Venezuelan riot police on Tuesday fired tear gas to break up a demonstration in Caracas called by Venezuelan National Assembly President Juan Guaido as he seeks to ramp up demands for elections to replace Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
Riot police moved in quickly to break up the demonstration soon after thousands of protesters began marching a 6km route toward the National Assembly building from the east of the capital.
In the aftermath of the protest, police arrested an opposition lawmaker, drawing angry protests from the opposition.
Photo: AFP
Guaido, recognized as interim president by more than 50 countries including the US, has been seeking to revive mass protests against Maduro, which have largely fizzled since spiking early last year.
As the opposition leader attempted to negotiate with a police cordon blocking the path of the march on Tuesday, they fired tear gas at the demonstrators, reporters at the scene said.
The march had only progressed a few blocks.
“This picket today does not represent Venezuela, this picket represents the dictatorship,” Guaido said, referring to the line of police with riot shields.
Most of the marchers left the area, but some with their faces covered threw stones at the police.
“A stage of sustained struggle begins today,” Guaido said earlier as he addressed the crowd through a megaphone from the back of a truck.
The opposition condemned what they said was a heavy-handed police raid on a hotel in east Caracas at which opposition lawmakers were staying.
The police “broke into the rooms with deputies inside,” lawmaker Guillermo Palacios told reporters outside the hotel.
They arrested lawmaker Renzo Prieto, who had taken part in the demonstration.
Prieto has been detained on two previous occasions. Two other lawmakers with him were also arrested, but released.
“They took us, they kidnapped us, they intimidated us, they took away our credentials, cell phones,” one of them, Sandra Castillo, told local media.
She added that the incident “is not going to stop us.”
Thousands of protesters had begun the march in east Caracas waving Venezuelan flags and caps in the national colors.
Local media reported smaller protests in other cities.
“Today we reconvene in the streets, the place where the citizens are free,” Guaido said on Twitter.
With her face still smeared with a substance to protect herself from tear gas, one of the protesters, 54-year-old cook Katherine Croquer, moved quickly away from the clashes.
“That happens and it hurts, but I feel more courageous, with more desire to continue protesting,” Croquer said, adding that her 24-year-old son was about to emigrate to Spain to try to find a better future.
A UN report released on Tuesday showed that almost 5 million people have fled the country’s economic crisis since 2015.
Guaido has blamed Maduro for the crippling, five-year economic crisis, which has mired the once rich oil-producing country in deepening poverty and soaring inflation.
Maduro supporters held a counterdemonstration, where they shouted anti-Guaido slogans and called him a “traitor” for enlisting the help of foreign governments to heap pressure on Maduro’s regime, particularly in the form of sanctions.
“Guaido has no chance at all,” Zenaida Gamboa, a 63-year-old retired teacher, said at the demonstration.
Venezuelan Constituent Assembly President Diosdado Cabello downplayed the police action against Guaido’s march.
“They carried out acts of violence for a photo,” he told his supporters. “What they wanted was a photo, because they believe they can topple the revolutionary government with a selfie.”
Plunging global oil prices on Monday were the latest shock to Venezuela’s economy, which is almost entirely dependent on revenues from its declining, sanctions-battered oil industry.
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