A/HRC/45/33 (Judgment No. 156) and lifted parliamentary immunity of all opposition deputies (Judgment No. 155), decisions that were in part subsequently reversed following a public outcry. 18. Compromised judicial independence contributed to the violations documented in the present report. Most judges are appointed on a temporary basis following selection procedures that are not in accordance with the law. Judges can be removed without cause or regard for the process provided for in the Constitution. Moreover, judges have faced undue pressure to reach certain decisions, as revealed in various cases investigated by the mission. 19. Since 2014, the Government has implemented at least 27 changes to the security framework, adopting laws, plans and policies through executive orders or ad hoc plans, which bypassed the legislative process. Many of these increased military involvement in citizen security tasks and permitted or encouraged State security forces to coordinate with private citizens in maintaining public order. 20. The State security institutions comprise the Bolivarian National Armed Forces, including the Bolivarian National Guard; and police institutions, including the National Bolivarian Police and its Special Action Forces, and the Scientific, Criminal and Criminological Investigator Corps. State intelligence services are mainly carried out by the Directorate General of Military Counter-intelligence and the Bolivarian National Intelligence Service. IV. Findings A. Targeted political repression 21. In 2014, the Venezuelan opposition movement intensified efforts to change the Government. Opposition has taken many forms since then, within political, civil and diplomatic circles. It has also involved elements within the Venezuelan military, which attempted to topple the Government by force. Facing threats of destabilization, the Government apparatus responded with repressive tactics and measures. In accordance with its methodology, the mission investigated 110 cases involving these violations, identifying core patterns. Of these, 21 are included in detailed case studies in the full report. 1. Victim profiles 22. The mission found that principal targets of violations were often government critics with high public profiles or people who achieved prominence or represented a perceived threat owing to their actions. They mainly included social activists and political leaders at the forefront of protests; opposition politicians; and military dissidents accused of rebellion, plotting coups or other conspiracies. 23. Intelligence agencies also targeted other profiles seen to challenge official narratives, including selected civil servants, judges, prosecutors, defence lawyers, human rights defenders, journalists, and bloggers and social media users. In 2020, health workers and social media users critical of the Government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic were also detained. 24. People associated with principal targets were also singled out, including families, friends and colleagues or human rights defenders. The questions authorities asked these people under interrogation appeared to suggest that they had been detained to extract information about or apply pressure on the main targets. Organizations that may have provided funding to opposition movements or received international funding were also targeted. 25. From 1 January 2014 to 15 July 2020, the non-governmental organization (NGO) Foro Penal registered 3,479 cases of politically motivated detention, of which 902 (26 per cent) were selective detentions, with the remainder taking place in the context of protests. 4 Foro 4 4 Foro Penal, Detenciones de Presos Políticos por Circunstancias Distintas a Manifestaciones y Protestas, sobre la Base de “Presos Políticos”, p. 1 (document on file with the mission).