Operation Tun Tun

Operation Tun Tun is the name coined by pro-government deputy Diosdado Cabello during the 2017 Venezuelan protests and repeated by pro-government media to describe the police raids of residences of Venezuelan opponents by security forces.

A report by Human Rights Watch and Foro Penal documented at least six instances in which Venezuelan security forces raided residential areas and apartments in Caracas and in four different states. In some of the raids, which tended to occur near barricades built by protesters, security forces entered homes without search warrants, stealing personal belongings and food, and both beating and arresting residents.

Term
In the second hearing of the Organization of American States to analyze possible crimes against humanity in Venezuela, Major General Hebert García Plaza described Operation Tun Tun as an operation normally carried out at night, where a Bolivarian Intelligence Service commission visits the person and takes them away, possibly without an arrest warrant or issued by a Public Ministry prosecutor. When asked by the Argentine jurist Luis Moreno Ocampo about the origin of the name, García Plaza answered that although he did not know its origin and that "one would have to ask Diosdado Cabello", he supposed that it came from the sound emitted by the door when it is knocked by the security forces.

History
On 17 May 2017, Diosdado Cabello assured during his television program Con el mazo dando that he would activate an operation called "Tun Tun" that night for people who imported implements for "terrorists", noting that the opposition "is going to take more stick than a thieving cat" and describing Voluntad Popular deputy Freddy Guevara as a "drug addict". Diosdado also threatened the shipping companies in the country, stating that "they contribute with the transfer of supplies that are used by members of these violent groups to generate acts of vandalism and terrorism in Venezuela" and declaring that the situation "will be taken to the competent authorities to investigate these actions", saying that shipping companies DHL, Liberty Express, Aduanera Las Dos L, Aduana Isacar and Economía Aduanera 2000 could be charged under the Anti-Terrorism Law.

On 24 June, during a ceremony commemorating the Battle of Carabobo and Army Day, President Nicolás Maduro declared that all those detained in Operation Tun Tun were under military justice, and on 19 July Diosdado Cabello threatened, again in his program Con el mazo dando, the candidates to be appointed by the National Assembly as judges of the Supreme Tribunal of Justice, after the judges appointed in 2015 with vices and irregularities by the outgoing ruling party majority of the National Assembly, saying: "Let's see who will appoint you, who will defend you, to see if Julio Borges will defend you when the operation tuntun comes for you, let's see if they will defend you."

On the morning of 30 April 2018, officers of the Bolivarian National Intelligence Service (SEBIN) raided the house of the relatives of the Supreme Tribunal of Justice of Venezuela in exile judge Elenis Rodríguez, in Maturín, where they stole a computer equipment and where her mother, who had Alzheimer's disease, and a sister of the justice live, who was taken as a witness to testify but was released after several hours. In the rest of the country, similar procedures were carried out against properties of at least four other magistrates, including Miguel Ángel Martín (magistrate), who served as president of the Supreme Tribunal, and magistrates Cioly Zambrano, Tony Marval, and Pedro Troconis.

On July 11, 2019, Diosdado threatened to apply Operation Tun Tun against diplomat Reinaldo Diaz Ohep. In 2020, the Academy of Physical, Mathematical and Natural Sciences of Venezuela published a report on the COVID-19 pandemic where it warned that the peak of the outbreak in the country could reach 4,000 cases per day in June. Cabello responded to the report by threatening the academy, saying "This is an invitation for security agencies to visit these people. It is an invitation to a tun tun". The academy rejected the threats.

Reception
A report by Human Rights Watch and Foro Penal documented at least six instances in which Venezuelan security forces raided residential areas and apartments in Caracas and in four different states. In some of these raids, which tended to occur near barricades built by protesters, security forces entered homes without search warrants, stealing personal belongings and food, and both beating and arresting residents.

The deputy of the Legislative Council of the Bolívar state, Cesar Ramírez, witnessed the raid in the urbanizations of Villa Latina, Los Olivos and Los Mangos in Puerto Ordaz, where officers of the National Guard, military counter-intelligence and the Bolivarian Intelligence Service were present with sledgehammers, demolition equipment, firearms and even drums, breaking glass and main access doors and raiding residences. Ramirez described the actions of the officers as "very far from what is a police operation" and that rather "it looked like a criminal operation with people in National Guard uniforms, hooded and with firearms causing destruction and running over a civilian population inside their homes, violating human rights". Ramírez requested the Attorney General's Office to order a criminal investigation against governor Francisco Rangel Gómez, officials of the General Directorate of Military Counterintelligence and the Bolivarian National Guard for causing destruction to private property, raid of apartments without a court order and detaining a minor without an arrest warrant.

Political scientist and editor of Aporrea Nicmer Evans described the operation as "fascist", denouncing that they knocked on his door to ask him about deputy Germán Ferrer, husband of the attorney general dismissed by the National Constituent Assembly, Luisa Ortega Díaz. In 2020, constitutionalist Joel Rodríguez Ramos declared that Operation Tun Tun "presaged barbarism".