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<h1 id="reader-title">The Truth About Venezuela’s Opposition</h1>
<div id="reader-credits" class="credits">Lucas Koerner is a
staff writer and editor at Venezuelanalysis.com.<br>
November 1, 2016<br>
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<blockquote>
<p><a
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series, is out now. Get a <a
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<p><span class="dropcaps">F</span>or the corporate media,
<a
href="https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/07/philando-castile-alton-sterling-black-lives-matter-dallas/">“blue
lives” seem to matter</a> in a lot of places. Just not
in Venezuela.</p>
<p>On Wednesday, October 26, 2016, the Venezuelan
opposition convened <a
href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/12751">nationwide
demonstrations</a> against the government of President
Nicolas Maduro, protesting the national electoral body’s
<a href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/12736">decision</a>
to temporarily suspend preparations for a presidential
recall referendum pending investigations into fraud.</p>
<p>As was to be expected, international media lauded the
protests, rejoicing at the idea that the Maduro “regime”
was now in its death throes.</p>
<p>“<a
href="http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/venezuela-braces-anti-government-protests-amid-crisis-43061587"
target="_blank">Mass Protest in Venezuela Demanding
End of ‘Dictatorship’</a>,” wrote the AP. “<a
href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2016/10/27/in-venezuela-maduro-for-longer-spells-trouble/#11cd5ec67c23"
target="_blank">In Venezuela, ‘Maduro For Longer’
Spells Trouble</a>,” salivated <em>Forbes</em>.</p>
<p>“As the situation worsens, it is only logical that more
Venezuelans will be driven by desperation to rise up. If
there is more bloodshed, Mr. Maduro will be
responsible,” <a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/27/opinion/a-dangerous-standoff-in-venezuela.html"
target="_blank">wrote</a> the <em>New York Times</em>
editorial board.</p>
<p>Yet strangely missing from the narrative of the
Venezuelan opposition’s peaceful march to victory over a
cruel dictatorship was the small detail of the murder of
a Venezuelan police officer by demonstrators Wednesday
evening.</p>
<p>Miranda state police officer Jose Alejandro Molina
Ramirez was <a
href="http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Venezuela-Police-Officer-Shot-Killed-During-Right-Wing-Protest-20161026-0023.html"
target="_blank">shot and killed</a> while attempting
to disperse a protest near the Pan-American Highway in
the southeastern Caracas municipality of San Antonio. In
a graphic <a
href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cB4LIV-zft0&feature=youtu.be">video</a>,
Ramirez and other officers can be seen approaching a
group of demonstrators when they suddenly come under
gunfire from what appear to be the nearby buildings.</p>
<p>While Venezuelan media <a
href="http://www.eluniversal.com/noticias/sucesos/muere-efectivo-polimiranda-disipar-manifestacion_624375"
target="_blank">reported</a> the incident as a
confrontation between police and opposition protesters,
international media sought to separate the crime from
the day’s demonstrations.</p>
<p>The <em>Guardian</em> <a
href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/27/venezuelan-opposition-calls-direct-action-force-referendum">suggested</a>
that the Miranda state police “did not link the incident
to the opposition protest,” yet offers no quote from the
police department in question. A review of the local
department’s Twitter feed as well as local media
accounts fails to uncover any such announcement. Nor
does the newspaper bother to cite Interior Minister
Nestor Reverol’s official statement that the homicide
occurred in the course of a law enforcement effort to
disperse demonstrators.</p>
<p>Although the <a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/27/world/americas/nicolas-maduro-venezuela-protests.html"
target="_blank"><em>New York Times</em></a> and the <a
href="http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/venezuela/article110589762.html"
target="_blank"><em>Miami Herald</em></a> indeed
mention the killing in the context of the day’s
protests, both newspapers consider the episode
sufficiently unimportant to merit no more than one
sentence each.</p>
<p>To its credit, <a
href="http://edition.cnn.com/2016/10/26/americas/venezuela-protests/"
target="_blank">CNN</a> does include the homicide in
its headline, devoting one line to the incident before
going on to cite “opposition leader” Henrique Capriles’s
unverified figures for the number of injured and
imprisoned from the day’s protests. Absent is any
indication that Capriles is in fact governor of Miranda
state and as such is responsible for the safety its
police personnel.</p>
<p>Despite being updated late Thursday afternoon, the CNN
article likewise makes no mention of Venezuelan attorney
general Luisa Ortega’s <a
href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/12756">official
figures</a>, which include eighty-six people injured
nationwide, including twenty-six police and National
Guard personnel.</p>
<p>Reuters, meanwhile, succeeds in <a
href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-maduro-protests-idUSKCN12R2J8?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews&rpc=932"
target="_blank">suppressing</a> any mention of the
dead cop at all, preferring to highlight “veteran
activist Maria Corina Machado and jailed protest leader
Leopoldo Lopez’s wife Lilian Tintori” who it said are
urging “Gandhi-style civil disobedience.”</p>
<p>The irony that these far-right figures were key
protagonists in 2014’s violent antigovernment protests —
which left forty-three dead, <a
href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/10580">over
half of whom</a> were government supporters, police
and National Guard troops, and passerby — is lost on the
international news service.</p>
<p>Why does the mainstream media systematically
under-report or outright ignore the Venezuelan right’s
almost nonstop violence against Venezuelan government
personnel and institutions?</p>
<p>Because reporting incidents like the killing of Molina,
the wounding of twenty-six other officers, <a
href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/12751">attacks</a>
on socialist youth leaders in Cojedes or state cultural
workers in Amazonas threaten to slaughter a sacred cow —
namely the idea of a peaceful and democratic Venezuelan
opposition.</p>
<p>After all, it’s difficult to argue that Venezuela is an
“<a
href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/global-opinions/wp/2016/10/21/its-official-venezuela-is-a-dictatorship/?utm_term=.a48a7d22345e">all-out,
no-more-elections dictatorship</a>” when you have an
opposition that wins elections and holds regular,
authorized protests where its activists frequently
attack police, civil servants, and government
supporters, often with complete impunity.</p>
<p>It’s inconvenient to report these uncomfortable facts
that show opposition leaders’ utter disregard for the
rule of law, which is normally considered a sacrilege by
Western journalists.</p>
<p>Yet no one seems to care that Henrique Capriles has yet
to issue a public statement condemning the homicide of a
police officer in his state during a protest that he
himself led. Contrast this with the media’s eagerness to
<a
href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/07/08/texas-republicans-blame-black-lives-matter-for-shooting-of-dallas-police/">report</a>
Texas lieutenant governor Dan Patrick’s comments blaming
Black Lives Matter for the killing of Dallas police at a
protest earlier this year.</p>
<p>Nor does the international media hesitate in calling
hard-right opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez a “<a
href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jared-genser/venezuela-amnesty-law_b_9679576.html"
target="_blank">political prisoner</a><u>.</u>” Lopez
— who previously played an <a
href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/11452">active
role</a> in the 2002 US-backed coup for which he was
granted amnesty — is currently serving a <a
href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/11508">thirteen-year
prison sentence</a> for public incitement to violence
and criminal conspiracy during 2014’s antigovernment
protests.</p>
<p>In the United States, he would likely be facing a much
stiffer sentence or possibly life imprisonment for such
offenses. Compare with Puerto Rican nationalist Oscar
Rivera López, who is currently serving a fifty-five-year
sentence in US federal prison for seditious conspiracy
despite the fact that “<a
href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/10/puerto-rico-last-political-prisoner-oscar-lopez-rivera">he
was not convicted of any violent crimes</a>.”</p>
<p>Sadly, the international media has a lot more <a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/02/opinion/in-venezuela-political-prisoners-as-pawns.html"
target="_blank">tears</a> to shed for Leopoldo Lopez
than it does for the <a
href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/11953">victims</a>
of opposition violence.</p>
<p>In most cases, “blue lives” apparently matter an awful
lot — except when they’re serving under a self-declared
socialist national government that has been branded an “<a
href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/11872">unusual
and extraordinary threat</a>” by the United States.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Adapted from <em>Telesur</em>.</p>
</blockquote>
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