A nationwide strike against plans to rewrite the constitution on Thursday shut down much of Venezuela’s capital before erupting into sporadic violence that left at least two young men dead.
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro pledged to forge ahead with reshaping the government despite the protests and a US threat to levy economic sanctions if he continued.
A coalition of opposition groups called what it described as a “great march” for today, returning to a strategy of direct confrontation with the government after a week of alternative tactics like organizing a nationwide protest vote against the constitutional rewrite.
Photo: AFP
In New York, a senior diplomat on Thursday resigned from the Venezuelan delegation to the UN in what he called a protest of the Maduro’s administration’s widespread human rights violations.
Venezuelan Ambassador to the UN Rafael Ramirez said on Twitter that Minister Counselor Isaias Medina had acted dishonestly and been removed from his post.
In a video and a letter posted online, a man who identified himself as Medina and said he was Venezuela’s representative to the UN General Assembly’s human rights committee announced his resignation, and said he cannot be part of a government that attacks protesters, censors the media and detains political prisoners.
The authenticity of the letter and video could not be independently confirmed, but the footage is consistent with prior photographs of Medina.
Medina could not immediately be reached for comment.
In Caracas, pro-opposition neighborhoods in the eastern part of the city were shuttered and silent until early afternoon, when improvised blockades left them almost entirely cut them off from the rest of the city. Groups of masked young men set fire to a handful of blockades and hurled stones at riot police, who fired back tear gas.
The Venezuelan chief prosecutor’s office said 23-year-old Andres Uzcategui was killed in a protest in the working-class neighborhood of La Isabelica in the central state of Carabobo and 24-year-old Ronney Eloy Tejera Soler was killed in the Los Teques neighborhood on Caracas’ outskirts.
At least nine people were hurt in protests, the office said.
It offered no details about the circumstances of the killings.
The slaying drives the death toll over nearly four months of protests to at least 95.
A public transport strike appeared to have halted nearly all bus traffic and thousands of private businesses defied government demands to stay open during the first major national strike since a 2002 stoppage that failed to topple Maduro’s predecessor, former Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez.
Maduro on national television said that he will press ahead with plans to rewrite the nation’s constitution and said that hundreds of Venezuela’s largest companies are functioning “at 100 percent,” despite the strike.
The 24-hour strike was meant as an expression of national disapproval of Maduro’s plan to convene a constitutional assembly that would reshape the Venezuelan system to consolidate the ruling party’s power over the few institutions that remain outside its control.
The opposition is boycotting the election on Sunday next week to select members of the assembly.
“Definitively, we need a change,” teacher Katherina Alvarez said. “The main objective is for people to see how dissatisfied people are.”
Many of those who opted to work said they walked hours to get to their jobs, unable to find a bus or taxi.
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