Chavismo assumes headquarters of El Nacional newspaper, another contribution to the crisis

The political, economic and social crisis that Venezuela is experiencing continues adding episodes. This time, “the consummation of the robbery” of the newspaper El Nacional by Chavismo was added, according to the Inter-American Press Association (IAPA).

On the afternoon of last Monday, the Supreme Court of Justice handed over the seized headquarters of the newspaper to Chavismo’s number two, Diosdado Cabello, as part of a compensation for “non-material damage” of more than $13 million.

Cabello had denounced the newspaper for echoing information from the Spanish newspaper ABC, which indicated that the Chavista leader was being investigated by the US for alleged links to drug trafficking.

For RSF, El Nacional “is one of the few critical outlets still active,” whose paper edition stopped circulating in 2018.

“The confiscation of assets from El Nacional is very worrying and takes place in a government information control strategy” of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, RSF said.

“The direct adjudication of the headquarters of The National to Diosdado Cabello is one more attack by the Chavista regime against freedom of the press. An attack of unusual gravity, because it seeks to give the final blow to a medium with a long tradition. But the struggle of El Nacional to keep its independent voice alive will surely continue, and we trust that one day the institutionality will return to Venezuela, and with it the freedoms of expression and the press, vilely suffocated by the regimes of Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro” , says Carlos Jornet, president of the IAPA’s press freedom commission and director of the centennial Argentine newspaper The voice of the interior.

For Jornet, the measure ordered by Judge Lisbeth Amoroso was clearly irregular due to the way it was carried out. But it is not surprising in a country where there has been no justice for a long time and where no type of dissidence or claim against a government that has long ago departed from republican principles and adopted a clearly dictatorial outlook is allowed. “The suffocation against the press, translated into the closure of more than a hundred media outlets, is the way to silence the opposition and prevent any possibility of citizen debate,” she says.

Meanwhile, the Venezuelan journalist Jesús Hurtado comments that this is a step that has been expected since the newspaper’s headquarters were seized and that has meant that internally the news has passed without much pain or glory. “It was a known fact and that is why it has not penetrated the media or the public.”

In general terms, for a Venezuelan analyst who prefers not to publish his name to avoid reprisals, since 1999, the year in which Chavismo took over the reins of the State, there has been an increasing aggressiveness to go against media outlets that have open broadcast signals. and of some journalists who have been highly critical of the regime, but also of other types of politicians. “We have to remember that Venezuela, as far as I have the numbers, has closed the most radio stations in South America in the last 20 years, but it also has the unfortunate record of being the country with the largest number of political exiles abroad and of political prisoners for opinion issues within the country”, he points out.

Precisely the NGO Venezuelan Justice denounced on Tuesday that in the Caribbean country there are 190 soldiers imprisoned in civilian and military facilities for political reasons, of the 252 who have been prosecuted for this reason.

“What we do journalism (in Venezuela) we are trying to assimilate and digest the amount of daily news that occurs. This country goes a long way, we haven’t finished writing something when something else comes along. In recent days we have been very involved with the supposed economic reforms that the government is introducing, which clearly seem to indicate that the little boom that we could see last year, the moderate recovery that could have been last year is coming to get pissed off with these excesses… what the government wants is to get their hands on absolutely any type of way to get money… even cash transactions with currencies other than the bolivar, which no longer exists, it’s nothing… The entire amount of bolivars in Venezuela is a tiny part of the amount of dollars that are deposited in accounts that only began to open in July of last year,” says Hurtado.

He adds that until two weeks ago they had votes and since Sunday the information revolves around El Koki, one of the most dangerous and wanted criminals in the country, who was in confrontations until he was “discharged.” “The panorama everywhere is full of information and chance to see El Nacional, not much,” he adds.

The Venezuelan Police killed Carlos Luis Revette, known by the alias “el Koki” and considered one of the main perpetrators of the shootings unleashed last July, which paralyzed life in western Caracas for almost 72 hours, reported this Tuesday the Minister of the Interior, Remigio Ceballos, collects EFE. (I)