Pro-government Venezuelans protest US sanctions
Pro-government Venezuelans protest US sanctions
Dec 15, 4:24 PM EST
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) -- Supporters of the Venezuelan government have marched in the streets of the nation's capital to protest sanctions that US lawmakers approved last week.
The South American country's socialist government called Monday's march to protest the move by the US Congress and mark the 15-year anniversary of Venezuela's constitution.
The proposed sanctions would freeze the assets and ban visas of people accused of violating the human rights of Venezuelan government critics. The legislation was introduced in the spring amid a violent crackdown on anti-government street protests. President Barack Obama is expected to sign it into law.
Thousands of Venezuelans marched bearing signs with slogans such as "respect Venezuela" and "Yankee go home." The demonstration culminated in a speech by President Nicolas Maduro.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/L/LT_VENEZUELA_SANCTIONS_PROTEST?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-12-15-16-24-25
(Short article, no more at link.)
= new reply since forum marked as read
People of conscience throughout this planet recognize this on sight as either the rambling of someone suffering delirium, or someone too caught up in the swaggering ignorance of the right wingers who never stir themselves to learn about reality.
Easy pickings from the internet[font size=6]S:[/font]
The Pinochet Affair: `I saw them herded to their death. I heard the gunfire as they died'
Adam Schesch, witness to Pinochet's worst atrocity, talking yesterday to `The Independent'
Andrew Buncombe
Wednesday 21 October 1998
"Just before they led the one line out into the stadium, they would start the extractor fans in the changing rooms just to make some noise," he said. "They did not want people to know what was happening. Then they would lead the line of people out of the changing rooms into the stadium."
Moments later, Mr Schesch would hear the unmistakable sound of machine- gun fire.
"There was a concrete wall between where I was being held and the stadium but I could hear everything, said Mr Schesch. "On one occasion my wife heard the people in the stadium singing `the Internationale'. Then the machine-guns started.
"The gunfire would last for 45 seconds, maybe a minute, and then there was no sound. Then someone would come back in and turn off the fans."
Twenty-five years later, Mr Schesch, 55, is remarried with a grown-up son and working as researcher for the State of Wisconsin. But the arrest in London last week of General Pinochet - the alleged architect of the massacre in the stadium - has stirred memories he will never forget.
~snip~
In 1991, when a number of graves of coup victims were dug up, it was revealed that many of the bodies had broken arms and legs, indicating torture.
It was also revealed that many victims were buried two-to-a coffin. "What a great saving," General Pinochet is reported to have said. "I congratulate the diggers."
Such comments add to Mr Schesch's conviction that Britain has a duty not to give in now to Chile's demands for the release of General Pinochet. He believes even at the age of 82 he should be handed over to the Spanish judges requesting his extradition and tried for war crimes.
"It was not genocide but `politicide' what he was doing. He was trying to wipe out the leadership of a whole generation of the working class," he said.
More:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/the-pinochet-affair-i-saw-them-herded-to-their-death-i-heard-the-gunfire-as-they-died-1179543.html
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Gen. Augusto Pinochet, 1915-2006
A Chilean Dictator's Dark Legacy
By Monte Reel and J.Y. Smith
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, December 11, 2006
Gen. Augusto Pinochet, 91, the former Chilean dictator whose government murdered and tortured thousands during his repressive 17-year rule, died yesterday at a Santiago military hospital of complications from a heart attack, leaving incomplete numerous court cases that had sought to bring him to justice.
Pinochet assumed power on Sept. 11, 1973, in a bloody coup supported by the United States that toppled the elected government of Salvador Allende, a Marxist who had pledged to lead his country "down the democratic road to socialism."
First as head of a four-man military junta and then as president, Pinochet served until 1990, leaving a legacy of abuse that took successive governments years to catalogue. According to a government report that included testimony from more than 30,000 people, his government killed at least 3,197 people and tortured about 29,000. Two-thirds of the cases listed in the report happened in 1973.
~snip~
But legal actions against Pinochet had gathered momentum in the two years preceding his death, as courts locked several of his key subordinates behind bars and raised hopes among victims' families that Pinochet would meet a similar fate. He had been placed under house arrest in Santiago five times, most recently last month in connection with the murders of two of Allende's bodyguards.
Throughout his later years, Pinochet retained loyal supporters, who credited his government with instituting a fiscal discipline that helped make Chile's economy the region's strongest. But he lost many of those backers after multiple probes in recent years revealed financial corruption, including the discovery of millions of dollars in state funds held in numerous secret overseas accounts, among them several at the former Riggs Bank in Washington. As recently as October, Chilean investigators announced the discovery of 10 tons of gold, worth an estimated $160 million, in Pinochet's name in a Hong Kong bank.
~snip~
On July 2, during a general strike, an army patrol seized Rodrigo Rojas, an 18-year-old photographer who lived in Washington, and Carmen Gloria Quintana, 19, and set them on fire. Rojas died four days later, but Quintana survived and was blessed by Pope John Paul II, who visited Chile in 1987. The army at first denied responsibility, but a judge in 1989 sentenced an army captain to 300 days in prison for the attack.
More:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/10/AR2006121000302.html
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11 September 2013
Life under Pinochet: “They were taking turns to electrocute us one after the other”
The first time Lelia Pérez felt the sear of a cattle prod it was at the hands of a Chilean soldier. She was a 16 year old high school student, used as a guinea pig to help Pinochet’s security services hone their skills in torture. They didn't even bother to ask any questions.
“They would teach them how to interrogate, how to apply the electricity, where and for how long. When they were torturing me, I went into my own world - it was as if I was looking down on myself - like it wasn’t happening to me. It was brutal,” she said.
~snip~
“I was forced to wear the clothes of people we had seen being killed. There was a curfew and the few people around just walked away from us. The street was full of brothels and the sex workers took me in. They bathed me and gave me clothes. I went in the stadium as a 16-year-old and left as a 60-year-old.”
Those days of horror would only be the beginning of a long, incredible story that took Lelia through some of Pinochet’s darkest prisons. She was held in detention on three separate occasions over a two year period; each time abused and tortured by soldiers of the brutal Pinochet regime.
A country of terror
When Lelia was released from the Estadio Chile, her country was almost unrecognizable. Pinochet had imposed a number of restrictions on his citizens and thousands of social activists, teachers, lawyers, trade unionists and students were being detained and held in dozens of clandestine centres across the country.
More:
http://www.amnesty.org/en/news/life-under-pinochet-they-were-taking-turns-electrocute-us-one-after-other-2013-09-11
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Osvaldo Romo, Pinochet's most well-known torturer.
Osvaldo Romo Mena (c. 1938 – July 4, 2007) was an agent of the Chilean Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional (DINA) from 1973 to 1990, during the rule of Augusto Pinochet. Involved in the forced disappearance of more than a hundred persons (among which the Spanish priest Antonio Llidó Mengual, member of Cristianos por el socialismo (Christians for Socialism) and MIR members Diana Aron Svigilsky, Manuel Cortez Joo and Ofelio Lazo), he was sentenced to life imprisonment, but several of these sentences were suspended by the Chilean Supreme Court.[1]
Life[edit]
Osvaldo Romo made himself known in working classes' neighborhoods before Pinochet's coup in 1973 as a leftist activist, member of the Partido Socialista Popular and sympathizant of the MIR.[1] Following the coup, he reappeared in these neighborhoods with a military uniform, arresting his friends and contacts. Left-wing circles still debate to know if he suddenly changed political orientation or if he always was a mole for the security services.[1]
Known as Guatón Romo ("Fatso Romo"or Comandante Raúl, he was one of DINA's most important torturers, operating among others centers in Villa Grimaldi.[1] On April 11, 1995, in an interview televised by Univisión, he commented in great detail, and evidently without remorse, on the techniques that had been used. These included the application of electricity to women's nipples and genitals, the use of dogs, and the insertion of rats into women's vaginas.[1]
More:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osvaldo_Romo
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Google's collection of images of US-supported Augusto Pinochet's most celebrated torturer, Oswaldo Romo:
https://www.google.com/search?q=Osvaldo+Romo&rlz=1T4TSND_enUS566US566&tbm=isch&imgil=UnMfxQR-L7ZnfM%253A%253BTtbHJg30o2MmZM%253Bhttp%25253A%25252F%25252Fpodemospress.blogspot.com%25252F2007%25252F07%25252Fchilesepultado-el-torturador-osvaldo.html&source=iu&pf=m&fir=UnMfxQR-L7ZnfM%253A%252CTtbHJg30o2MmZM%252C_&usg=__QsXwHNI3zNScsuykFoeND06-3pQ%3D&biw=1347&bih=635&ved=0CK4BEMo3&ei=LbeQVJ_RIO21sASHqoCQBg#imgdii=_
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Video, interview of Osvaldo Romo. [/center]
I beg any real human being who hasn't heard far more than he or she can stand of this blood feast from the pit of hell, if you still harbor any question concerning what kind of government the monster Pinochet ran in Chile, PLEASE do plunge right in and start researching the subject. Your REAL answers will be fully illuminated in no time whatsoever.
Wikipedia summary:
~ snip ~
History
The military rule was characterized by systematic suppression of all political dissidence, which led some to speak of a "politicide" (or "political genocide" .[4] Steve J. Stern spoke of a politicide to describe "a systematic project to destroy an entire way of doing and understanding politics and governance."[5]
The worst violence occurred in the first three months of the coup's aftermath, with the number of suspected leftists killed or "disappeared" (desaparecidos) soon reaching into the thousand.[6] In the days immediately following the coup, the Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs informed Henry Kissinger, that the National Stadium was being used to hold 5,000 prisoners, and as late as 1975, the CIA was still reporting that up to 3,811 prisoners were still being held in the Stadium.[7] Amnesty International, reported that as many as 7,000 political prisoners in the National Stadium had been counted on 22 September 1973.[8] Nevertheless, it is often quoted in the press, that some 40,000 prisoners were detained in the Stadium.[9] Some of the most famous cases of "desaparecidos" are Charles Horman, a U.S. citizen who was killed during the coup itself,[10] Chilean songwriter Víctor Jara, and the October 1973 Caravan of Death (Caravana de la Muerte) where at least 70 persons were killed.[11] Other operations include Operation Colombo during which hundreds of left-wing activists were murdered and Operation Condor, carried out with the security services of other Latin American dictatorships.
The military rule was characterized by systematic suppression of all political dissidence, which led some to speak of a "politicide" (or "political genocide" .[4] Steve J. Stern spoke of a politicide to describe "a systematic project to destroy an entire way of doing and understanding politics and governance."[5]
The worst violence occurred in the first three months of the coup's aftermath, with the number of suspected leftists killed or "disappeared" (desaparecidos) soon reaching into the thousand.[6] In the days immediately following the coup, the Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs informed Henry Kissinger, that the National Stadium was being used to hold 5,000 prisoners, and as late as 1975, the CIA was still reporting that up to 3,811 prisoners were still being held in the Stadium.[7] Amnesty International, reported that as many as 7,000 political prisoners in the National Stadium had been counted on 22 September 1973.[8] Nevertheless, it is often quoted in the press, that some 40,000 prisoners were detained in the Stadium.[9] Some of the most famous cases of "desaparecidos" are Charles Horman, a U.S. citizen who was killed during the coup itself,[10] Chilean songwriter Víctor Jara, and the October 1973 Caravan of Death (Caravana de la Muerte) where at least 70 persons were killed.[11] Other operations include Operation Colombo during which hundreds of left-wing activists were murdered and Operation Condor, carried out with the security services of other Latin American dictatorships.
More:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_violations_in_Pinochet's_Chile
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This is a tremendously helpful article, much to learn for anyone who hasn't heard about this right-wing hell on earth. It also refers to the fact there were at least 17 separate torture centers in Chile, all needed for handling the heavy business involved in torturing so many political dissidents.
Question:
Does THIS resemble "the Chavista regime" one wonders?
