Today students marched to the Electoral Board in what was a large march
that has been covered well by the media.
The students met with the CNE Board and expressed their desire that the
referendum be postponed, a position that I find is hard to sustain
unless you can prove procedures have been violated as the Constitution
is quite clear that the CNE has 30 days to hold the referendum once the
Assembly has approved it. I believe the approval is spurious, but it is
not for the CNE to decide that.
In any case,
after the students presented their letters, a group of students
attempted to chain themselves to the stairs of the CNE in order to
stage a permanent protest at the Electoral Board. The action, while I
did not agree with it, as they were guests at the CNE, was certainly
not violent but gave the National Guard and the police the excuse to
repress and use violence against the marchers.
And
they were extremely violent both inside of the CNE and outside where
they began using tear gas immediately without any particular reason as
the students had already been vacated from the inside. Violence inside
was limited by the intervention of CNE Director Vicente Diaz, but the
same National Guard soldiers he controlled inside, went outside to
express theirs fascists militaristic impulses.
But perhaps the clearest moment of what I mean, was when the police, the same one that the Minister of the Interior
said today
had a “patriotic attitude” in controlling the marchers, began violently
beating a kid, managing to blow off his front teeth in the process. All
of a sudden one of the cops realized that Globovision was broadcasting
the abuse, so that the kid was surrounded by cops attempting to hide
what they had done. Sadly, the student is the son of former
Metropolitan Police Chief Henry Vivas, who is currently in jail and
spent a large part of his life finding ways to peacefully control
marches and demonstrations.
But
the fascism of the cops and National Guard is simply overflowing and is
ratified by the Minister of the Interior when he says, “it is the
responsibility of the state to enforce with all its weight the
principle of authority”. No, it is the responsibility of the State to
avoid violence and protect the citizens and curiously, it never uses
the same weight and enforcement when it comes to the pro-Chavez crowds
who are always illegally present at these opposition marches, ready to
confront and be violent like they did today.
But
you can’t expect from the Minister who conforms to a Forrest Gumpian
“Fascist is, Fascist does” culture ingrained in him by the military and
matured by his own stupidity. Lately, even the deaths in the prisons
that he fails to supervise have been according to the Minister “induced
by thugs paid by the opposition in order to destabilize”.
Fortunately,
human rights violations do not have a time limit for their prosecution
and the Minister and his thugs will one day, no matter how far into the
future be brought in front of the courts to pay for their crimes.
