Thursday, February 07, 2019

Venezuelan forces crack down on media in a bid to keep leadership showdown off airwaves

Juan Guaidó speaks to Venezuelan protest crowd
By Andrew Wight, Medellin

At 8pm on the day Juan Guaidó swore himself in as Venezuela's interim leader, police raided the local television stations of Aventura TV and Global TV in the western oil city of Maracaibo.

More than 20 government officials then took both channels off the air by disconnecting and destroying or seizing all the equipment they could find, according to Julio Reyes, the director of Aventura TV and the digital newspaper noticiaaldia.com.

"The channels received the action in reprisal for the live broadcast [of Guaidó's ceremony] made by Global TV, while noticiaaldia.com received a much stronger and more violent reprisal for the coverage it made of the civic demonstrations in Maracaibo," Reyes told The Telegraph .

Additional story at: The Telegraph https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/02/03/venezuela
(photo/U.S. Embassy Uruguay)