Venezuelan Police Break Up Anti-Chavez Protest

CARACAS, Venezuela — Police used tear gas, plastic bullets and water cannons to scatter hundreds of students protesting against the government Thursday, while President Hugo Chavez's supporters celebrated the 18th anniversary of his failed coup as an army officer.

Caracas Police Chief Carlos Meza said authorities broke up the protest because university students had not been granted permission to march. He said the denial was aimed at preventing clashes with thousands of "Chavistas" marching across the capital to mark the botched 1992 military rebellion that Chavez led as a lieutenant colonel.

"They don't have permission to march," Meza said.

Student leaders countered that they have the right to stage peaceful protests, and they said authorities loyal to Chavez frequently deny them permission to demonstrate. Before the protest was dispersed, students chanted: "We're students, not coup plotters!"

"This is one more demonstration of the government's abuse of power," student leader Roderick Navarro said.

Students started leading protests last week after the government pressured cable and satellite TV providers to drop an opposition channel. Students have organized demonstrations in cities across the country, accusing Chavez of forcing Radio Caracas Television International off the airwaves as a means of silencing his critics.

Chavez challenged the students to continue staging demonstrations, saying they won't weaken his socialist government. But he warned them against stirring up violence, suggesting authorities would break up protests that get out of control.

"Don't make a mistake with us. You'll get a firm response," Chavez said during a speech to his supporters at Venezuela's largest military fort.

Thousands of Chavez's backers gathered to listen to Chavez, who hailed the Feb. 4, 1992, military uprising against then-President Carlos Andres Perez as a justified rebellion seeking to topple a corrupt government that ignored the plight of Venezuela's poor.

More than 80 civilians and 17 soldiers were killed before troops loyal to the government quelled the coup attempt, which Chavez commemorates annually.

Comments

[mcmutter]

07:09 PM on 02/27/2010

Reminds of police breaking up anti-Bush protests ...... same thing, different dictator .......

[Trance2010]

10:24 PM on 02/06/2010

Chavez is just another caudillo.

[Martin Chuzzlewit]

08:46 PM on 02/06/2010

Venezuela is in a tailspin and it is just starting ....watch what happens in the next few weeks when even poor citizens see what it is like to own money that is now suddenly worth 50% less.

Some of them may actually get around to asking Hugo why their oil production has fallen from 3.5 to 2.4 million barrels a day on his watch.

He may have some 'splainin to do.

[zeppelingirl89]

07:38 PM on 02/06/2010

Love how my comments didn't get approved for whatever reason, even though there was absolutely nothing offensive in it....

[thrdr]

03:23 PM on 02/07/2010

The mods move in mysterious ways to all of us . . . .

[thrdr]

03:57 PM on 02/06/2010

Pathetic, moaning rich brats with nothing better to do with their lives. Of course they aren't "plotting a coup"--that would be WORK.

[Yank in France]

04:26 PM on 02/06/2010

Using the same language as Chavez, but you aren't a Chavista. Oh no!!

[thrdr]

01:48 PM on 02/07/2010

Nope. I'm not. Too bad for the rickety scaffold of your personal worldview.

[zeppelingirl89]

06:47 PM on 02/06/2010

protesting doesn't make one a rich brat. I'm sure some of them might be, but hey, being rich alone doesn't somehow negate one's right to public dissent....Funny how you probably are the first to decry police brutality against peaceful demonstrators in some instances, but apparently only if the protests conform to a certain idealized agenda....
Perhaps it's time you see the world less in black in white shades. Lemme guess... poor= always good and oppressed and rich = evil moneybags....Hmmm, doesn't this sound an awful lot like an extremely narrow worldview, something that liberals often accuse conservatives of possessing?
The truth is always somewhere in between. Maybe the poor are better off under Chavez, but that alone doesn't excuse other authoritarian stances of his administration. There are good and bad people among the rich and the poor. People of all classes probably exhibit behavior somewhere between the two extremes, like most people.

[TStringfellow]

06:33 AM on 02/07/2010

I've seen you parroting vague anti-Chavez rants all around this site without one example of his "authoritarianism".

Shutting down TV stations that try to overthrow your government isn't authoritarian.

Holding referendums is not authoritarian.

People are not saying that "rich=bad", as you put it. However, if you had the slightest understanding of the political situation in Venezuela you'd see that linking critics of Chavez to business interests is not far fetched. There are valid criticisms to be made of Chavez's government, as there are of any government, but to call if "authoritarian" is ridiculous.

[Yank in France]

07:25 AM on 02/07/2010

We have disagreed on another issue, zeppelingirl, but I am FANNING you anyway, because I appreciate the balance you bring to this conversation!

I think the opposition in Venezuela is no longer the far-right led group that Chavez and his politically challenged groupies in the States like to describe.

The leaders of the successful movement to defeat his "socialism" constitution referendum clearly recognize the importance of reducing income disparity and corruption in Venezuelan society.

They also recognize the faults of the former ruling elites, although the latter are not nearly the monsters Chavez has made them out to be.

Above all, the opposition objects to Chavez's shuddering of media, considered by him to be too opposition friendly.

They also object to his blacklisting from any work in government enterprises or enterprises which received govt contracts, i.e. about 90% of businesses in Venezuela.

Chavez has won support from the poor, not be making structural changes in the economy that will benefit them in the long-term, like building more roads, more public transportation or better electricity grids, but by handing out tax-payer money to the poor.

Many poor neighborhoods, and former Chavez bastions, voted against Chavez in the constitution change referendum because they see such aid for what it is: a highway to nowhere!

What our comrades on the HP forum do not grasp is that democracy is NOT majority rule, but majority rule with respect for the rights of minorities: otherwise, it is just mob rule!!

[LovingHope]

02:58 PM on 02/06/2010

I don't trust the HP when it is about Chavez. I know many in Venezuela love him, yet we never hear about them. Only the ones that oppose him. And I'm not shocked at all. This kind of treatment happens to everyone. Especially here in the U.S. Just ask Cindy Sheehan. You are not treated kindly when you oppose your government.

[thrdr]

03:52 PM on 02/06/2010

I'm no Chavista, but you're right to be skeptical of the corporate media, which desperately needs to find a boogie-man from the Latin American Left to prop up in support of its neocon/neolib agenda of glamorized, good-intentioned greed and rapacity. Chavez is rowdy and it's easy for them to paint a target on his public persona--not so easy with the polite Morales or the genial Lula, or other leaders in Latin America's rising Left, who are nevertheless both firmly on the same page as Chavez.

[Yank in France]

04:25 PM on 02/06/2010

Yes, you ARE a Chavista, or at least an apologist for him. Same difference here!!

[Wozzeck]

05:22 PM on 02/06/2010

Hugo is on corporate media's sh*tlist because Venezuela doesn't treat Iran as a pariah, as our special friend has decreed.

[thrdr]

02:52 PM on 02/07/2010

You mean Israel, of course.

[nomadrdw]

12:04 PM on 02/06/2010

Hugo Chavez is well on his way to becoming Kim Jong Ill, in south america. He has delusions of grandeur and will only be massive trouble to his own citizens and the rest of SA.

[thrdr]

04:00 PM on 02/06/2010

Ignorant and delusional. Chavez is the best thing that's happened to Venezuela's government in decades. And most Venezuelan's know it.

[Wozzeck]

09:41 AM on 02/06/2010

The truth of Chavez's media war:

"To understand Chavez' opposition to the country's media, one must take a look at the last decade. RCTV and other privately-owned channels Venevisión, Globovisión and Televen vocally supported the illegal military coup attempt against Chavez in 2002. At the time Chavez was kidnapped and taken to a military base while RCTV reported that he had resigned from power, and heralded the change as a victory for democracy."

http://blogs.thenational.ae/mixed_media/2010/02/the-truth-of-chavezs-media-war.html

[thrdr]

04:02 PM on 02/06/2010

True. They also doctored video footage to smear Chavez's supporters, accusing them of shooting civilians in the streets.

[patches12]

09:39 AM on 02/06/2010

Chavez is a THUG.... a socialist THUG who will hold onto power by any means necessary.

Hey Sean Penn... are you listening.... GO BUY A CLUE

[Richard Pearce]

09:53 AM on 02/06/2010

In this case, the means is governing in a way that brings services and knowledge to the vast majority of Venezuelans. How unscrupulous of him. He should be condemned for doing that by all right thinking people.

;-}

[Ira7]

11:43 AM on 02/06/2010

You don't consider electricity, water, basic food stuffs and police protection to be services, huh? Because he's sure doing a miserable job of providing them!

Your position would be laughable if it wasn't so pitiful.

[thrdr]

04:09 PM on 02/06/2010

Wrong. Totally, totally WRONG. YOU need a clue. Several. And badly.

When Chavez tried to pass via national referendum a Constitutional amendment to extend Presidential term-limitations a couple of years ago--as part of an over-loaded package, really--and it failed--though only barely--to pass with the Venezuelan voters, he didn't even demand any recount but shrugged it off and promised to try again, perhaps with a different approach, according to the rules. That's what they do in a democracy. You know--democracy--that funny thing that the U.S. Wrong-wing doesn't understand.

[thrdr]

06:34 AM on 02/06/2010

What this article fails to mention is that the year after Chavez's military uprising that attempted to depose him, Carlos Andres Perez was impeached and legally removed from power, kicked out of Venezuela's Democratic Action Party, and ultimately found guilty of corruption charges by the Venezuelan Supreme Court.

Last report was he was living in Miami, debilitated by a stroke but nonetheless filthy rich (of course), longing to return to Venezuela, and hating Hugo Chavez.

[Ira7]

11:44 AM on 02/06/2010

I suggest you go back and reread history. Your timeline is totally wrong.

[thrdr]

03:41 PM on 02/06/2010

You mean reread it the way you wish to rewrite it according to your Wrong-wing ideological deformation of reality, of course.

My timeline is totally RIGHT. YOU are totally wrong in your assertion.

I suggest anyone who wants to be informed look the matter up.

Just for starters:

http://www.bookrags.com/biography/carlos-andres-perez/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_Andr%C3%A9s_P%C3%A9rez#Corruption_charges

I also suggest that anyone interested in the matter look up the earlier Caracazo protest against Perez's neoliberal economic "reforms," a protest which was brutally supressed, with hundreds of people killed, by the Venezuelan National Guard at Perez's behest.

[Yank in France]

04:29 PM on 02/06/2010

Let me see here, you condemn the coup attempt against Chavez a few years ago.
But you support the coup attempt by Chavez a decade or so ago.

But you aren't a Chavista.......you claim!

[thrdr]

05:05 PM on 02/06/2010

By 1992, it was already pretty clear to the Venezuelan people that Perez truly had become despotic, murderously so . . . .

But anyway perhaps you and the Wrong-wing zealots should leave defining what was or was not a coup to the Venezuelan people, who subsequently democratically elected Chavez the nefarious coup plotter to the Pesidency--twice, the second time after he survived a U.S.-sponsored attempt to depose him.

[Elishia Windfohr]

03:17 AM on 02/06/2010

Again! President Hugo Chavez, terrified his people, he's threatened on nationalist telecasting to launch a butcherly attack against his governmental opponents and anyone who opposes him, meaningful over half of the civilian assemblage.

Since the foregone weekend, polar plan thugs including his homies Diosdado Cabello and Jose Vicente Rangel (JVR) possess members made related threats of mass carnage against the midriff sort of Caracas.
Lets remember Ramiro Valdes is responsible for hundreds if not thousands of murdered and tortured Cubans who did not agree with Castro's gyration. He is in Venezuela at Chavez's content to do the identical to the opposition there. Seriously this part of the world needs some peace from this kind of drama!

Elishia Windfohr

[nexxtep54]

07:27 PM on 02/05/2010

Jeeeebus, Venezuela is turning into the US.

[sticksnstones]

07:40 PM on 02/05/2010

Anyone remember the police riot known as the Battle in Seattle, 1999 at the World Trade Organization Ministrial Conference ?? Anyone ?

[Richard Pearce]

11:38 PM on 02/05/2010

And if the G7 meeting was beng held anywhere more populated than where it is, there'd have been similar scenes.

[CigarGod]

09:41 AM on 02/06/2010

Certainly do.

Police practices have been international standards for many years.

[sticksnstones]

04:57 PM on 02/05/2010

" If it takes a bloodbath, then let's get it over with. "

----- California Governor Ronald Reagan, on how to handle student protests, Mat 5, 1970, the day following the killing of students at Kent State University.

[wereeverywhere]

05:16 PM on 02/05/2010

It makes me uneasy to see Chavez act like a right winger.

[sticksnstones]

05:20 PM on 02/05/2010

It makes me even MORE uneasy that we (read the US) seem to have no historical memory.

[CigarGod]

09:46 AM on 02/06/2010

Thanks for the historical perspective.

We tend to think the leaders of our country, actually love the citizenry.

[blogisti]

03:39 PM on 02/05/2010

Chavez has the support of 80% of the people. Why? Because those 80% were ignored by American backed governments run by the small elite for the last many decades. The small elite, and their children in university, are not happy about not having access to the power and wealth they were used to. It doesn't take much for the CIA to rouse up the young elite.
You hear about the small group would rioted but not much about the thousands who celebrated. That tells you that this is a CIA plant story. Planting negative stories against any country they have in their cross hairs is part the the softening up process that they do before they run their coup or invade. It works too. Just look at the comments following these stories. A lot are negative but interesting not as many as there used to be. The internet is a good antidote to the one sided (lazy) main stream media.

[MaxPowerXP]

12:11 AM on 02/06/2010

It's so cute that when HP Chavistas claim that any opposition to Hugo's government is just a bunch of rich kids assisted by the CIA, with nothing to corroborate it.

If this site had been around during the Tiananmen Square protests, you'd probably claim they were stirred up by the CIA too.

[Ira7]

11:31 AM on 02/06/2010

80%, huh? What hat did you pull that number out of?

[Yank in France]

03:09 AM on 02/07/2010

I think you are betting a little hard on blogisti for his 80% Chavez support figure. Let's be fair: if you had to look for stats where the "sun don't shine", you also might have a hard time pulling out the right stat, too!

[KataVideo]

02:46 PM on 02/05/2010

This is what the republicans want for us: two sides, dug in, no negotiation or bipartisanship ever.