Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro marked the start of Christmas celebrations on October 1 by launching fireworks from El Helicoide, a Caracas detention facility widely documented as a site of torture. The building, headquarters of the country's intelligence service SEBIN, continues to hold dozens of political prisoners.
Videos and photos shared on social media showed the fireworks display lighting up the complex, which human rights organizations describe as one of Venezuela's most notorious prisons. The celebration coincided with the government's declaration of October 1 as the official beginning of the holiday season, a decision made by Maduro back in early September and which he has done for several years.
Maduro defended the move at the time as a way to protect what he called the Venezuelan people's "right to happiness and joy," while many described his decision to be a way to distract from tensions between Caracas and Washington following the deployment of U.S. military forces in Caribbean waters.
Cuando la disociación psicótica llega a los niveles de iniciar la celebración de la navidad desde el mayor Centro de tortura y delitos de lesa humanidad del mundo (El Helicoide del Sebin en Caracas), estamos claros que están cerca del fin... pic.twitter.com/iNysIvPNlL
— Nicmer Evans (@NicmerEvans) October 2, 2025
"The bitter ones thought they could take Christmas away from the Venezuelan people," said Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello about the event, as reported by El Mundo. "They believe that with their campaigns they will demotivate, frighten, and keep people at home, that there will be no Christmas here. The people here are joyful by nature, and they don't understand that."
International observers have repeatedly described El Helicoide as a center of systematic abuse. A United Nations fact-finding mission previously reported the use of methods such as forced stress positions, suffocation with bags or water, electric shocks to the genitals, and beatings. It concluded that arbitrary detention, torture, sexual violence, and enforced disappearances form part of a broader strategy of political persecution in Venezuela.
Human Rights Watch, in a report published last month, noted that dozens of political prisoners have been held in El Helicoide and other facilities in prolonged incommunicado detention, in some cases for more than a year. Families often learn their relatives are still alive only through soiled clothes or brief handwritten notes passed out by guards.
HRW noted that detainees frequently face charges such as "terrorism" and "incitement to hatred" without access to legal counsel of their choice. Many have been subjected to virtual hearings conducted without their participation. The organization has called on foreign governments to use diplomatic channels and upcoming regional summits to press for the release of political prisoners and independent medical evaluations of their health conditions.
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