Crushing of Dissent: Venezuela (Updated)
Posted by MichaelW on 24 Oct 2007 at 4:27 pm | Tagged as: Hugo Chavez, MichaelW's Page, Foreign affairs
The slow march towards full-fledged totalitarianism in Venezuela is picking up the pace. Citizens opposed to Chavez’s plans to change the constitution were forcibly deterred from meeting with the National Assembly by Venezuelan authorities:
Venezuelan riot police fired tear gas at thousands of protesters in downtown Caracas as they marched to oppose President Hugo Chavez’s plans to change the country’s constitution.
Scuffles broke out after demonstrators, led by student groups, pushed through a police line, according to images shown on television station Globovision. After a group of about a dozen student leaders met with lawmakers at the National Assembly, the protesters left the downtown area without further incident.
Hundreds of National Guard troops reinforced riot police to keep the march from reaching the National Assembly. Police also kept hundreds of Chavez supporters from clashing with the demonstrators, according to Globovision.
Via the link to Citizen Feathers above, here are pictures of the clashes with the police.
Reuters has more, and note the make-up of Venezuela’s legislature (bolded):
Thousands of marchers pushed through police lines in central Caracas, exchanging a volley of rocks and bottles with small groups of pro-Chavez demonstrators as police fired tear gas to disperse them.
Several people were slightly injured by rocks during the clashes, witnesses said.
“The message to the Congress and to the government is that there is … a part of this country that rejects these reforms and we want to be heard,” student leader Stalin Gonzalez told a local television station.
Chavez, a Cuba ally who has clashed with Washington over U.S. free market policies, says the changes are key to implementing a socialist revolution to help the poor majority with reforms such as extending social security benefits.
[…]
Lawmakers in Venezuela’s National Assembly, where Chavez supporters hold all the seats, are rushing through a debate of the proposed constitutional rewrite to try to finished before the scheduled December referendum.
But even one pro-Chavez party, Podemos, has criticized the reforms, especially a proposal to lift limits on presidential terms that opponents fear will allow Chavez to stand indefinitely for re-election.
Breitbart TV also has some video of the protests (HT: Insty).
These constitutional changes will put the final touches on Chavez’s solidification of power. Afterwards, the only thing that will remove him from office will be death. This is the real-deal totalitarianism and not the kind complained of here in the US. As Feathers McGraw put it:
There you go. I wonder why (sic) the people who call Bush a fascist, who teared (sic) their clothes because the police repressed their right to protest at the WTO Conference think about this. Hhmmm….
Indeed. To be fair, I’m not so sure there is any thought involved on their part.
UPDATE: Gateway Pundit links (thanks, Jim!), and adds this link to Venezuela News and Views: “Those pesky dissident students troubling chavismo”
Technorati Tags: Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, riots, constitutional reforms, reforma no, Caracas, National Assembly, totalitarianism, socialism, Bolivarian, Cuba
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