- The Guardian, Tuesday 4 August 2009
- Article history
Dozens of militant supporters of President Hugo Chavez stormed an opposition TV station yesterday in an escalation of Venezuela's "media war".
Around 30 activists with red berets forced their way into the Caracas headquarters of Globovision, lobbed tear gas and threatened staff with handguns.
The raid came amid a government crackdown on critics of Chavez's socialist revolution, a campaign which human rights groups have condemned as an attack on free speech. In recent days the government has revoked the licences of dozens of radio stations and proposed a law which would jail people deemed guilty of "media crimes" for up to four years.
Footage aired on Globovision showed activists from the UPV, a radical left-wing party which backs the president and dresses in quasi-military gear, arriving on motorbikes and rushing on foot into the station.
The intruders, led by a prominent "Chavista" named Lina Ron, waved banners and reportedly injured a guard and a police officer while tear gas seeped through the complex.
Chavez has repeatedly assailed Globovision – the South American country's last opposition TV network – as an instrument of oligarchs and US imperialists who are waging "media terrorism".
However, the government swiftly distanced itself from the raid. "We condemn this attack energetically and reject this type of violent action against Globovision," said the interior minister, Tareck El Aissami. "We don't accept that violence is the instrument to solve our differences."
Network executives rejected the condemnation as hollow. "I can only think [the attack] was an order from Miraflores," said Guillermo Zuloaga, in reference to the presidential palace. The government has named Globovision as its main target in a "media war" to rebut what it says is a campaign of lies and smears against the revolution. Authorities last month fined Globovision $2m for back taxes and officials have twice raided its president's property, saying he illegally resold cars and broke environmental regulations by keeping stuffed animals.
The government also opened an investigation against the channel for "inciting panic" after it reported on a small earthquake recently which affected Caracas.
RCTV, another channel which criticised Chavez, went off the air in 2007 after its licence was not renewed. Other private networks which have stayed neutral in Venezuela's polarised political climate continue operating. Chavez, a former tank commander with a flair for communication, has greatly expanded state media during his decade-long rule.
Last week he moved to further clip the wings of private media. A draft law was unveiled which threatens to jail journalists and broadcasters who "harm the interests of the state", "cause panic" or "disturb social peace". Some 34 radio stations had their licences revoked, the first of 240 which have been targeted, allegedly over irregular paperwork.
Venezuela Still Aids Colombia Rebels, New Material Shows
CARACAS, Venezuela — Despite repeated denials by President Hugo Chávez, Venezuelan officials have continued to assist commanders of Colombia’s largest rebel group, helping them arrange weapons deals in Venezuela and even obtain identity cards to move with ease on Venezuelan soil, according to computer material captured from the rebels in recent months and under review by Western intelligence agencies.
New evidence points to collaborations between members of the Venezuelan government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. A Colombian soldier inspected the area after an aerial bombardment against the FARC in July.
President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, left, appearing with Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro, froze diplomatic relations with Colombia in late July.
One message discussed a plan for an arms deal in Amazonas.
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The materials point to detailed collaborations between the guerrillas and high-ranking military and intelligence officials in Mr. Chávez’s government as recently as several weeks ago, countering the president’s frequent statements that his administration does not assist the rebels. “We do not protect them,” he said in late July.
The new evidence — drawn from computer material captured from the rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC — comes at a low point for ties between Venezuela and Colombia. Mr. Chávez froze diplomatic relations in late July, chafing at assertions by Colombia’s government that Swedish rocket launchers sold to Venezuela ended up in the hands of the FARC. Venezuela’s reaction was also fueled by Colombia’s plans to increase American troop levels there.
“Colombia’s government is trying to build a case in the media against our country that serves its own political agenda,” said Bernardo Álvarez, Venezuela’s ambassador in Washington, describing the latest intelligence information as “noncorroborated.”
Mr. Chávez has disputed claims of his government’s collaboration with the rebels since Colombian forces raided a FARC encampment in Ecuador last year. During the raid, Colombian commandos obtained the computers of a FARC commander with encrypted e-mail messages that described a history of close ties between Mr. Chávez’s government and the rebel group, which has long crossed over into Venezuelan territory for refuge.
The newest communications, circulated among the seven members of the FARC’s secretariat, suggest that little has changed with Venezuela’s assistance since the raid. The New York Times obtained a copy of the computer material from an intelligence agency that is analyzing it.
One message from Iván Márquez, a rebel commander thought to operate largely from Venezuelan territory, describes the FARC’s plan to buy surface-to-air missiles, sniper rifles and radios in Venezuela last year.
It is not clear whether the arms Mr. Márquez refers to ended up in FARC hands. But he wrote that the effort was facilitated by Gen. Henry Rangel Silva, the director of Venezuela’s police intelligence agency until his removal last month, and by Ramón Rodríguez Chacín, a former Venezuelan interior minister who served as Mr. Chávez’s official emissary to the FARC in negotiations to free hostages last year.
In the message, Mr. Márquez discusses a plan by Mr. Rodríguez Chacín to carry out the deal near the Río Negro in Amazonas State in Venezuela. Mr. Márquez goes further, explaining that General Rangel Silva gave the arms dealers documents they could use to move around freely while in Venezuela.
Intelligence of this kind has been a source of tension between Colombia and Venezuela, with the government here claiming the information is false and used to further political ends. Colombian officials, by contrast, argue that the intelligence proves that the FARC survives in part on its ability to operate from Venezuela’s frontier regions.
The latest evidence, suggesting that the FARC operates easily in Venezuela, may put the Obama administration in a tough spot. President Obama has recently tried to repair Washington’s relations with Venezuela, adopting a nonconfrontational approach to Mr. Chávez that stands in contrast to the Bush administration’s often aggressive response to his taunts and insults.
But the United States and the European Union still classify the FARC as a terrorist organization. The Treasury Department accused General Rangel Silva and Mr. Rodríguez Chacín last year of assisting the FARC’s drug trafficking activities, opening the officials to freezes on their assets, fines and prison terms of up to 30 years in the United States. Venezuela has said the men are not guilty of those charges.
“We do not comment on intelligence matters,” said Noel Clay, a State Department spokesman, in relation to the latest captured communications. A spokesman from the Colombian Foreign Ministry declined to comment on the matter.
Computer records obtained in the Colombian raid in Ecuador last year appeared to corroborate the assertion that Venezuela helped the FARC acquire the Swedish-made rocket launchers at the heart of the latest diplomatic dispute between the two countries. The launchers were purchased by the Venezuelan Army in the late 1980s but captured in Colombia in combat operations against the FARC last year.
The FARC’s use of Swedish arms has an added dimension: the rebels kidnapped a Swedish engineer in Colombia in 2007, holding him hostage for nearly two years — during which he was reported to have suffered brain damage and paralysis from a stroke — before releasing him in March.
“The issue of these weapons is extremely serious for us,” said Tommy Stromberg, the political officer at the Swedish Embassy in Bogotá, the Colombian capital, which also oversees Sweden’s affairs in Venezuela. Mr. Stromberg said Venezuela had bought Swedish arms as recently as 2006. “We have asked Venezuela’s Foreign Ministry for clarification on how this happened, but have not had a response.”
The computer records from the raid in Ecuador last year also seem to match some of the information in the new communications under review by Western intelligence officials.
For example, a message obtained in the Ecuador raid and written in September 2007 contained an earlier reference to the arms deal discussed recently by the FARC. In the earlier message, Mr. Márquez, the rebel commander, referred to dealers he described as Australian, and went into detail about the arms they were selling, including Dragunov rifles, SA-7 missiles and HF-90M radios, the same items he discusses in the more recent communications.
Another file from the Ecuador raid mentioning an offer from the FARC to instruct Venezuelan officers in guerrilla warfare matches recently obtained material from a rebel commander, Timoleón Jiménez, that says the course took place. Other communications refer to FARC efforts to secure Venezuelan identity cards in a plan overseen by General Rangel Silva, the former Venezuelan intelligence chief.
The Big Question: Is Hugo Chavez guilty of wielding excessive power in Venezuela?
Why are we asking this now?
A group of radical supporters of the Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez have attacked an opposition TV channel, Globovision, including by firing tear gas. It comes just as the Chávez government has adopted a series of measures to control the media. Some 34 radio stations have been closed for "irregularities" and 200 more are "under investigation". Critics say it is an assault on free speech by the man who the leftist New Statesman once placed near the top of its list of "Heroes of Our Time". Yesterday the former Foreign Office minister Denis MacShane suggested that it was now time for the Hooray Hugos to give up their uncritical admiration for Chávez after the South American proletarian hero announced a law that could jail journalists for up to four years if they divulged information against "the stability of the institutions of the state".
How authoritarian is he?
In 2006 he withdrew the terrestrial licence for Venezuela's second largest TV channel and replaced it with a state network. But then the station had, along with all the other privately-owned channels, backed a United States-inspired coup against him. Then, earlier this year, he persuaded voters to lift the two-term limit on the presidency – enabling him to keep standing indefinitely for the job. Opponents criticised him for having a second referendum on the subject after the first one failed. (A trick he perhaps learned from the EU's second plebiscite in Ireland over the Lisbon treaty). But an impressive 70 per cent of voters turned out, and 54 per cent said "Yes". Chávez announced: "In 2012, there will be presidential elections, and unless God decides otherwise, unless the people decide otherwise, this soldier is already a candidate," he told his supporters. "I am ready!" Critics say Chávez is hollowing-out Venezuelan democracy, though his supporters point to Germany, which allows for re-election indefinitely (Chancellor Helmut Kohl was in power for 16 years before losing his fourth election) without any major threat to German democracy.
What about human rights?
The lobby group Human Rights Watch has been critical of Chávez's expansion and toughening of penalties for speech and broadcasting offences. It has accused him of a disregard for the separation of powers, with attacks on the independent judiciary and on workers' rights to associate freely. The Venezuelan police have never sunk to the levels of barbarity of places like Brazil and Argentina at their worst, but it is said that those who don't tow the chavista line can be excluded from state jobs or benefits.
So why do Venezuelans keep voting for him?
Because, for all his faults, Chávez is a lot straighter and more honourable than the corrupt and kleptocractic regimes that preceded him. They also like his flamboyant and ribald style, which is on show not just in big set speeches but in his own live TV talk show Aló Presidente. Over the last 10 years there have been 14 referenda and elections and he, or his party, have won 12 of them. Chávez is generally viewed as speaking and acting in the best interests of the poor. Though his opponents dub him a dictator, Chávez keeps getting re-elected – and with very high turnouts in elections praised as free and fair by international observers such as the EU.
Have the poor benefited?
Undoubtedly. Chávez has channelled billions of dollars into social programmes in the form of health and literacy programmes aimed at the poorest. There is free dental care, free health, access to education and vocational training, social housing and cheap food subsidised by the state. There are elected neighbourhood community councils, which decide how government money will be spent locally. There are 3,500 local communal banks for micro-financing. The incomes of the poorest have risen by 130 per cent. Social indicators, on child mortality, disease, illiteracy, malnutrition and poverty, show huge improvement.
Things are far from perfect – state control of food prices has led to sporadic shortages. But the net improvements are clear. Official UN figures show that poverty has dropped from 51 per cent to 25 per cent since 2003. Extreme poverty is down from 25 per cent to just 7 per cent. Venezuela is well on the way to reaching its first Millennium Development Goal years ahead of schedule – in stark contrast to those Third World countries relying on the affluent West for aid.
So who exactly is against him?
The vested interests who depended on the old corrupt economic model for handling the country's oil economy, which is the fifth largest in the world. Also the professional and middle classes who relied on the working of the old elitist model. Prominent among these are the owners, managers, and commentators workings on the five major private television networks and largest newspapers who have opposed Chávez for a decade. Their airwaves and pages are full of day-to-day issues like muggings (crime is high in Venezuela) and the price of milk. But their real concern is the shift from alignment with the US-dominated globalised economy to the bilateral trade and reciprocal aid agreements which Chávez has called his "oil diplomacy" – bartering oil for arms with Brazil, for doctors and other expertise with Cuba, and for strapped meat and dairy products from Argentina.
They were also alarmed by Chávez's wider proposals as part of a constitutional reform including limiting central bank autonomy, strengthening state expropriation powers and providing for public control over Venezuela's international reserves. It is measures like that which have caused Washington to massively subsidise Venezuela's opposition parties.
How has the arrival of Obama changed things?
The United States has long seen Chávez as a threat. In the Bush era it backed a botched military coup against him and, at the same time, criticised him for "undermining democracy". Chávez was applauded in 2006 when he referred to President George W Bush in the UN General Assembly as "the devil". But the arrival of Barack Obama has robbed Chávez of his anti-American card. He is now talking of re-establishing diplomatic ties with the US.
What impact is the recession likely to have?
Chávez's critics say he is buying his popularity by squandering the nation's oil wealth on social programmes which are transitory and will bring no lasting change to underlying structural problems. With the fall in oil prices they predicted doom would follow.
But that was when oil was $40 a barrel, and they knew that Chávez's budgeting was predicated on a world oil price of $60 a barrel. Yesterday the price was $71 and even the cheaper Venezuelan crude oil was $63. There may also be something of a longer-term structural problem. The private sector is shrinking relative to the overall economy. Millions more Venezuelans depend on the state for jobs and handouts than a decade ago. But the oil will not run out before Chávez's time in power is well over, however long he might extend it.
Is it time to give up faith in the President of Venezuela?
Yes...
* His violations of human rights are becoming more authoritarian as the years pass.
* He is squandering vast amounts of oil wealth on social security programmes that are only a sticking plaster on deep structural woes.
* Constitutional changes allowing him to rule indefinitely are dangerous.
No...
* He has massively improved the lives of his country's poorest people.
* His foreign policy remains an important challenge to the power of the US in the region.
* Venezuelans still support him far more than voters in democracies like the UK or US support their leaders.
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