The leader of Venezuela’s Roman Catholic Church on Monday accused the government of President Hugo Chavez of using judges and prosecutors to punish political adversaries.
Cardinal Jorge Urosa said authorities were unfairly prosecuting Chavez opponents for simply criticizing the government.
Urosa said an increasing number of Chavez’s foes are being “imprisoned for their opinion” and he urged Venezuelans to speak out against “any violation of human rights.”
Human rights groups already have expressed concerns that Chavez is becoming increasingly authoritarian and cracking down on dissent.
Chavez denies doing that. The president says he holds no sway over the justice system, but encourages authorities to uphold the law.
A Venezuelan lawmaker said on Monday he was being prosecuted for his outspoken criticism of Chavez and his family and appealed for international support. Wilmer Azuaje said charges that he struck a police official were politically motivated and that Chavez intended to keep him from running for re-election and to silence him.
Over the past week, prosecutors brought criminal charges against Guillermo Zuloaga, the majority shareholder of Venezuela’s lone anti-Chavez TV channel, and opposition politician Oswaldo Alvarez Paz for making remarks that authorities deemed misleading and offensive to the president. Both deny any wrongdoing and say they stand by their statements.
Zuloaga, owner of the TV channel Globovision, is facing charges for making what prosecutors consider false and “offensive” remarks about Chavez at an Inter American Press Association meeting in Aruba.
Alvarez Paz, a former state governor, has been charged with conspiracy, spreading false information and publicly inciting crime after commenting during a TV interview that Venezuela has turned into a haven for drug traffickers and backing allegations by a Spanish judge that Venezuela has cooperated with the Basque separatist group ETA and Colombian rebels — accusations Chavez denies.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
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Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
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