By IPS Correspondents
CARACAS, Mar 5 2004 (IPS)

International human rights organisations expressed alarm over the recent events in Venezuela, where 10 people have been killed and dozens injured at the hands of police and the National Guard during the past week of protests.

Novel aspects setting the demonstrations apart from similar situations elsewhere in Latin America were reports of shooting by opposition protesters and denunciations that police forces in municipalities governed by opposition parties merely stood by, or even actively took part in the disturbances.

The London-based Amnesty International stated Thursday that it was concerned about reports that indicated an excessive use of force by the security forces.

”While several of the demonstrations have been violent, with protesters using firearms and other weapons, the National Guard (a military force) and DISIP (the political police) have used excessive force” in getting the situation under control, according to the rights group.

The Amnesty statement added that hundreds of people have been injured, including a large number of police officers, while the Democratic Coordinator – the opposition umbrella – alleges that 350 people have been arrested and that the police have jailed opposition leaders on trumped-up charges.

The opposition movement is protesting the electoral council’s decision to disqualify signatures. Because of that ruling, the opposition does not have enough signatures to trigger a recall referendum for President Hugo Chavez.

A minimum of 2.4 million signatures are needed to hold a referendum, and electoral authorities ruled Tuesday that only 1.8 million of the 3.4 million gathered by the opposition are valid.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) also expressed concern over the violent incidents in Venezuela.

The IACHR, which forms part of the OAS regional justice system, demanded that the government ”respect the due process guarantees and basic rights of the individuals detained during the recent protests.”

Eva Carrizo, an activist with Democratic Action, one of the main opposition parties, became the 10th victim of the week of disturbances Thursday. According to her family and opposition lawmaker Elias Matta, she was shot in the back in Machiques, a town in northwestern Venezuela, by a member of the National Guard.

Former employees of the government oil monopoly marched Friday in front of the Spanish Embassy in Caracas to protest the death of Spanish-Venezuelan citizen Jose Vilas, who was also purportedly shot in the back by the National Guard while taking part in a demonstration early this week in the nearby town of San Antonio.

The TV stations and press have kept up a constant barrage of images of the violence. The privately-owned media, most of which are openly opposed to Chavez, have shown members of the National Guard kicking and beating detainees with their batons, helmets and fists.

The government-run media, meanwhile, have shown images of protesters lobbing stones and molotov cocktails at the security forces.

The family of young orchestra director Carlos Izcaray complained that while observing a street demonstration as a bystander, he was seized by members of the National Guard, dragged into a truck, and brutally beaten and tortured with electric shocks.

Felix Farias with Bandera Roja, a leftist group opposed to Chavez, also said individuals dressed as civilians, with their faces covered, grabbed him near his home in downtown Caracas, threw him into a van, and burnt his arms with a red-hot iron, demanding information on the whereabouts of several opposition leaders.

The Democratic Coordinator asked the United Nations High Commissioner on Human Rights to study the situation in Venezuela, and denounced that ”the government has violated every article in the Inter-American Democratic Charter” adopted by 34 governments in September 2001.

But Vice-President Jose Vicente Rangel, a prominent defender of human rights in Congress in the 1960s and 1970s, said ”the opposition is trying to set itself up as the champion of these rights to cloak the terror that it has unleashed itself in the streets, which has included shooting by snipers.”

Rangel and other government spokespersons have accused municipal and state police forces in Caracas and other cities of merely looking on during the disturbances mounted by the opposition, who for several days manned roadblocks and clashed with the National Guard.

They also accused the police of sending in agitators to egg on the protesters and of even providing logistical support.

Rangel blamed plainclothes members of the Caracas metropolitan police for the death of a pro-Chavez worker in a public rally. The 8,000-strong police force, which answers to opposition Mayor Alfredo Pena, refrained from taking direct action against the protesters.

Seven of Venezuela’s leading human rights organisations criticised the police ”for directly participating in throwing up barricades and in other events that altered the public order, and for failing in their duty to guarantee citizen security.”

But they also condemned ”the disproportionate use of force by the National Guard and DISIP in controlling the protests.”

”We are documenting complaints of excesses in the use of force against protesters,” Carlos Correa, the head of PROVEA, one of the rights groups, told IPS.

The Catholic Church’s human rights office expressed ”a profound rejection of the disproportionate use of force, specifically by members of the National Guard,” and urged the attorney-general’s and ombudsman’s offices ”to guarantee full observance of rights.”

The two offices have filed legal action against opposition mayors and one regional governor for failing in their duty to guarantee citizen security during the unrest.

On Friday, the Irish presidency of the European Union said in a statement that the bloc ”deeply regrets the development of a climate of violence, which has led to human casualties.”

Milos Alcalay, Venezuela’s ambassador to the United Nations, quit Thursday and refused a new appointment as ambassador to Britain, criticising the repression by the national guard and political police, which he said had led to the loss of lives, disappearances, and the taking of political prisoners.

Ruling coalition parliamentarian Tarek Saab dubbed Alcalay an ”opportunist and hypocrit,” saying he ”did not defend human rights or resign when dictator Pedro Carmona (the businessman named president during the short-lived April 2002 coup d’etat that overthrew Chavez for two days) abolished democracy and human rights with one stroke of the pen.”

But some of those wounded in the protests were the victims of the techniques used by demonstrators, which involved setting alight improvised roadblocks. In Caracas alone ”28 people were hurt by explosions in garbage bags that we suppose held spray cans, and 47 had burns from melting plastic,” Giorgio Restori, a member of Vitalis, a local environmental group, commented to IPS.

The environment was another victim of the protests, as demonstrators set fire to piles of tires, bags full of garbage, plastic flowerpots, trees and bushes, billboards, fenceposts and even vehicles to block roads leading into middle- and upper-class neighbourhoods.

”The environmental problem caused by these protests is very serious,” said the activist. ”Priority has been given to the political conflict over and above the environment. The gases caused by burning plastic are like cyanide. Birds, dogs and cats have died in the streets and even in people’s homes.”

When asked how much garbage might have gone up in flames, Rafael Suarez, the president of the Cot‚cnica garbage company in the capital, said that between Feb. 27, when the protests started, and Mar. 2, ”11,000 tons of garbage were received at the La Bonanza landfill (30 kms from Caracas), when the normal amount between Friday and Tuesday is 14,000 tons.

”I can’t say for sure whether all 3,000 tons were burnt in the protests, or are still laying around the city waiting to be picked up. Perhaps less garbage was collected because economic activity slowed down during those days,” said Suarez.

Restori noted that ”the smog has visibly worsened in the city.”

Pedro Valero, director of air quality in the Environment Ministry, said ”local residents have inhaled nitrous oxide, methane, carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide produced by the burning of tires, plastic and other garbage, and by the explosions of molotov cocktails.”

Dozens of people have visited health centres for respiratory problems triggered by tear gas and smoke from the barricades.

”The most affected are children, especially newborn babies, and the elderly,” Evelyn Escalona, the head of the Health Ministry’s populational health department, told IPS.

* Yensi Rivero contributed to this report. (END/IPS/LA/IP-HD/TRASP-SW/HM-YR/MJ/04)

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