Eleven civilians killed, in addition to a military man and more than 1,000 people have been arrested since protests against Maduro’s re-election broke out.
Venezuela’s president, Nicolas Maduro, said Thursday that he enlists two maximum-security prisons to house protesters detained during protests that erupted after his disputed re-election.
“I am preparing two prisons that I must have ready in 15 days, they are already repairing,” Maduro said in an event broadcast on the state channel VTV.
“All the guarimberos (demonstrators) go to Tocorón and Tocuyito, maximum security prisons,” he added in relation to two prisons that were under criminal gang control for years until they were occupied by law enforcement last year.
Tocorón, for example, served as an operating center of the dreaded Aragua Train band.
More than 1,000 people have been arrested since protests against Maduro’s re-election erupted, which the opposition branded fraudulent.
“We have more than 1,200 captured and we are looking for 1,000 more and we are going to grab them, because they were trained in the United States, in Texas; in Colombia, Peru and Chile,” the president said, under intense international pressure for more transparency in the vote.
Maduro refers to protesters as “terrorists,” “criminals” and members of “new generation bands” who compared to gangs in Haiti and the Central American maras.
“They wanted to turn Venezuela into another Haiti,” the president said. “There is a long way to go, they are going to make roads,” he added about the “re-education” that will be implemented in these prisons.
Protests have left at least 11 civilians dead, in addition to a military man. The opposition figures the number of deaths at 16.
The opposition, led by María Corina Machado and her candidate, Edmundo González Urrutia, denounce a “cruel and repressive escalada of the regime.”
In the midst of the demonstrations there were skirmishes in which statues of the late former president Hugo Chávez were torn down, as well as some of the huge fences with Maduro’s face that cover avenues throughout the country.
This article has been translated after first appearing in Diario El Mundo