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href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/13070">https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/13070</a></font>
<h1 id="reader-title">Make No Mistake: There is a media blockade
against Venezuela</h1>
<div id="reader-credits" class="credits">By Rachael Boothroyd
Rojas – Venezuelanalysis.com , April 23rd 2017</div>
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<p dir="ltr"><span
id="docs-internal-guid-106e22ad-9b49-0874-d0ba-ae103ce9f32b"><span>Venezuela
is in flames. Or at least parts of it is. </span></span></p>
<p dir="ltr">Since April 4th, opposition militants have
been carrying out targeted acts of violence, vandalism
and arson, as well as deliberately clashing with
security forces in an attempt to plunge the country into
total chaos and forcefully remove the elected socialist
government. It is the continuation of an 18 year effort
to topple the Bolivarian revolution by any means
necessary — although you may have seen it miraculously
recast in the mainstream media as “promoting a return to
democracy” in the country.</p>
<p dir="ltr">A catalogue of the violence over the last 18
days is shocking – schools have been ransacked, a
Supreme Court building has been torched, an air force
base attacked, while public transport, health and
veterinary facilities have been destroyed. At least 23
people have been left dead, with many more injured. In
one of the most shocking cases of right-wing violence,
at around 10pm on April 20th, women, children and over
50 newborn babies had to be evacuated by the government
from a public maternity hospital which came under attack
from opposition gangs.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Anywhere else in the western world, this
would have given way to horrified international and
national calls for an end to the violence, and for the
swift prosecution of those responsible – making it all
the more scandalous that these incidents have at best
been ignored, and at worst totally misrepresented by the
international press. Instead, those tasked with
providing the public with unbiased reporting on
international affairs have opted to uncritically parrot
the Venezuelan opposition’s claims that the elected
government is violently repressing peaceful protests,
and holding it responsible for all deaths in connection
with the demonstrations so far.</p>
<p dir="ltr">This narrative cannot be described as even a
remotely accurate interpretation of the facts, and so it
is important to set the record straight.</p>
<ul>
<li dir="ltr">
<p dir="ltr">To date, three people (two protesters and
one bystander) have been killed by state security
personnel, who were promptly arrested and in two
cases indicted.</p>
</li>
<li dir="ltr">
<p dir="ltr">A further five people have been directly
killed by opposition protesters, while one person
has died as an indirect result of the opposition
roadblocks in Caracas (Ricarda Gonzalez, 89, who
suffered from a CVA and was prevented from getting
to a hospital).</p>
</li>
<li dir="ltr">
<p dir="ltr">Five people have been shot in separate
incidents near protests but under unclear
circumstances. One of these victims was shot by an
alleged opposition supporter from a high rise
building, although the perpetrator’s political
affiliation is yet to be confirmed.</p>
</li>
<li dir="ltr">
<p dir="ltr">Nine protesters appear to have died as a
result of their own actions (at least nine were
electrocuted in the recent looting of a bakery).</p>
</li>
</ul>
<p dir="ltr">A cursory look at the reality reveals that
the government is clearly not responsible for the
majority of these deaths. However, to paraphrase a
remark recently made by Venezuelan author Jose Roberto
Duque, the “truth has suddenly become useless”.</p>
<p dir="ltr">The media has failed to go into too much
detail surrounding the exact circumstances of these
deaths; precisely because the truth presents a serious
obstacle to their narrative that all these people were
killed during pro-democracy peaceful protests at the
repressive hands of the authoritarian regime. This
narrative isn’t just overly simplistic; it distorts the
reality on the ground and misinforms international
audiences.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Take this deliberately misleading paragraph
from an article written by Nicholas Casey, the New York
Time’s latest propaganda writer for the opposition.</p>
<p dir="ltr"><a
href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/19/world/americas/venezuela-caracas-maduro-protests.html">“Protesters
demanding elections and a return to democratic rule
jammed the streets of Caracas and other Venezuelan
cities on Wednesday. National Guard troops and
government-aligned militias beat crowds back with tear
gas, rubber bullets and other weapons, and at least
three people were killed, according to human rights
groups and news reports.”</a></p>
<p dir="ltr">Casey opted to omit the fact that none of
those three deaths has so far been attributed to
security forces, and one of the victims was an army
sergeant killed by protesters themselves. Moreover,
those on the receiving end of the “tear gas and rubber
bullets” are not quite the “peaceful protesters” he so
disingenuously implies. Anyone in the east of the city
on April 19th, when both opposition and pro-government
forces marched, <a
href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVVExLzJ3gg">could
see how opposition supporters gathered in total
freedom in Plaza Francia in Altamira, even buying
anti-government t-shirts, caps, and purchasing
ice-creams</a>, and were able to march along the main
highway linking the east of the city to the west.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Police “repression” has occurred in two
specific scenarios. Firstly, when opposition gangs have
set-up burning barricades and carried out violent acts
of vandalism on the streets, including the targeting of
public institutions – actions deliberately aimed at
provoking photo-op worthy clashes with security forces.
In the second instance, it has occurred when opposition
marchers have attempted to cross a police line blocking
them from getting to the working class municipality of
El Libertador in the west of the city – where government
support is traditionally concentrated. Again, this
action is a deliberate attempt to provoke clashes with
security forces and their supporters by the opposition,
who are well aware that they have not been granted
permission to march into El Libertador since a
short-lived opposition-led coup in 2002, triggered by an
anti-government march diverted towards Miraflores
Presidential Palace in the west that left 19 dead by
opposition sniper-fire.</p>
<p dir="ltr">It is hard to see how the police would not
respond to these violent actions in a similar way, or
even more violently, in the rest of the world. I can
only imagine what would happen if armed and violent
protesters consistently tried to march on the White
House in Washington, or on No. 10 Downing Street in
London. What if they assaulted police lines outside the
White House, or attacked hospitals and looted businesses
in London? Not only would they not be granted permission
to continue, but protesters would most likely be shot,
or end up in jail under anti-terrorism legislation for a
very long time. But in Venezuela, the opposition can
rely on its carte blanche from the mainstream press as
its get out of jail card.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Needless to say, details of the undemocratic
actions of opposition leaders and their supporters –
ranging from these latest attacks to support for a
violent coup in 2002 – are glaringly absent from
virtually all news reports. This is despite the fact
that the opposition’s current protest leaders – Julio
Borges, Henrique Capriles Radonski, Henry Ramos Allup
and Leopoldo Lopez – were active players in the 2002
coup.</p>
<p dir="ltr">The above article by Casey is a patent
attempt to mislead the public over the dynamic on the
ground in Venezuela. But unfortunately this is not just
a case of one isolated news agency. The UK’s Guardian,
for instance,<a
href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2017/apr/19/violence-after-anti-government-march-in-caracas-in-pictures">
provided its readers with an image gallery of the
opposition’s April 19th march and “ensuing violence”</a>,
but failed to acknowledge that a pro-government march of
similar size, if not greater, was also held the same
day. They simply erased the actions of hundreds of
thousands, if not millions, of people. Whichever news
agency you check, be it the BBC, the Washington Post,
CNN, or any other corporate outlet, you will find the
same, uniform consensus in their Venezuela coverage.
There are no words to describe this state of affairs
other than a total media blockade.</p>
<p dir="ltr">The last time the country witnessed unrest on
this scale was in 2014, when opposition militants again
unsuccessfully tried to force the “exit” of President
Nicolas Maduro using similar tactics, leading to the
deaths of 43 people. The majority of those victims were
innocent passersby caught in the violence or state
security personnel, who were given the somewhat
impossible task (just like today) of somehow refraining
from responding with violence to people who are
deliberately trying to provoke, maim and kill them.</p>
<p dir="ltr">While protests in 2014 were a response to
violent unrest headed by the country’s right-wing
student movement, this year’s commenced at the beginning
of April after the Supreme Court issued a ruling
granting the court temporary powers to assume the
legislative functions of the National Assembly. It came
in response to the Venezuelan parliament having been
declared “in contempt of court” for more than six
months, after the opposition refused to remove three of
its lawmakers under investigation for electoral fraud in
violation of a Supreme Court order. This is much like
the current legal case hanging over the thirty
Conservative MPs in the UK. The only difference in
Venezuela is that the legislators were suspended from
being sworn into parliament pending the results of the
investigations. The opposition immediately hit out at
the ruling, declaring it an attempted “coup” by the
government that had come out of nowhere. The media
swallowed this version of events hook, line and sinker.
Although the ruling was overturned almost straightaway,
the opposition took to the streets denouncing a “rupture
of the constitutional order”.</p>
<p dir="ltr">This soon morphed into a hodgepodge of
ultimatums which have dominated the opposition’s agenda
since it won control of the country’s National Assembly
(one of the five branches of the Venezuelan government)
in December 2015, promising to have deposed the national
government “within six months” – something beyond the
power of Venezuela’s legislative branch. These demands
include the release of what they call “political
prisoners”, the opening-up of a “humanitarian channel”
for receiving international aid and, most importantly,
immediate regional and general elections. The street
protests were an unmissable opportunity for the
opposition, which was suffering from steadily decreasing
popularity following an entire year of having squandered
its legislative majority in parliament.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Evidently, long term strategy is not the
opposition’s strong point. History testifies to the fact
that they tend to go for maximum amount of damage in the
minimum amount of time, no matter the cost. This brings
us to why this kind of violence, which has been employed
several times throughout the last 18 years by
Venezuela’s well-seasoned opposition, is once again
happening at this moment. If the government is so
unpopular, as the opposition claims it is, why not just
wait for the presidential elections in 2018 for their
time to shine?</p>
<p dir="ltr">At this point it should be clear that the
opposition’s only goal, far from promoting a “return” to
democracy, is to step right over it. They want to remove
the elected government more than a year ahead of
scheduled elections. But they don’t want to stop there.
As one opposition marcher told me on Wednesday: “Get
your stuff together Maduro, because you’re going to
jail”. The opposition’s goal is the total annihilation
of Chavismo.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Whatever the government’s many errors and
faults over the past four years under the leadership of
Nicolas Maduro, progressives across the globe have an
obligation to defend it against the opposition's
onslaught and the international media's blockade. The
alternative is the same savage neoliberalism - currently
being mercilessly unleashed by Brazil’s unelected
government - which previously squeezed blood from the
entire continent throughout the 1980s and 1990s.</p>
<p>The slogan “No Volveran” (they shall not return) has
never been more urgent.</p>
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<div class="moz-signature">-- <br>
Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
415 863.9977
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.freedomarchives.org">www.freedomarchives.org</a>
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