generalspeaking

Rejecting the Bolivarian Revolution

Student-led protests that began in early February in San Cristobal and then spread to Caracas, are being put down by the Venezuelan National Guard and state police. The students voiced the concerns of the population over violent crime rates, food shortages and price rises. Fresh clashes broke out in the capital Caracas on the weekend.

The opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez languishes in a military prison on charges of arson and the instigation of violence relating to the protests. Armed pro-government groups have been responsible for a string of attacks on government opponents. Venezuela has been roiled with the agitation of the protests.

Under cover of darkness, National Guards pulled in, advancing with bulldozers and armoured vehicles, firing tear gas and rubber bullets, authorized by president Nicholas Maduro to regain control of San Cristobal. The makeshift barricades comprised  of tree trunks, rubble, discarded mattresses, old furniture, bed springs, wheelbarrows and metal drums were shoved aside, and when that happened a wasteland appeared with the acrid odour of gas hanging nauseatingly over a war zone.

National Guard and state police patrolled the streets, helicopters rattling low overhead. A city under siege. In mid-February at the beginning of the wave of protests against the government of President Maduro, the first roadblock was erected on Avenida Carabobo. Just after dawn security forces reclaimed Avenida Carabobo, the main hillside thoroughfare running through San Cristobal.

The students who had camped out at the main barricades fought the assault with gas bombs, slings and rocks prepared long before the attack was mounted, in expectation that it was imminent. After two days of clean-up operations, Gen.Vladimir Padrino, head of the National Armed Forces Strategic Operational Command declared security forces had "ended the curfew imposed by terrorists."

Terrorists. Precisely what Syria, Iran, Turkey and other criminally repressive states term citizens who oppose them. Throw in Russia, Ukraine and Egypt and you've got the source of bitter dissatisfaction and unrest from among citizenry whose governments oppress and restrain them, and when their leaders rise to denounce the unjustness they are charged with false offences and imprisoned.

In Venezuela, for the time being the mission to destroy the hundreds of barricades that have overtaken life in the Andean city of 650,000 which represented a stronghold for the opposition has, for the time being, been put down.  The students were no match for the showdown with heavily armed forces; their clash was unmistakably one-sided.

Labels: Conflict, Human Rights, Revolution, Venezuela

posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, April 02, 2014