Saturday, February 22, 2014

US Secretary of State, John Kerry: "I call on the Venezuelan government to step back from its efforts to stifle dissent through force and respect basic human rights. The solution to Venezuela's problems can only be found through dialogue with all Venezuelans, engaging in a free exchange of opinions in a climate of mutual respect."


Venezuela leader Nicolas Maduro seeks talks with Obama 

The offer of dialogue may not be taken seriously, as Irene Caselli reports


Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro has invited US President Barack Obama to join him in talks aimed at resolving the problems between the two countries.
Mr Maduro said the meeting would help "put the truth out on the table".
He has accused US conservatives and media organisations of plotting to overthrow his government.
Earlier on Friday Venezuela revoked the accreditations of CNN reporters covering the country's crisis. Eight people have died in recent protests.
In a news conference on Friday, Mr Maduro said: "I call for a dialogue between Venezuela and the United States and its government.
"Let's initiate a high-level dialogue and let's put the truth out on the table."
Protests in CaracasProtests against the government have entered their second week
The dialogue will be "difficult and complex", Mr Maduro said, until the American government accepted "the full autonomy and independence of Latin America".
On Sunday Venezuela expelled three US diplomats accused of meeting violent groups linked to the opposition.
'War propaganda'
Earlier Venezuela had revoked the accreditation of CNN's Caracas-based reporter, Osmary Hernandez, and those of two other CNN journalists sent to Venezuela to cover a wave of opposition marches.
The government says the protests are part of a coup attempt.
US Secretary of State, John Kerry, denounced the latest action on Friday, saying: "This is not how democracies behave.
"I call on the Venezuelan government to step back from its efforts to stifle dissent through force and respect basic human rights.
"The solution to Venezuela's problems can only be found through dialogue with all Venezuelans, engaging in a free exchange of opinions in a climate of mutual respect."
On Thursday, Mr Maduro threatened to "take action" against CNN unless it ceased what he described as "hostile coverage".
"I won't accept war propaganda against Venezuela. If they don't rectify themselves, out of Venezuela," he said.
Journalists protests, 11 Feb 14Journalists took to the streets earlier this month to complain about the shortage of printing paper
One of the two US-based CNN journalists who had their work permits revoked, Patricia Janiot, said she had been harassed by Venezuelan officials as she left the country.
In a statement, the network said it was still negotiating with the authorities.
"We hope the government reconsiders its decision. Meanwhile, we will carry on covering events in Venezuela in a fair, accurate and balanced manner," read the statement.
A close ally of the late president, Hugo Chavez, Mr Maduro was elected by a narrow margin last April.
Political divisions have deepened since the election, and the economy has taken a downturn.
Henrique Capriles, who was defeated in last year's presidential election, and other opposition leaders have called on people to take to the streets on Saturday, in marches "against violence".
Are you in Venezuela? What are your expectations for the protests or the talks? Send us your experiences using the form below.
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Venezuela expats are tweeting the way for embattled protesters | GlobalPost

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Venezuela expats are tweeting the way for embattled protesters

The government is squeezing critical TV, blocking websites and even cutting off the internet. Here's how Venezuelans abroad are helping protesters cope.

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A Venezuelan protester lights a fire during clashes with riot police in Caracas on Feb. 20. (Raul Arboleda/AFP/Getty Images)
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BOGOTA, Colombia — As anti-government protesters descended on Caracas’ main plaza this week, marcher Eiker Ramirez called a Venezuelan living in neighboring Colombia and asked her what was happening.
His friend here, 24-year-old university student Yoselie Gonzalez, checked her Twitter feed.
“They’ve got the whole avenue militarized,” Gonzalez told him via cellphone.
She warned Ramirez to avoid possible clashes between opposition demonstrators and government forces or the armed militia supporters of President Nicolas Maduro, after a wave of violence over the past week has left eight confirmed dead.
“You’ve got to go through the other way. There isn’t any other route,” she said.
Since the Maduro government blocked access to a range of visual media covering the protests, young Venezuelans abroad have resorted to online social networks to keep family and friends inside the country informed.
This is part of a global trend where young people from Kyiv to Tehran, Cairo to Rio de Janeiro have swarmed to social media for organizing, spreading the story, and voicing anger at their leadership.
Venezuela’s government, also an avid tweeter, is well aware of this. The authorities are now blockingwebsites and cutting off the internet in parts of the country after bloody scenes from the clashes went viral.
With very few remaining independent and critical local media, President Maduro is also cracking down on international broadcasters he deems dangerous to the stability of his regime. The country's telecommunications regulator took a Colombian network off the air last week. Now, Maduro isthreatening to do the same to CNN.
“We’re living through the worst media blackout in our history right now,” said Lorena Di Cecilia, chief of operations at Digital Monitoring, a Caracas-based media watchdog.
“The government has launched an investigation into CNN. And they’re the very last channel on the air with a voice. If we lose CNN, the country goes blind — it’ll be an absolute blackout.”
Telecom regulator CONATEL, Di Cecilia explained, has threatened news anchors and broadcasters with heavy fines against their companies or getting taken off the air if they communicate information that the government considers to be “destabilizing.”
This has scared the national media into "a form of self-censorship," she added. “Basically everything expressed in opposition to this government implies ‘fascism’ or ‘destabilization’ … so they refrain from publishing it.”
In an attempt to muffle the noise of protests, Maduro’s government blocked images on Twitter last week, a spokesman for the social site told Bloomberg. After three days, Twitter’s image-publishing service was back online there, but other outlets have suffered.
Not long after that, the government removed NTN24, a Colombian 24-hour TV news station, from Venezuelan televisions after the network showed footage of violent clashes between police and protesters.
As the protests crescendo, the Committee to Protect Journalists condemned Maduro’s actions toward the press, saying, “Media blackouts, arrests, and a campaign of harassment against dissenting voices has become a hallmark of this administration.”
Gonzalez insists that citizen journalism through social media has become the only way for Venezuelans to publish and verify information as the government tightens its control over traditional forms.
On top of that, many protesters are relying on people like Gonzalez who are safely outside the country to monitor social networks since many protesters can’t get internet access on the streets to find out where violent flare-ups are happening.
“We’re trying to publish the human rights violations that are happening,” Gonzalez said. “That’s what is not getting published on [Venezuelan] national television right now and these images need to be seen.”
The tone of Venezuela’s protests is eerily similar to other violent clashes around the world, including Ukraine and Brazil. Deadly and lasting clashes in all three countries started with smaller rallies of young people — many of them college students — protesting the government plus a host of social and economic woes.
Venezuelan protesters are speaking out against a deepening economic crisis, high crime levels and corruption. Many feel strongly that President Maduro is incapable of solving the problems that lie ahead, while his staunchest critics say he's making those problems worse.
Indeed, Venezuela’s economy is in shambles. Consumer prices are up a whopping 56 percent. Many basics — like food and medicine — are widely unavailable across the country.
Yet, as to the causes and solutions to these problems, Venezuela is very polarized. That's clear just by watching the demos. Ardent government supporters have also swarmed the streets in counter-protest. Many Venezuelans still support the left-wing movement launched by the late Hugo Chavez in 1999. And they fear that Chavez’s disciple, President Maduro, is right: that his opponents are “ultra-right-wing fascists” backed by US interests who are trying to incite a coup — lines that are repeated by most national media outlets as fact.
Not 25-year-old Giovanna Delgada. She's a Venezuelan teacher who fled her native Caracas a month ago after finding that the economic situation had become intolerable for her profession. She now lives in Dublin, Ireland.
Commenting on Venezuela’s rampant inflation, Delgado says, “If I were working as a teacher in Caracas right now, I’d be dying of hunger.”
In addition to inflation problems, Venezuela’s debts are piling up and its foreign currency reserves are dwindling. It owes $3 billion to foreign airlines, and roughly $9 billion in private-sector imports. And even though Venezuela sits on top of what many agree to be the world’s largest oil reserves, it isn’t reaping all the rewards it could from its oil sales.
Right now, Venezuela is sending hundreds of thousands of barrels to pay off $40 billion worth of debt to China, one of its main trading partners.
Instead of claiming responsibility and confronting deep-seated economic problems, Maduro seems to be putting more energy into measures that quell the dissent. Over the weekend the government ousted three US diplomats and, on Tuesday, arrested opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez for inciting the marches.
Lopez, a 42-year-old Harvard-educated local mayor, is among those Maduro labels a “fascist.”
How Lopez’s trial in the courts, and Venezuela’s trial on the streets, shape up over the next week should tell the world a great deal about President Nicolas Maduro’s leadership. That is, if he doesn’t shut down the story on social media before Venezuela’s citizen journalists tell it.
Back in Bogota, as she scrolls through her Twitter feed showing images and videos of violence from the day in Caracas, Yoselie Gonzalez asked out loud to herself, “How did we come to all of this? This isn’t my Venezuela.”
Follow this journalist on Twitter: @wesleytomaselli
<a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/americas/colombia/140221/venezuela-blackout-expats-social-media" rel="nofollow">http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/americas/colombia/140221/venezuela-blackout-expats-social-media</a>
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Venezuela expats are tweeting the way for embattled protesters

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