Venezuela has seen protests against Nicolas
Maduro’s
failing government for weeks, and they escalated after
opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez
surrendered himself to government authorities on charges of
inciting violence.
Francisco Toro at the Caracas Chronicles writes that a
state-sponsored campaign of violence in Venezuela last night has
changed the
nature of what’s happening in the country:
There are now dozens of serious human right abuses:
National Guardsmen shooting tear gas canisters directly into
residential buildings. We have videos of soldiers shooting
civilians on the street. And that’s just what came out in real
time, over Twitter and YouTube, before any real investigation is
carried out. Online media is next, a city of 645,000
inhabitants has been taken off the internet amid mounting
repression, and this blog itself has been the object of a Facebook
“block” campaign.What we saw were not “street clashes”, what we saw is a
state-hatched offensive to suppress and terrorize its
opponents.After the major crackdown on the streets of major (and minor)
Venezuelan cities last night, I expected some kind of response in
the major international news outlets this morning. I understand
that with an even bigger and more photogenic
freakout ongoing in an even more strategically important
country, we weren’t going to be front-page-above-the-fold, but I’m
staggered this morning to wake up, scan the press and find…Nothing.
Read the whole thing, full of links,
here.
According to
Reuters, a 17-year-old beauty queen shot yesterday was the
fifth fatality of the unrest. President Obama
criticized the arrest of protesters by the Venezuelan
government while in Mexico yesterday, and urged it to address
“legitimate grievances.”
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