Venezuelans battle with shields, gas masks, fecal bombs
Hands straining at a giant elastic exercise band, three young protesters form a giant human slingshot to hurl a jar filled with feces at Venezuelan officers firing tear gas at demonstrators who are in the streets to demand new elections.
Farther down Caracas' main highway, other youths mass behind wooden shields bearing medieval decorations or images of the South American nation's blue constitution book, which socialist President Nicolas Maduro wants to rewrite. Some protesters wear swimming goggles to protest their eyes from the stinging gas. Others use gas masks fashioned from soda bottles.
In a country where finding even a Tylenol can be a weekslong ordeal, protesters are employing every scrap of material they can find as makeshift weaponry or to protect themselves while confronting police and national guardsmen who fire tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse marchers. Protesters are vowing to remain on the streets even as the death toll mounts after six weeks of unrest.
"We are using these devices to protect ourselves — to prevent there from being more injuries than there have already been," Juan Andres Mejia, an opposition lawmaker, said this week as a friend held a wooden shield above his head.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/venezuelans-battle-shields-gas-masks-fecal-bombs-155712814.html
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