GENEVA: The United Nations human rights chief called on Friday for an international investigation of atrocities in Venezuela, blasting the government’s chronic refusal to probe security officers over the alleged killings of civilians.

“The failure to hold security forces accountable for such serious human rights violations suggests that the rule of law is virtually absent in Venezuela,” said Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, as his office launched a new report on the crisis-stricken country.

Zeid asked the UN Human Rights Council to set up its highest-level probe — a Commission of Inquiry — for Venezuela and said the International Criminal Court (ICC) might need to get further involved.

The Hague-based ICC in February opened a preliminary investigation into cri­mes allegedly committed by the security forces during a wave of protests against President Nicolas Maduro.

The UN rights office, which examined Maduro’s crackdown on protesters in a report last year, said its new findings related mostly to alleged abuses committed during purported anti-crime operations.

UN investigators have been denied access to Venezuela. Some of the findings were based on remote monitoring as well as interviews with victims, witnesses, civil society groups and others.

Other evidence includes material compiled by former attorney general Luisa Ortega Diaz, who was sacked by Maduro last August and is living in exile.

The report highlights alleged extrajudicial killings by officers involved in the Operations for the Liberation of the People. It said those officers, supposedly tasked with fighting crime, might have been responsible for more than 500 killings between July 2015 and March 2017, largely carried out in poor neighbourhoods.

Rights office spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani told reporters in Geneva that the victims were young men who “tended to fit the profile of suspected criminals”, and were “arrested and killed without judicial warrants”.

The operations were desi­gned to show Maduro was tough on crime, Shamdasani said.

The report also highlighted the “pervasive” impunity for Maduro and for officers blamed for killing at least 46 people during protests last year.

According to the UN, Ortega Diaz had issued dozens of warrants against officers linked to the deaths, but only one trial has started. “This impunity must end,” Zeid said in a statement.

Published in Dawn, June 23rd, 2018