World must confront Maduro’s ‘campaign of terror’, Venezuelan opposition leader says

Venezuela's main opposition leader, Maria Corina Machado, has accused the country's strongman president, Nicolás Maduro, of unleashing a horrific "campaign of terror" in an attempt to cling on to power.

Two weeks after Maduro's widely questioned claim to have won the 28 July election, human rights activists say he has launched a ferocious clampdown designed to silence those convinced his rival Edmundo González was the actual winner. More than 1,300 people have been detained, including 116 teenagers, according to the rights group Foro Penal. At least 24 people have reportedly been killed.

Speaking from an undisclosed location where she is in hiding, Machado - a charismatic conservative who is González's key backer - urged governments around the world to oppose Maduro's intensifying crackdown.

"What is going on in Venezuela is horrific. Innocent people are being detained or disappeared as we speak," said the 56-year-old former congresswoman, who endorsed González after authorities barred her from running.

Maduro's regime has nicknamed part of its clampdown Operación Tun Tun - "Operation Knock Knock" - a chilling reference to the often late-night visits to perceived government opponents by heavily armed, black-clad captors from the intelligence services or police.

Tun Tun's targets have included activists, journalists and prominent opposition politicians - but most detainees appear to be the residents of working-class areas who rose up en masse against Maduro for the first time in the two days after his disputed claim to victory.

One Tun Tun propaganda video published on the Instagram account of the military counterintelligence service, DGCIM, last week showed one of Machado's campaign organisers, Maria Oropeza, being detained to the sound of the nursery rhyme from the 1984 horror film A Nightmare on Elm Street, in which Freddy Krueger attacks children in their dreams. "One, two, Freddy's coming for you! Three, four, better lock your door!" warn the song's sinister lyrics.