Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez urged authorities on Monday to impose sanctions on Venezuelan TV networks that allegedly backed a military rebellion that briefly ousted him seven years ago.
Chavez has long accused Venezuela’s major TV channels — Venevision, Globovision, RCTV and Televen — of supporting the short-lived 2002 coup by broadcasting cartoons and movies instead of street protests that aided his return to power two days after the military uprising.
The socialist leader accused privately owned TV channels of continuing to try to “stir up disorder.”
PHOTO: EPA
“Nobody has touched them,” Chavez said of the TV networks during a speech to supporters in downtown Caracas. “Sanctions must be imposed.”
POWER OF SUGGESTION
Chavez didn’t elaborate, but similar comments in the past have prompted the government’s telecommunications watchdog, Conatel, to slap fines on Globovision.
Ana Cristina Nunez, a legal consultant for Globovision, said Chavez sought a crackdown on dissent.
“The president is totally criminalizing the free exercise of freedom of expression,” Nunez said.
Venevision and Televen curbed criticism of Chavez following the coup. RCTV moved to cable in 2007 after Chavez refused to renew the channel’s broadcast license, leaving Globovision as the only major network that remains critical of the government.
Chavez also urged prosecutors to bring “the intellectual authors” responsible for the coup to trial.
Dissident military officers rose up against Chavez on April 11, 2002, after 19 people were killed in Caracas during street demonstrations for and against Chavez. Government critics blame the slayings on National Guard troops and Chavez backers who were filmed shooting from a bridge, but the president’s supporters say the police were responsible.
LIVING IN EXILE
None of the dissident military officers who ousted Chavez, many of whom are living in exile, have gone to trial. Former business leader Pedro Carmona, who served as interim president before loyalists in the military returned Chavez to power, was granted political asylum in Colombia.
A Zurich city councilor has apologized and reportedly sought police protection against threats after she fired a sport pistol at an auction poster of a 14th-century Madonna and child painting, and posted images of their bullet-ridden faces on social media. Green-Liberal party official Sanija Ameti, 32, put the images on Instagram over the weekend before quickly pulling them down. She later wrote on social media that she had been practicing shots from about 10m and only found the poster as “big enough” for a suitable target. “I apologize to the people who were hurt by my post. I deleted it immediately when I
The governor of Ohio is to send law enforcement and millions of dollars in healthcare resources to the city of Springfield as it faces a surge in temporary Haitian migrants. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine on Tuesday said that he does not oppose the Temporary Protected Status program under which about 15,000 Haitians have arrived in the city of about 59,000 people since 2020, but said the federal government must do more to help affected communities. On Monday, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost directed his office to research legal avenues — including filing a lawsuit — to stop the federal government from sending
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
RSS