"The doll box:" The Venezuelan dictatorship's house of torture

The Venezuelan dictatorship continues to utilize brutal torture methods in state detention centers, despite recent attempts to collaborate with the U.N.’s Human Rights Commission, says Tamara Suju, executive director of the Casla Institute – a Prague based human rights group.

One of the most horrific forms of torture used by the General Directorate of Military Counterintelligence – one of the dictatorship’s principle intelligence services – is called the “doll box.”

#Venezuela. Así TORTURA el Regimen de Nicolas Maduro. Uno de los métodos denunciados x @caslainstitute que llamamos "LA CAJA DE MUñECAS" del #DGCIM.
No se quien es el autor del video, pero Gracias!!! pic.twitter.com/0uDiIehG66

— Tamara Suju (@TAMARA_SUJU) March 17, 2021

“Prisoners are placed in a 2 ft x 2 ft box. They are left there for hours, although some have spent upwards of a week inside,” Suju explained through an illustration prepared by the Casla Institute in anticipation of a report it will present to the Organization of American States in January on human rights violations in Venezuela.

The limited space means that the detainees, who are usually political prisoners, have to stand and have practically no space to sit or squat without hitting the walls.

The Casla Institute’s report also included the testimony of a victim who spent multiple nights in the “doll box.”

“I spent three days in that box, without food and water, without air, in complete darkness. I thought I saw lights and shadows speaking to me. I passed out three times from exhaustion, I peed and the walls were grabbing onto me. I was hallucinating.”

Suju added that many victims spend upwards of a week in the torture chamber, saying, “they feel as if they are suffocating, as if they are being buried alive. They never forget the feeling.”

The Venezuelan dictatorship has long stood accused of violating human rights in Venezuela. In March, The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michele Bachelet, reported to the Human Rights Council on the situation in Venezuela, noting the viciousness and brutality of the Maduro regime and its indifference to the suffering of the Venezuelan people.

That same month, Human Rights Watch released a similar report and noted, "Covid-19 has become a convenient excuse for Nicolas Maduro’s government to crack down on dissenting voices. The brutal repression continues, with extrajudicial killings, short-term enforced disappearances, arbitrary arrests, and torture—further evidence supporting the conclusions presented by this UN Fact-Finding Mission."