Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights and Foro Penal have published a new report outlining patterns of political repression in Venezuela following the July 2024 presidential elections, and the 2025 parliamentary and regional elections. The report, titled Electoral Repression, Enforced Disappearances and Political Control in Venezuela, analyzes how President Nicolas Maduro’s regime has increasingly utilized enforced disappearances and hostage-taking to silence political opposition, ensure domestic control, and barter with other countries. The report’s publication follows RFK Human Rights’ and Foro Penal’s recent presentation of their findings to key stakeholders in Geneva, including diplomatic delegations.
Building upon two prior joint reports in 2020 and 2022, this new report examines how enforced disappearance continues to be deployed as part of the Maduro regime’s evolving criminal policy, specifically in relation to the three most recent election processes: the July 2024 presidential election, the May 2025 parliamentary and gubernatorial elections, and the July 2025 municipal election.
The report draws on over 200 documented cases of detention and enforced disappearance, including foreign nationals and dual citizens, exposing how repression has become a central tool of governance. The data illustrates how the Maduro regime has increasingly weaponized detention not only for domestic control but as a bargaining chip in international relations and foreign policy.
The report also includes individual case studies and stories that highlight the human toll of these trends. Cases cited include a Venezuelan journalist whose whereabouts remain unknown after he was kidnapped by state agents and a dual French-American citizen who was arbitrarily detained by Venezuelan authorities at the Colombian-Venezuelan border while on vacation in Colombia and held as a hostage for months before the Venezuelan government released him in a prisoner exchange with the United States.