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Social / CSR in Venezuela

  • Venezuela jails opposition leaders in new crackdown on opponents

    VENEZUELA, 2017/08/02 Venezuela jailed two leading critics of President Nicolas Maduro on Tuesday in a fresh blow to the opposition after the election of a new political body with absolute powers to strengthen the hand of the leftist government. The United States imposed sanctions on Maduro on Monday, calling him a "dictator" for Sunday's election of a constituent assembly that the opposition boycotted and denounced as illegitimate. In a statement announcing the jailing of opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez and veteran politician Antonio Ledezma, the pro-government Supreme Court said they were planning to flee the country and had violated terms of their house arrest by making political statements and speaking to media.
  • Right-Wing Terrorism In Venezuela

    VENEZUELA, 2017/05/29 One May 20th, the 21 year old vendor from the shanty town of Petare, Orlando José Figueras, was beaten, stabbed, doused with gasoline and set on fire by opposition militants in the middle class neighborhood of Altamira during an anti-government demonstration reportedly because they took him for a Chavista or a thief. This atrocity has sent tremors throughout the popular barrios and raised the profile of terrorism from the right in Venezuela. The horrific scene was captured on video and by professional photographer, Marco Bello, and described in testimonies of the victim and his parents. Other demonstrators at the scene reportedly urged the attackers not to kill Figueras as he pleaded for his life. What happened to Figueras, who has lived to tell his story, is impossible to ignore, and it casts light on the hatred and savagery of some radical and extremist supporters of the opposition in Venezuela.
  • Venezuela opposition takes to streets to keep heat on President Maduro

    VENEZUELA, 2016/09/02 Venezuela’s opposition is vowing to keep up pressure on President Nicolas Maduro next flooding the streets of Caracas with demonstrators Thursday in its biggest show of force in years. Protesters filled dozens of city blocks in what was dubbed the “taking of Caracas” to pressure electoral authorities to allow a recall referendum against Maduro this year. Protesters, dressed mostly in white and carrying Venezuelan flags, chanted, “It’s going to fall, it’s going to fall, the government is going to fall.”
  • State of emergency declared in Venezuela to counter "US and domestic threats"

    VENEZUELA, 2016/05/15 Venezuela’s president has declared a 60-day national of emergency to counter, what he calls, a domestic and US push to topple his government amid the country’s economic woes. Nicolas Maduro signed off on the measure and extended a national of economic emergency on Friday as a means of fending off “threats” from within and outside the country, without providing further details.
  • Prosecutor flees Venezuela, claims pressured into 'false' case against Lopez

    VENEZUELA, 2015/11/01 A Venezuelan prosecutor who tried opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez has fled Caracas, claiming in a newly released video that the government of Nicolas Maduro pressured him into presenting false evidence against Lopez at trial. The prosecutor, Franklin Nieves, posted a video denouncing the Maduro government, adding that he left the country because of heavy political pressure. "I decided to leave Venezuela with my family as a result of the pressure being exerted by the executive branch and my superiors to continue defending the false evidence that condemned the citizen Leopoldo Lopez," said Nieves in Spanish, on a video posted on YouTube by news portal La Patilla. Nieves' .
  • Oxfam Study Finds Richest 1% Is Likely to Control Half of Global Wealth by 2016

    AFGHANISTAN, 2015/01/20 The richest 1 % are likely to control additional than half of the globe’s total wealth by next year, the charity Oxfam reported in a study released on Monday. The warning about deepening world inequality comes just as the world’s business elite prepare to meet this week at the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The 80 wealthiest people in the world all own $1.9 trillion, the statement found, nearly the same all shared by the 3.5 billion people who occupy the bottom half of the world’s gain scale. (Last year, it took 85 billionaires to equal that figure.) And the richest 1 % of the people, who number in the millions, control nearly half of the world’s total wealth, a share that is as well increasing.
  • US sanctions against Venezuela officials signed into law

    UNITED STATES, 2014/12/19 The United States will presently be able to impose punitive measures on Venezuelan government officials involved in a crackdown on protesters against the Maduro government, or on those who have carried out acts of violence or violated the human rights of political opponents. U.S. President Barack Obama Thursday signed into law the Venezuela Defense of Human Rights and Civil Society Act, which allows him to freeze all assets and deny visas to any government official of the Nicolas Maduro government who meets the designed criteria. The measure builds upon existing travel bans.
  • Rights trampled in Venezuelan protests

    VENEZUELA, 2014/03/05 Fifteen dead, dozens injured, some 500 arrested and denunciations of torture, illegal repression by security forces and irregular groups and attacks on the press are the fruits of over two weeks of political confrontation in the streets of some 30 Venezuelan cities. The national "has tossed the United Nations basic principles on the use of force and firearms [approved in Havana in 1990] into the waste bin, with regulatory bodies like the Public Prosecutor's Office and the Ombudsman's Office treating them with contempt," Marino Alvarado, coordinator of the human rights organisation Provea, told IPS. According to eye-witnesses, press investigations and videos circulating on the social networks, several protesters were shot to death by plain-clothes police, by armed groups that intimidated protesters and initiated violent incidents, or by pellets allegedly fired by members of the militarised Bolivarian National Guard.