Earlier this month, Venezuela's President Nicolás Maduro suddenly discovered a concern for human rights. Maduro’s regime recently declared UN Human Rights chief Volker Türk persona non grata, a retaliatory gesture for the UN’s apparent failure to protect Venezuelan migrants deported from the US. The image of Maduro, a champion of jailing political opposition and crushing dissent, posing as a human rights hero would be laughable if it were not so dangerously cynical.
This latest action against a UN official is more of the same from Maduro’s regime. Last February, after Maduro’s foreign minister, Yván Gil, described the UN advisory office as “the private law firm of coup plotters and terrorist groups,” the regime forced the office to close. Their allegations of anti-government activity were, of course, never substantiated.
The timing of this shuttering was no coincidence. The Maduro regime was gearing up to pull off what was perhaps the largest electoral fraud in Latin American history. Despite hollow promises to appease the US, the regime never had any intention of holding free elections. Maduro’s government spent the weeks and months leading up to the July 2024 presidential election banning opponents from the contest and using the power of the state to ensure a Maduro reelection.
This pattern of repression culminated in the brazen 2024 election fraud. Perhaps one of the few things that the regime has ever been transparent about, the theft of the 2024 election was far from subtle. Multiple countries, from Colombia to Spain, reported that their official delegations to observe the election were either deported shortly after arrival or refused entry altogether.
In an October 2024 article, the co-director of ‘Laboratorio de Paz,’ a Venezuelan NGO dedicated to advancing democracy and human rights, reported that over 2,000 Venezuelans had been detained for political dissent. These mass detentions, coupled with high-profile abuses by Maduro, like the banning of his main opposition rival María Corina Machado from contesting the election, underscore the regime’s blatant disregard for democratic norms and rights.
Maduro’s recent attacks on the UN should be viewed in the very same cynical light. Maduro’s sudden “concern” for deportees is grossly hypocritical given the ease with which he imprisons Venezuelans at home. Meanwhile, investigations reveal that the Maduro regime has facilitated gang activities that fueled illegal immigration as a tactic to destabilise the US and give itself leverage at the negotiating table.
Ron MacCammon, a retired US Army Special Forces Colonel and Latin America expert, described how “gangs like Tren de Aragua don’t just operate with impunity—they operate with purpose, acting as armed proxies in a broader campaign.” Gang activity like that of Tren de Agua has played a serious role in drug trafficking, weapons smuggling, and other serious threats to the US. If President Maduro is so concerned about US treatment of Venezuelans crossing the border, he should consider not coordinating their journeys north.
If not a damascene conversion to the virtues of human rights, what could explain the Maduro regime’s recent attacks on the UN and Volker Türk? The answers presumably lie in a speech made by Türk to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva on June 27th. In the speech, Türk raised a litany of concerns on human rights in Venezuela. From concerns over “enforced disappearance,” “freedom of association,” and “allegations of torture and ill-treatment,” Türk revealed the grim reality of human rights in Venezuela. The regime’s designation of Türk as a persona non grata is a classic authoritarian tactic; in denouncing others, Maduro offers an accidental confession.
The Maduro regime’s long history of human rights abuses is just one of many reasons that the US and its allies should maintain Maduro’s international isolation, rather than heeding self-interested calls for rapprochement. When the US and others recognised Edmundo González as the legitimate winner of the 2024 Venezuelan presidential election, it sent a message to Maduro that his regime, upheld by the oppression of Venezuelans, would not be rehabilitated on the world stage. Maduro’s expulsion of Türk is the latest proof of his fragility under scrutiny and the necessity of keeping a spotlight on the Venezuelan regime.
Mackenzie France is a Young Voices contributor and director of strategy at the Pinsker Centre, a UK-based foreign policy think tank. He is also a Krauthammer Fellow at the Tikvah Fund.
