Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez and his leftist “Bolivarian Revolution” are throttling that oil-rich country's free press. Half a dozen Latin countries have turned moderately left in recent years but only Venezuela, so far, is moving to silence press criticism and stifle dissent.
Chávez, a crude populist and ex-army officer, sees his critics among Venezuela's newspapers and broadcast networks as bourgeois reactionaries out to sabotage his self-styled revolution. Much of the Venezuelan press sees itself as fighting a desperate battle to preserve the country's democratic institutions against a strong-armed president whose political hero is Fidel Castro.
At first, Chávez used demagoguery and denunciation against the press. Then he resorted to direct action, inciting street mobs to attack journalists and their press organizations. Chávez's incitement has prompted a series of assaults in which journalists have been beaten or threatened.
Now, Chávez and his government are moving systematically to undercut press freedoms and silence press criticism of his lurch leftward. A Venezuelan congress and judiciary effectively controlled by Chávez are enacting laws and regulations that criminalize dissent. “Social responsibility” laws are being used to impose de facto censorship on radio and television news and commentary. A tangle of new arbitrary laws, decrees, regulations and rules is being put in place to stifle press criticism and give Chávez and his revolution an ever freer ride in the media.
While Chávez's critics in the press are hounded and harassed, Chávez gets an average of 40 broadcast hours a week, unchallenged by critics, to harangue Venezuelans.
The new laws and regulations plus higher taxes and punitive fines amount to a neo-totalitarian infrastructure for muzzling Venezuela's once-vibrant press. In an ominous portent, the 100-year-old El Impulso newspaper of Barquisimeto, Venezuela, was arbitrarily closed and prevented from publishing by government tax collectors for a day last October.
Chávez's campaign to muzzle Venezuela's press is provoking strenuous protests from outraged Venezuelan journalists, publishers and broadcasters, plus an international who's who of press-freedom defenders: the Inter American Press Association, Reporters Without Borders, Human Rights Watch, the Institute for Defense of Journalists and the International Association of Radio Broadcasters. In addition, the Organization of American States' Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has signaled its disapproval.
More must be done, by human rights groups and democratic nations in the Western Hemisphere especially, if Chávez is to be deterred from even worse transgressions against the rights of all Venezuelans to a free press. If press freedoms in Venezuela are completely extinguished, what's left of Venezuela's democracy won't be far behind.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/op-ed/editorial2/20060405-9999-lz1ed5bottom.html
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