Canada has sanctioned 40 Venezuelans, including President Nicolas Maduro, over what it calls attacks on “fundamental democratic rights.”

The new regulations announced Friday include asset freezes and prohibitions against dealing with the 40 individuals “in any property … or providing financial or related services to them.”

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Global Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland have repeatedly called on the Maduro government to restore constitutional ‎order and release the country’s political prisoners.

In a statement Friday, Freeland said that Canada “will not stand by silently as the government of Venezuela robs its people of their fundamental democratic rights.”

Earlier this week, Freeland welcomed the appointment of McGill University professor and former MP Irwin Cotler to an Organization of American States panel looking into possible crimes against humanity in Venezuela.

Between April to July, there were at least 124 deaths linked to protests against the Maduro government, with security forces responsible for at least 46, according to a report from the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.

The UN report said that more than 5,000 people were detained during that period, with at least 609 civilians forced to go before military tribunals.

The report also noted “credible accounts that indicate that security forces systematically used excessive force to deter demonstrations, crush dissent and instill fear,” and cases of torture, including “electric shocks, severe beatings, stress positions, suffocation, and threats of sexual violence and death.”

Protests in the socialist South American nation have intensified amid a collapsing economy and severe shortages of food and medicine.

Many Venezuelans took to the streets after the opposition won two thirds of seats in the National Assembly in December 2015 and was subsequently stripped of its powers.

Maduro held a vote in July to create a new constitutional assembly that quickly declared itself superior to all other governmental institutions, including the opposition-controlled congress.

Last month, U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order for sanctions that included barring American financial institutions from providing new money to the Maduro government or its state oil company.