Venezuela 2017
In Venezuela in 2017, the economy was in free-fall, there were food and medicine shortages, and there were a growing number of political prisoners. A wave of protests against Venezuelan President Nicolas Madura erupted after the Supreme Tribunal of Justice (their Supreme Court, controlled by Madura) attempted to dissolve the opposition-led National Assembly.
On April 19, 2017, in the "Mother of all Protests", up to 6 million citizens marched and protested.
Protests continued the following day. In the capital, Caracas, a young man stripped naked, and armed only with a Bible, walked down the Francisco Fajardo highway to confront the National Police (above).
Police shot tear gas canisters around him, but he continued.
He climbed onto one of the police "tanks" (armored vehicles) as they shouted for him to get down.
He called on the police to stop their assault on protesters. In response, they shot at him with rubber pellets. You can see the marks the rubber pellets made on his back.
But he did not back down.
Even after being shot, he continued to ask for a stop to the violence.
Afterwards, he walked down the highway to meet with the rest of the protesters, as the National Police passed him on their motorcycles on both sides.
At first he was anonymous. Then he was identified as 27-year-old Hans Wuerich, a graduate of Santa Maria University. Media coverage of his naked protest went viral, and he became a national hero for his courageous act. Click on the photo above for a larger version.
President Maduro mocked him, saying "Thank goodness he didn't drop the soap." But Wuerich replied, "Peaceful protests hit dictatorships hard. Maduro can try to insult us, but he knows that he is a demon who has been weakened."
However, Maduro arranged for a new Constitution, and the new National Assembly, elected in rigged elections, give Maduro the power to rule by decree. He has been the dictator of Venezuela ever since.
5 comments:
Do we know if he is still alive? BigDude
The U.S. seems headed in that direction.
I see the exact thing happening here. Bit by bit the right-wing has been chipping away at it. Now that SCOTUS has given free rein to "presidential powers," well....
Venezuela has elections again a week from Sunday. Even though Maduro has continued to rig the system, he is so overwhelmingly unpopular that the opposition just might win this time.
It's difficult to comprehend how the American nation with the world's largest petroleum deposits could have a large population scrambling for life's barest necessities.
Oh wait - the US and its servant nations such as UK, France, Colombia, Peru, Chile, Dominican Republic..etc. signed on to bending Venezuela into submission thru its favorite method; an economic blockade coupled with the English keeping the vast amounts of gold bullion that had been entrusted to. Meanwhile, the residents of Altamira, Las Mercedes and Lechería were sipping wines, holidaying on their yachts on the stunning Venezuelan Caribbean coast, or shopping at America's oldest Ferrari dealership - yes Caracas. Where did that vast wealth come from? Oil money in the hands of the few, while the residents of Catia and a host of other poor neighborhoods (los ranchos) were beside themselves with difficulties. So do as Tio Sam demands, or face its yellow press and its ire.
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