The News
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro blocked X after accusing the social media site’s owner Elon Musk of attempting to meddle in the country’s disputed election.
The order came after Maduro theatrically deleted WhatsApp off his phone on live TV amid a wider crackdown on social media as protests against his regime grew. In response, authorities have deployed Operation Knock Knock, in which government critics are arrested after opening the doors to their homes.
SIGNALS
Thousands arrested as Maduro tries to hold on to power
More than 2,000 people protesting against Maduro’s likely fraudulent win have been arrested in recent weeks, as the president argues that the opposition should be imprisoned, and media workers are deported from the country. The attempts to stifle dissent have meant that Venezuela is operating more like a police state, experts said: “Maduro has miscalculated — badly,” Ryan Berg, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told Bloomberg. “In order to remain in power, Maduro has moved the country in the direction of Nicaragua, which is a total police state.”
Government using ‘arbitrary’ rules for detentions
More people have been detained in recent weeks than in any previous protest against Maduro’s government. Police are using “arbitrary” rules to arrest Venezuelans, who are seeing their passports frozen and are being arrested in their homes. The crackdown is having a “chilling effect” on the nation, one analyst told The Associated Press. “It’s not just discouraging protests. People are scared to go on the streets period,” Phil Gunson, an analyst for the International Crisis Group, said. “There’s a sense that police have a quota to fill and anyone can be stopped and carted away as a suspected subversive.”
Children among those arrested
Many of the protesters are youth, some barely teenagers, Spanish outlet El País reported. That is prompting concern over the rights of the roughly 100 children arrested amid the mass crackdown. “We have seen that they are also detained in police and military cells and there is no provision for separating the adult detainees,” children’s rights lawyer Carlos Trapani told the paper. The children have not been able to contact their families, he added. “We do not understand how, without having sufficient elements of an ongoing investigation, they come to charge them with terrorism.”