CARACAS, Venezuela — Venezuela is coming under increasing international scrutiny amid violence that most recently killed a National Guardsman and a civilian in a clash at a protest barricade.
United Nations human rights specialists demanded answers Thursday from Venezuela’s government about the use of violence and imprisonment in a crackdown on widespread demonstrations.
The six specialists, who report to the UN’s top human rights body in Geneva, wrote the administration of President Nicolas Maduro about allegations of protesters being beaten and in some cases severely tortured by security forces, taken to military facilities, cut off from communication, and denied legal help, UN officials said.
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Venezuela’s UN Mission in Geneva called it part of an international disinformation campaign to undermine the government.
In Washington, the permanent council of the Organization of American States met into the early hours of Friday to discuss the situation in Venezuela, without making any decision. It was to resume deliberations later in the day.
The National Guard member and the civilian were killed Thursday after a group of men on motorcycles rode into an east Caracas neighborhood to remove a street barricade erected by anti-government protesters.
The clash that erupted in the mixed industrial and residential district of Los Ruices heightened tensions on the same day the Venezuelan government expelled foreign diplomats for the second time in a month.
More than 100 men on motorcycles carrying pipes and rocks swarmed Los Ruices in the episode.
Some tried to force their way into buildings. Residents screamed ‘‘murderers, murderers’’ from rooftops and the motorcyclists taunted them from below, urging them to come down and fight.
In other neighborhoods, motorcyclists dismantled barricades under the whistles and shouts of residents, but without violence.
Venezuelans fed up with food shortages and unchecked violence have been staging nearly daily street protests since mid-February, snarling traffic with barricades of garbage, furniture, and burning tires.
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At least 21 people have been killed in related violence, by government count, in the country’s worst unrest in years.
President Nicolas Maduro’s administration shows no signs of crumbling from several weeks of nearly daily demonstrations, but the country appears in a stalemate.
Protesters are mostly from the middle and upper classes, although they do include poorer Venezuelans who do not protest in their home districts for fear of pro-government paramilitaries.
Sucre Mayor Carlos Ocariz said residents of Los Ruices reported hearing gunshots after motorcyclists began dismantling the barricades. Some apartment dwellers began banging pots and raining down bottles to express their anger, he said. In the melee, a 24-year-old motorcycle taxi driver was shot dead.
‘‘I’m not going to be irresponsible and accuse anyone,’’ Ocariz said. ‘‘I condemn the violence and the shots must be investigated, but I also reject the brutal repression’’ of security forces.
When National Guardsmen arrived to secure the area, a 25-year-old sergeant was shot through the neck and killed.
Ocariz said that according to district police, who report to him, in both cases the men’s wounds seemed to indicate the shots came from above.
Pro-government motorcyclists who reside in slums served as street-level enforcers for the late President Hugo Chavez and continue to menace opponents of the ruling socialists. The opposition claims they are bankrolled by the government.
Maduro, meeting with American actor Danny Glover, said on state television that the slain motorcyclist, Jose Gregorio Amaris, used his motorcycle as a taxi and was clearing debris in order to do his job.
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He called those who build street barricades ‘‘vandals who hate the people’’ and said a second motorcyclist was seriously injured.
Among opposition demands is that the government disarm the motorcycle-riding paramilitaries, called ‘‘colectivos.’’