While most of the world may have its eyes on the unrest in Ukraine at the moment, there is also a rapidly-escalating uprising going on in Venezuela due to the massive level of human rights abuse plaguing the South American nation.
Yet quite possibly even more unnerving than the Venezuelan security forces’s treatment of innocent civilians is the lack of coverage these atrocities are receiving from the mainstream media, largely because of the situation in Ukraine.
You know, the one involving white people.
Venezuelan political blog Caracas Chronicles addresses both of these issues in this passionate open letter by Francisco Toro, entitled “The Game Has Changed.”
Toro’s piece, published yesterday morning, also asks for your support in publicizing the Venezuelan protests because these brave individuals need help and they need it fast.
Dear International Editor:
Listen and understand. The game changed in Venezuela last night. What had been a slow-motion unravelling that had stretched out over many years went kinetic all of a sudden.
What we have this morning is no longer the Venezuela story you thought you understood.
Throughout last night, panicked people told their stories of state-sponsored paramilitaries on motorcyles roaming middle-class neighborhoods, shooting at people and storming into apartment buildings, shooting at anyone who seemed like he might be protesting.
People continue to be arrested merely for protesting, and a long established local Human Rights NGO makes an urgent plea for an investigation into widespread reports of torture of detainees. There are now dozens of serious human right abuses: National Guardsmen shooting tear gas cannisters 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 inhabitans as 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.
Here at Caracas Chronicles we’re doing what it can to document the crisis, but there’s only so much one tiny, zero-budget blog can do.
After the major crackdown on the streets of large (and small) 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 freak-out 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.
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