The UN is concerned about the arrests in Venezuela on the eve of the protests

The United Nations has expressed alarm after receiving reports of arbitrary detentions and intimidation in Venezuela ahead of opposition marches on Thursday.

The office of UN Human Rights Chief Volker Türk wrote on X that “now is the time to work to ease tensions and reduce the risk of increased violence.”

It refers to the arrest of Carlos Correa, head of an NGO that supports press freedom, who was seized by unidentified hooded men on Tuesday.

The government of Nicolas Maduro has deployed thousands of police officers to the country’s capital, Caracas, ahead of an inauguration ceremony on Friday in which the government-allied National Assembly plans to swear Maduro in for a third term.

The opposition, for its part, called on its supporters to turn out en masse in nationwide protests on Thursday in an attempt to prevent Maduro from being sworn in.

In the city of Valencia, police used tear gas against protesters, Reuters reports.

In western Caracas, Niegalos Payares, 70, told a news agency that “I’m not afraid, I lost my fear a long time ago.”

And in the city of Maracay, in central Venezuela, Roisa Gomez told a Reuters reporter that she was “fighting for my vote, which I cast for Edmundo Gonzalez. They cannot steal the election.”

Maduro was declared the winner of July’s presidential election by the government-dominated National Electoral Council (CNE), but the CNE has yet to provide detailed voting data to back up the claim.

Venezuela’s opposition and many democratic governments around the world, including the United States, rejected the results as falsified and recognized opposition candidate Edmundo González as the legitimate president-elect.

Gonzalez fled Venezuela in September and has been living in Spain, but this month he embarked on a tour of the Americas to drum up international support.

In Washington, he met with US President Joe Biden, who said that Venezuela deserves a “peaceful transfer of power.”

In Panama, González deposited thousands of voting results that the opposition had collected in a state bank.

The tally was a key piece of evidence offered by the opposition to show that Gonzalez, not Maduro, had won the election.

With the help of official election witnesses, they managed to collect 85% of the results and upload them to the Internet.

Independent observers and media organizations that have reviewed them say they show that Gonzalez defeated Maduro in a landslide.

In the immediate aftermath of the election, many countries said they would refrain from recognizing Maduro until the CNE released the tally.

With the CNE showing no signs of it, and Maduro’s scheduled inauguration less than 24 hours away, more and more countries are backing Edmundo Gonzalez.

Maduro’s government, meanwhile, has issued an arrest warrant for Gonzalez and is offering a $100,000 reward for information leading to his capture.

Due to the fact that Gonzalez is abroad, his relatives have become a target. On Tuesday, his son-in-law was grabbed by hooded men in Caracas.

María Corina Machado, the opposition leader whom González replaced on the ballot after she was barred from running on her own, was also targeted.

Machado, who has been hiding in Venezuela since the election, said security agents surrounded her elderly mother’s home in an attempt to intimidate her.

Rights groups also condemned the arrest of opposition politician Enrique Marquez, who ran against Maduro in July’s election before backing Edmundo Gonzalez.

Government officials accused him of orchestrating a coup against Maduro with the help of “mercenaries” they arrested on Tuesday, including US citizens.

On Thursday, the US State Department dismissed as “categorically false” accusations by Venezuelan officials of a plot to topple Maduro.