With debates, exhibitions, workshops and demonstrations, this week Venezuela marked a decade since the coup and counter-coup of April 2002 which removed President Hugo Chavez from power in just under 48 hours.
Venezuelan’s National Telecommunication Commission (Conatel) has taken rightwing news station Globovision to the Supreme Court for not paying a Bs 9.3 million (US$ 2.2 million ) fine by the due date, 1 January 2012.
A coalition of Venezuelan social movements have rejected reports in a private Venezuelan newspaper linking them to paramilitary groups as false. The movements have denounced the allegations as “an unprecedented offensive by the domestic counterrevolution, that forms part of the electoral and conspiratorial campaign of [Venezuelan presidential opposition candidate] Capriles Radonski”.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has urged the Supreme Court and the public prosecutor, Luisa Ortega, to investigate the private media and opposition spokespeople for “spreading information about supposed contamination of some of the country’s water supplies” and called it “war propaganda”.
An initial government statement reports that an operation on President Hugo Chavez on a lesion in the same area where he had a cancerous tumour removed last year, has been successful. Nevertheless, private media, using the recently leaked Stratfor emails, are announcing he has just one or two years to live.
Yesterday Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez announced that he would require another operation, this time to extract a lesion from the pelvic region of his body. Opposition spokespeople and international press have speculated about the seriousness of the surgery, suggesting “uncertainty” before the presidential elections.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez has condemned the United States’ decision to expel the Venezuelan consul general in Miami as “arbitrary and unjustified” this past Monday, and derided the move as “another demonstration of the arrogance of ridiculous imperialism”.
“2012 is going to be a decisive year. There will be various elections, including the presidential elections in October. That means that the manipulations, lies, and distortions by both Venezuelan and international private media will be even more intense than usual,” said VA writer Tamara Pearson.
On Thursday, Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolás Maduro welcomed a decision by the Colombian Supreme Court to dismiss evidence said to be from the laptop computers of slain rebel leader Luis Edgar Devía Silva (aka Raúl Reyes).
Caracas-based Radio del Sur suffered a shake up this week after Venezuela’s Minister of Communication and Information replaced the station’s president in what workers there described as a reprisal for having aired “the exercise of self-criticism” in the aftermath of Venezuela’s controversial deportation to Colombia of alternative media activist Joaquin Pérez Becerra.
Refuting claims that Venezuela has been saddled by a clamp down on freedom of expression in recent years, Vice President for the NGO Journalists for the Truth, Jose Gregorio Nieves, challenged corporate media outlets to report the reality of the country during an appearance on the program All Venezuela, broadcast by Venezolana de Television.
More accusations by accused drug trafficker, Walid Makled, have led to mainstream media calling Venezuela a “drug state”, amidst a political struggle between the U.S. and Venezuela over Makled’s extradition.
On Wednesday, Cuba’s Deputy Foreign Minister Ana Teresita Gonzalez and her Venezuelan counterpart for Latin America and the Caribbean, Jacqueline Mendoza, highlighted the achievements in bilateral cooperation despite ongoing media smear campaigns against the two nations, Prensa Latina news agency reports.
According to BBC Mundo, there is no evidence of Internet censorship in Venezuela. Other countries with no evidence of Internet censorship include Ecuador, Bolivia, Mexico, Chile and Paraguay. However, in the United States, Colombia, Peru, Brazil and Argentina some type of censorship was detected.
In response to rumours based on a comment made by British Foreign Minister William Hague, Venezuelan authorities have confirmed that Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi has not fled to Venezuela. They also expressed their hopes for a “peaceful” resolution to the protest situation in Libya.
