(MENAFN- Gulf Times) Amnesty International yesterday accused Venezuela's security forces of thousands of extrajudicial executions targeting mainly poor young men.
COFAVIC, a Venezuelan non-governmental organisation representing relatives of victims, has documented 6,385 cases of extrajudicial executions that occurred between 2012 and 2017, according to the report.
The cases increased from 1,018 in 2014 to 2,379 in 2016.
An Amnesty press release put the number of extrajudicial executions at 8,292 between 2015 and 2017 alone.
Venezuela's attorney general's office, meanwhile, said that 4,667 people died at the hands of security officials in 2016.
Last year, 1,848 people died in the same circumstances between January and June, the Amnesty report quoted the office as saying.
'(In) the context of security operations, state officials, adopting a militarised approach to policing, have regularly used excessive and abusive force and, in some cases, have used lethal force with the intent to kill, Amnesty said.
Human rights violations that Amnesty has documented in Venezuela since the late 1990s include cases of torture, ill-treatment and extrajudicial executions by security forces.
Such cases are often attributed to armed confrontations and the victims are branded as criminals, although in reality they were protesters or unarmed people, according to the report.
'Venezuela is going through one of the worst human rights crises in its history, said Erika Guevara-Rosas, Amnesty's Americas director. The South American country is among the most violent in the world, with a homicide rate of 89 per 100,000 people, according to the report.
'The number of homicides in Venezuela is higher than those in countries at war, Amnesty representative Esteban Beltran said at a press conference in Buenos Aires.
The majority of the victims killed by both the security forces and criminals are young men from poor neighbourhoods.
In 2017, 95% of the victims were boys and men aged between 12 and 44 years, Amnesty said.
'(Thousands) of young men living in poverty are dying each year in a spiral of violence that the state has failed to stop, the rights group said.
More than 90% of homicides in Venezuela go unpunished, according to the report.
The response of the authorities to addressing the proliferation of firearms has meanwhile been 'weak and has failed to control access to guns or reduce armed violence, Amnesty said.
More than 2.3mn people are estimated to have left Venezuela due to its massive economic crisis and violence since 2014.
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