The US government on Thursday ordered family members of employees at its embassy in Venezuela to leave as a political crisis deepened ahead of a controversial vote critics contend could end democracy in the oil-rich country.
Violence continued to rage on the street, with another seven people killed during the latest opposition-led strike against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s planned election for a powerful new Constituent Assembly on Sunday.
The Constituent Assembly would have power to rewrite the constitution and shut down the existing opposition-led legislature, which the opposition maintains would cement dictatorship in Venezuela.
Photo: AFP
Maduro’s critics yesterday were planning to pile more pressure on the unpopular leftist leader by holding roadblocks across the nation dubbed “The Takeover of Venezuela.”
“We are going to keep fighting, we are not leaving the streets,” Justice First lawmaker Jorge Millan said.
The government banned protests from Friday to Tuesday, raising the likelihood of more violence in volatile Venezuela. Many people have been stocking up food and staying home.
Many streets remained barricaded and deserted on Thursday during the second day of a nationwide work stoppage. However, plenty of rural areas and working-class urban neighborhoods were bustling, and the strike appeared less massively supported than a one-day shutdown last week.
In Barinas, home state of former Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, only about a third of businesses were closed, according to a Reuters witness, as opposed to the opposition’s formal estimate of 90 percent participation nationally.
Officials and candidates for the Constituent Assembly on Thursday wrapped up campaigning with a rally in Caracas with Maduro.
The former bus driver and union leader reiterated that the assembly was the only way to bring peace to Venezuela, blasted threats of further sanctions from “emperor Donald Trump,” and hit back at accusations that he is morphing into a tyrant.
“The usual suspects came out to say Maduro had become crazy,” he told cheering red-shirted supporters in Caracas. “Of course, I was crazy! Crazy with passion, crazy with a desire for peace.”
Amid rumors of 11th-hour attempts to foster negotiations, Maduro reiterated an invitation to talk with the opposition, although such talks have flopped in the past.
The state prosecutor’s office said four people died on Thursday amid the unrest: A 49-year-old man in Carabobo state, a 23-year-old in Lara state, a 29-year-old in Anzoategui state and a 16-year-old in the middle-class Caracas area of El Paraiso.
A 23-year-old man and a 30-year-old man were also killed in western Merida state and a 16-year-old boy was killed in the poor Caracas neighborhood of Petare during clashes on Wednesday.
This week’s death toll topped last week’s one-day strike, when five people were killed.
Over 190 people were arrested during the stoppage on Wednesday and nearly 50 on Thursday, local rights group Penal Forum said.
Since April, authorities have detained nearly 4,800 people, of whom 1,325 remain behind bars, it said.
Wuilly Arteaga, a violinist who has become one of the best-known faces of the protests, was among those detained by the National Guard, Penal Forum added.
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