Monday, March 14, 2005

The two burned soldiers just died The two young soldiers that were burned last week in a military cell confinement, just died. Globovision confirms that Roman Lujan (20 years old) and Roger Gutierrez (19 years old) died today. I am personally disgusted and appaled that this would happen anywhere in the world. According to a special program that I watched yesterday in Globovision, this is the third incident of this type that takes place in Venezuela in four years, the second in only a year. Where are the human rights organizations now? How can this happen in a supposedly democratic country where the individual rights are respected? How could this happen at all, not once, but three times? What are the results of the previous investigations? Why nothing was done to correct the situation? Who is responsible for the deaths? So far, there are no answers. All I have read is that the doctors that were in charge of the burned soldiers last year in Furte Mara were the only ones charged for negligence. Jorge Arena 11:50:11 AM    comment []

Military and Presidential News Scanning the official sites I found an event that is apparently very innocuous, but it is scary to me. Radio Nacional de Venezuela reports that more than 3000 young students participated in a parade honoring the Venezuelan flag. I am not a big fun of parades or very fond of the military. I think that taking 3000 kids to parade to honor the flag sounds very military to me and it reminds me of the parades of youngsters in fascist regimes From the comment section I received the tip to link to a Carabobo site. It seems that the Governor of Carabobo, burping General Acosta Carlez, is not very happy with the MVR. Apparently there has been some tensions with the official party, and one may wonder if he had some differences with president Chavez. One thing is for sure, now people from Carabobo have a full weekend of entertainment as Acosta Carlez (one of the two singing generals of Alo Presidente) is the host of the new program “Alo mi Pueblo”. The show runs for four hours on Saturdays, so it does not compete with the six hours of Alo Presidente on Sundays. I must say, though, that Acosta Carlez’s outfit for Alo mi Pueblo is much but much more colorful than Chavez’s! The family of one of the soldiers that died last year after being burned in a confined cell in Fuerte Mara, in the Zulia state, has asked the ombudsman to reopen the case. The family is not happy because after the investigation, the doctors that treated the burned soldiers were the ones being charged whereas, according to them, nothing was done to the military responsible for the punishment. The story is particularly tragic as last week another burning case took place in a confinement cell in a military station in Cumana. The family asks human rights organizations in Venezuela to take the control of the investigation so that the fundamental right to life is respected. You were probably wondering why Chavez had stayed in Paris instead of being home receiving president Jatami of Iran. The reason was not that Chavez was waiting for Miguel arrival to Paris to say hello, as some readers had suggested, but rather that there was a mechanical problem with the presidential plane. Fortunately, he called his international airborne AAA support team (Cubana de Aviacion) and was able to get to Caracas the very next day.          Jorge Arena 12:42:41 AM    comment []