The
“truth has suddenly become useless” in Venezuela because it fails
to support Western media narratives that smear the Maduro government.
by
Rachael Boothroyd Rojas
Venezuela is
in flames. Or at least parts of it is.
Since April
4, 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.
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 20, 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.
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.
This
narrative cannot be described as even a remotely accurate
interpretation of the facts, and so it is important to set the record
straight.
- 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.
- 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).
- 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.
- 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).
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.”
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.
Take this
deliberately misleading paragraph from an article written by Nicholas
Casey, the New York Time’s latest propaganda writer for the
opposition:
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.
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 19, when both
opposition and pro-government forces marched, 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, and were able to march along the main highway linking the
east of the city to the west.
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.
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.
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.
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 U.K.’s Guardian, for
instance, provided its readers with an image gallery of the
opposition’s April 19th march and “ensuing violence,” 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.
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.
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 U.K. 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”.
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.
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?
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.
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.
The
slogan “No Volveran” (they shall not return) has never been more
urgent.
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