are among the list of countries that have recognized Maduro as the “winner” of the sham election.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.