At least 41 people, including foreign reporters, were arrested in Caracas late on Friday as security forces battled protesters angry at the policies of Venezuela’s leftist government.
National Guard security forces blasted the student-led demonstrators with high-pressure water and fired tear gas canisters into the crowds in an attempt to break up the protest. Hooded protesters set up barricades and responded by hurling rocks and Molotov cocktails.
The death toll from three-week street battles stood at 18, according to government figures.
With no sign of a breakthrough in the political crisis gripping the oil-rich country, Washington urged Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro to talk to the protesters.
“They need to reach out and have a dialogue, and bring people together and resolve their problems,” US Secretary of State John Kerry said in Washington, urging against “arrests and violence in the streets.”
Kerry said the US was working with Colombia and other countries to bolster mediation efforts.
Maduro has labeled the protests that began on Feb. 4 a Washington-backed attempted “coup.”
He claims that radical opposition leaders have joined students angered by high inflation and goods shortage in plotting to topple his nearly year-old government.
Eight of those detained were foreigners “and are being held for international terrorism,” state VTV television said in a brief statement.
Venezuela’s journalist association SNTP said that one of the foreigners was US freelance reporter Andrew Rosati, who writes for the Miami Herald.
Rosati was detained for half an hour and released after being “struck in the face and his abdomen” by security forces, the SNTP, said on Twitter.
The group also said that Italian photographer Francesca Commissari, who works for the local daily El Nacional, was being held.
Security forces made the arrests at a protest in the Plaza Altamira, in the city’s wealthy Chacao District.
In a separate incident, Maduro said that National Guard members were “ambushed” and shot at while removing debris from the streets of Valencia, Venezuela’s economic hub. One died from a shot in the eye and another was shot twice in the leg.
“All these things are aimed at triggering a backlash from security forces,” Maduro said from the Miraflores presidential palace, where he spoke with representatives of various political and social sectors.
Protest organizer Alfredo Romero, president of the Venezuelan Penal Forum, said 33 cases of “cruel and inhuman treatment or torture” have been reported to the public ombudsman.
One of the cases involves an alleged rape with a rifle of a young man arrested by the National Guard.
The Venezuelan government said it was investigating 27 cases of human rights abuses, though it provided no details of possible wrongdoing.
Some of the deaths have been attributed to violent clashes with police, but other victims have been shot by unidentified gunmen, whom the protesters have accused of being government agents.
The government has denied all links to such killings.
Venezuelan Attorney General Luisa Ortega Diaz said that the death toll linked to the protests stood at 18, while of the 1,044 that had been detained, 72 remain behind bars.
The US Congress has condemned “inexcusable” violence against anti-government protesters, calling for a dialogue to end the crisis and urging US President Barack Obama to impose sanctions on those responsible for the crackdown.
The resolution came one day after Venezuela reportedly issued an arrest warrant for a second opposition figure accused of crimes linked to the protests, including arson, public incitement and criminal damage.
Voluntad Popular party’s Leopoldo Lopez had turned himself in last week after a warrant went out for his arrest.
The party said on Thursday that Maduro’s embattled government was now seeking Carlos Vecchio, the Voluntad Popular party’s national political coordinator.
Court officials have not confirmed the arrest warrant.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in