\n<\/p>\n
Of all the government critics, few thought that Roc\u00edo San Miguel would be the one to disappear.<\/p>\n
Ms. San Miguel, 57, has long been one of Venezuela\u2019s best known security experts, a woman who dared investigate her country\u2019s authoritarian government even as others fled. She is also a moderate, has international recognition and appeared to have strong contacts in the secretive world of the Venezuelan military, qualities that her peers thought might protect her.<\/p>\n
But late last week, Ms. San Miguel arrived at the airport outside Caracas with her daughter, bound for what a relative called a short trip to Miami, when she was picked up by counterintelligence agents. Soon after, her family began to disappear, too. The daughter, two brothers and two former romantic partners. Gone.<\/p>\n
For four days, the only public information about Ms. San Miguel came from Venezuela\u2019s top prosecutor, who claimed on social media<\/a>, without providing evidence, that Ms. San Miguel had been linked to a plot to kill the country\u2019s president, Nicol\u00e1s Maduro.<\/p>\n Finally, on Tuesday evening, her lawyers said she had surfaced \u2014 and was being held in a notoriously brutal detention center. Her family was also in state custody.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The arrest of Ms. San Miguel, the head of a modest but influential nonprofit organization that monitors the armed forces, has triggered a small earthquake in Venezuela\u2019s human rights circles, where just a few months ago many watched with guarded anticipation as Mr. Maduro signed a deal<\/a> with the country\u2019s opposition, promising to work toward a free and fair presidential election later this year.<\/p>\n Political change, if still a far-off possibility, seemed worth dreaming about.<\/p>\n Now, the small group of activists, aid workers, critics, analysts, journalists and others who have been able to hang on inside the country \u2014 despite years of repression and economic crisis \u2014 are watching the space in which they operate narrow even further.<\/p>\n And as a result, the path toward democracy looks as difficult as ever.<\/p>\n A new law proposed by Mr. Maduro\u2019s party seeks to strictly regulate nonprofit organizations, prohibiting them from engaging in actions \u201cthat threaten national stability,\u201d leading to concerns that it will be used to criminalize these groups.<\/p>\n The country\u2019s leading opposition candidate, Mar\u00eda Corina Machado, has been disqualified from running in the presidential election, several of her staff members have been arrested and a violent, government-affiliated gang recently interrupted one of her events, bloodying supporters.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cIf this happened to Roc\u00edo San Miguel, then what\u2019s left for everybody else?\u201d said Laura Dib, who directs the Venezuela program at the Washington Office on Latin America.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The jailing of people the Maduro government considers a threat is not new. There are 263 political prisoners in Venezuela, according to a watchdog group, Foro Penal, many of whom have been held without trial for years.<\/p>\n What distinguishes Ms. San Miguel\u2019s case is not just how prominent and well connected she was \u2014 it\u2019s that the authorities detained her entire family, and then kept all of them without communication for days, a tactic known under international law as \u201cforced disappearance<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n Taken together, these measures are part a noteworthy shift in repression, said Gonzalo Himiob of Foro Penal, in which the government seeks out cases that draw media attention and uses detention tactics that are likely to escalate fear among those who challenge its rule.<\/p>\n \u201cThe government is crossing lines it had not crossed before,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n At the heart of these actions appears to be Mr. Maduro\u2019s own fear. Chavismo, the movement he leads, has governed Venezuela since his predecessor, Hugo Ch\u00e1vez, won a presidential election in 1998.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Mr. Ch\u00e1vez, and then Mr. Maduro, oversaw a socialist-inspired revolution that at first lifted many out of poverty. But in recent years, government mismanagement of the oil sector, as well as corruption and U.S. sanctions, have devastated the economy.<\/p>\n A humanitarian crisis inside the country has spilled out of its borders, with millions of Venezuelans seeking refuge elsewhere. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Mr. Maduro wants the U.S. to lift sanctions, which could help improve the country\u2019s financial situation, and which Washington has said it will do if Mr. Maduro makes moves to support democracy.<\/p>\n In October<\/a>, with cautious praise from the U.S. and its allies, Mr. Maduro signed a deal with the opposition to hold a presidential election.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Days later, the main opposition candidate, Ms. Machado, won a primary<\/a> vote with turnout that exceeded expectations and was seen as sign of Mr. Maduro\u2019s weakness.<\/p>\n The arrests of Ms. San Miguel and her family, Ms. Dib said, are a \u201cmessage to civil society, that they are not going to get what they want.\u201d Meaning, a real election.<\/p>\n Mr. Maduro, she added, \u201cis not willing to lose power.\u201d<\/p>\n Ms. San Miguel, a dual Venezuelan-Spanish citizen, is the head of Citizen Control, which has published an investigation on the number of people killed by state security forces and criticized a Venezuelan law allowing the use of deadly force during protests.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n On the morning of Feb. 9, Ms. San Miguel had arrived at the airport outside Caracas with her 26-year-old daughter, according to Minnie D\u00edaz Paruta, an aunt of the daughter.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Ms. San Miguel was approached by government agents and taken into custody.<\/p>\n Terrified, the daughter returned to Caracas. A day later, she returned to the airport to retrieve her luggage, but the young woman soon disappeared, failing to answer messages, said the aunt. Ms. San Miguel\u2019s brothers and former partners were detained around this time, according to Ms. D\u00edaz and other reports.<\/p>\n Two days later, Venezuela\u2019s top prosecutor, Tarek William Saab, announced<\/a> on the social media platform X that Ms. San Miguel was being held by the state, accused of involvement in an operation that he claimed sought Mr. Maduro\u2019s assassination.<\/p>\n He assured the public that the detention had taken place in accord with \u201cinternational standards for the protection of human rights.\u201d<\/p>\n (Mr. Maduro\u2019s government frequently claims to uncover assassination plots against him.)<\/p>\n Ms. San Miguel\u2019s lawyers were not permitted to see her or told where she was.<\/p>\n A group of human rights activists toured some of the country\u2019s detention centers, hoping to find her, Ms. Dib said, without success. It\u2019s unclear how she was eventually found.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The U.S. Embassy to Venezuela, which is in neighboring Colombia, said<\/a> the arrests followed \u201ca worrying trend of apparently arbitrary detentions of democratic actors.\u201d<\/p>\n The United Nations Human Rights Council, which in 2020 said<\/a> that Mr. Maduro had committed \u201ccrimes against humanity\u201d in his efforts to silence the opposition, issued a similar statement<\/a>.<\/p>\n