Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on Tuesday accused Washington of ordering a coup against his government and called for a “total revision” of ties with the US.
The latest claims by Caracas of a US coup plot came one day before a mass street protest announced by the opposition and one day after a mutiny by some soldiers.
Maduro was specifically reacting to comments by US Vice President Mike Pence, who posted a video on Twitter branding Maduro “a dictator with no legitimate claim to power.”
Photo: AFP
Referring to yesterday’s planned opposition rally, Pence added: “As the good people of Venezuela make your voices heard tomorrow, on behalf of the American people, we say: estamos con ustedes. We are with you.”
Maduro responded in a radio and TV broadcast, saying: “What the government of the United States did through Vice President Mike Pence was to give orders to carry out a coup from the fascist state ... which is unparalleled in the history of relations between the United States and Venezuela in 200 years.”
He ordered Venezuelan Minister of Foreign Affairs Jorge Arreaza to begin “a total revision of relations” with Washington, which has already sanctioned top Venezuelan regime figures.
With Maduro’s government ominously predicting that there would be violence against opposition protesters, US Senator Marco Rubio warned Venezuela’s intelligence service to “reconsider the plan they have for tomorrow before it’s too late.”
“You are about to cross a line & trigger a response that believe me you are not prepared to face,” the Florida Republican said on Twitter.
Rubio urged prayers for “the thousands of Venezuelans who will face danger & difficulty in the hours ahead. May God give them strength. And may he change the hearts of military leaders so that they protect not repress their fellow countrymen.”
The Venezuelan government’s rhetoric intensified the day after a group of soldiers rose up against Maduro at a command post in the north of Caracas. They published a video on social media calling for the public to come out and support them.
However, they surrendered after police and military units surrounded the post; 27 soldiers were arrested.
Their voices were heard, though, according to the non-governmental Social Conflict Observatory, which on Tuesday said that anti-Maduro protests were recorded in at least 30 different locations around the capital.
The Organization of American States, which has declared Maduro’s new term illegitimate, plans to hold an extraordinary session tomorrow to discuss “recent events in Venezuela.”
“Yankee go home! We won’t let them interfere in the affairs of the homeland,” Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodriguez said in televised remarks, while Venezuelan Minister of Communications and Information Jorge Rodriguez accused Pence of having ordered “terrorists” to carry out acts of violence during yesterday’s protest.
Demonstrators were set to mobilize behind new Venezuelan National Assembly President Juan Guaido, who has branded Maduro an “usurper” and wants to establish a transitional government leading to elections.
The Maduro administration has stripped the assembly of its power, but Guaido has risen to the challenge of taking him on. The movement has gained traction since Maduro was sworn in for a second term as president on Jan. 10 after he won controversial elections.
Unrest triggered by Monday’s troop uprising lasted in some places until Tuesday morning.
“’Maduro out!’ That’s what the people were shouting. It was awful,” 60-year-old Dinora de Longa said. “The police were shooting and there was tear gas everywhere. I had to put my grandchildren in the bathroom. This won’t solve anything.”
One protest, in which people pelted cars with stones, took place on the motorway linking Caracas to the neighboring port of La Guaira, where the capital’s airport is located.
The protest date of Jan. 23 is significant, because it marks the 61st anniversary of the ousting of former Venezuelan president Marcos Perez Jimenez.
The regime has responded by announcing its own demonstration in support of Maduro.
It is to be the first major street movement since 125 people were killed during civil unrest from April to July 2017.
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi reaffirmed his pledge to replace India’s religion-based marriage and inheritance laws with a uniform civil code if he returns to office for a third term, a move that some minority groups have opposed. In an interview with the Times of India listing his agenda, Modi said his government would push for making the code a reality. “It is clear that separate laws for communities are detrimental to the health of society,” he said in the interview published yesterday. “We cannot be a nation where one community is progressing with the support of the Constitution while the other
The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Central Committee is to gather in July for a key meeting known as a plenum, the third since the body of elite decisionmakers was elected in 2022, focusing on reforms amid “challenges” at home and complexities broad. Plenums are important events on China’s political calendar that require the attendance of all of the Central Committee, comprising 205 members and 171 alternate members with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at the helm. The Central Committee typically holds seven plenums between party congresses, which are held once every five years. The current central committee members were elected at the
CODIFYING DISCRIMINATION: Transgender people would be sentenced to three years in prison, while same-sex relations could land a person in jail for more than a decade Iraq’s parliament on Saturday passed a bill criminalizing same-sex relations, which would receive a sentence of up to 15 years in prison, in a move rights groups condemned as an “attack on human rights.” Transgender people would be sentenced to three years’ jail under the amendments to a 1988 anti-prostitution law, which were adopted during a session attended by 170 of 329 lawmakers. A previous draft had proposed capital punishment for same-sex relations, in what campaigners had called a “dangerous” escalation. The new amendments enable courts to sentence people engaging in same-sex relations to 10 to 15 years in prison, according to the