Venezuela has moved the women’s baseball world championship tournament to militarized stadiums outside Caracas after a Hong Kong player was shot during a game, prompting an outcry over the city’s violent crime epidemic.
Hong Kong withdrew from the tournament and games were briefly suspended after an apparently stray bullet hit Cheuk Woon-yee in the left calf during a tie against the Netherlands on Friday last week.
Doctors removed the bullet and the player was expected to recover but that did not spare authorities from embarrassing questions about a wave of violence that has made Caracas one of the world’s most dangerous capitals.
The incident came amid a separate furor over a newspaper’s publication of a photograph of bodies stacked in a morgue, a grisly image that infuriated the government and dominated the political agenda.
In the absence of complete official figures, watchdog groups estimate 16,000 people are murdered in Venezuela every year and that less than 93 percent of cases go unpunished, breeding impunity. Police kill an estimated 900 people every year.
To safeguard a showcase sporting event, authorities hosted the baseball championship in Fuerte Tiuna, a military base and supposedly Caracas’ safest site. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez regularly stays there overnight.
However, as Cheuk took her position at third base during the fourth inning of the game, a shot rang out and she fell to the ground. Venezuelan Vice President Elias Jaua said the bullet was a stray. It was unclear where it originated. Speculation centered on hillside slums and the base itself.
Cheuk, a bandage around her leg, was pushed in a wheelchair through the airport as her team prepared to leave Venezuela.
“We’re very sorry about [Hong Kong’s] decision to pull out, but we respect it,” Venezuelan Minister of Sports Hector Rodriguez said.
After a brief suspension, the tournament was moved to the city of Maracay, west of Caracas, “to reassure all of the participating teams,” Rodriguez said.
Games resumed on Sunday amid a show of force. Army and national guard troops with armored vehicles reinforced police checkpoints leading to the main stadium. Other troops searched the pockets and bags of people entering the stadium, all watched by a military helicopter hovering overhead. Tight controls were also in place at a second stadium inside an airbase.
Government critics said the shooting was further evidence that violent crime was out of control, a common perception which is hurting Chavez’s administration in the run-up to legislative elections next month. Dozens are killed in Caracas each weekend alone. Most of the victims are poor young men from slums caught up in gang violence.
The newspaper El Nacional caused a sensation last week by publishing a front page photograph of about a dozen corpses piled in a morgue closed to media since homicide rates started soaring. The editor, Miguel Henrique Otero, said the intention was to show the facility was overwhelmed.
Prosecutors launched an investigation into El Nacional, which could face a fine or other sanctions. The ombudsman said publishing such an image risked damaging young people’s psychological and moral well-being.
Another newspaper, Tal Cual, re-published the photograph on its front page on Monday.
“Turns out the problem is the picture,” editor Teodoro Petkoff said in an accompanying editorial. “The problem isn’t the 16,000 murders each year ... That’s not the problem. The photo is the thing.”
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