SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
A U.N. fact-finding mission this week accused Venezuela's president, Nicolas Maduro, of persecuting opposition activists who have disputed official election results. The report said that hundreds of people have been arrested in the crackdown. Many who are not in prison have fled to neighboring countries, but they are not always welcome there. Manuel Rueda has the story from the Colombian border with Venezuela.
MANUEL RUEDA, BYLINE: Hernan Ballesteros crossed into Colombia last week with nothing but the clothes on his back. He says he fled from the capital, Caracas, after police knocked down his door and tried to arrest him.
HERNAN BALLESTEROS: (Speaking Spanish).
RUEDA: "I was in a protest where we burned tires on the street," he says. "Luckily, by the time the police came for me, I was hiding in my aunt's house." Ballesteros was waiting to get some food at a shelter in the Colombian town of Pamplona, which is just 50 miles from the Venezuelan border. When he talks about Venezuela's presidential election, the 48-year-old gets goose bumps on his arms.
BALLESTEROS: (Speaking Spanish).
RUEDA: "The government did not accept defeat," he says. More than 2,000 people have been imprisoned in Venezuela as Nicolas Maduro's government represses activists, politicians and journalists who have questioned the official election results. Human rights groups say that over the past month, hundreds of Venezuelans have been fleeing into neighboring countries to escape persecution.
In Pamplona, humanitarian groups try to help incoming Venezuelans with food, shelter and bus tickets so they can head to large cities like Bogota or Medellin. Most of the people here say they have left Venezuela for economic reasons, but there's also a growing number of political refugees.
BELLA DEL MAR BLANCO: (Speaking Spanish).
RUEDA: "Our country has stopped being a democracy. Now it's a dictatorship," says Bella del Mar Blanco, an activist from the state of Tachira. On election day, she helped collect tally sheets from voting stations in her town as part of an effort to monitor the results. Blanco says that men on motorcycles assaulted her shortly after polls closed and took away her ID card. Then they threw rocks at her apartment, threatening to kill her.
BLANCO: (Speaking Spanish).
RUEDA: "We had no choice but to escape," Blanco says. "But we showed the world that Venezuelans don't want Maduro." According to Venezuelan officials, President Maduro won the election with 52% of the votes. But around the country, opposition activists collected tally sheets from thousands of voting machines that indicate Maduro actually lost the election by a 2-to-1 margin to opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez. Now many people who were involved in that effort are escaping from Venezuela, including Gonzalez, who's now in Spain.
BLANCO: (Speaking Spanish).
RUEDA: "We did the best we could," Blanco says. And they know one day, it'll pay off. But this new wave of Venezuelan refugees faces several obstacles as they try to settle down in Colombia and other nearby countries. More than 6 million Venezuelans have fled to Latin American nations in recent years, and governments in the region are no longer so welcoming. Human Rights Watch is asking Latin American countries to grant temporary protected status to all Venezuelans and lift many visa restrictions.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Non-English language spoken).
RUEDA: Back in Pamplona, Hernan Ballesteros says he wants to go to Chile, where he has a son who can help him to get work. But to get there, he'll have to cross through Ecuador and Peru, two nations that have placed visa restrictions on Venezuelans.
BALLESTEROS: (Speaking Spanish).
RUEDA: "I'll have no choice but to cross borders illegally," Ballesteros says.
For NPR News, I'm Manuel Rueda in Pamplona, Colombia. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.