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Marchers, Mayors Defy Venezuelan Government

Marchers, Mayors Defy Venezuelan Government

By Mery Mogollon and Chris Kraul, Los Angeles Times

CARACAS, Venezuela — Venezuela’s government and opposition marchers were headed for a showdown Wednesday while several Caracas borough mayors defied a supreme court order that they clear barricades in parts of the capital where demonstrations against President Nicolas Maduro have now entered a second month.

Opponents to Maduro have organized a march in downtown Caracas in observance of the Flag Day national holiday, even as the government has vowed to stop marchers because they have no permit. National guard members in riot gear were seen posted in several points along the proposed march route Wednesday.

Maria Corina Machado, an opposition deputy in the National Assembly and a leader of protests against high crime, inflation and scarcities, had called for students and other Maduro opponents to march from Plaza Venezuela to the Public Defender’s office to demand the release of students and others detained over the last month.

Meanwhile, supporters of the government have called for a competing march that also will end up in the same area as the protesters.

Police in riot gear blocked a march Monday by doctors and other health workers to protest the lack of medical supplies in city hospitals. On Tuesday, opposition groups in Valencia reported 12 were injured in clashes with police and in Merida at least 16 people were injured.

Also on Tuesday, the official death toll since protests began Feb 12 rose to 23 with the death of 24-year old Daniel Tinoco, a student in San Cristobal, the capital of Tachira state, the scene of some of the most violent protests.

Residents in the Chacao area of eastern Caracas reported a four-hour confrontation Tuesday night between protesters and national guardsmen, who fired several tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse crowds. Chacao is an affluent neighborhood once governed by former mayor Leopoldo Lopez, who remains jailed after his arrest Feb. 18 on incitement to violence charges.

The supreme court order that local mayors clear streets of barricades came after the mayors issued a joint statement over the weekend vowing that although they disagreed with the closures, they would defy any government effort to “intervene” in their local governments because it wasn’t local police duty to “deal with public order problems.”

“We support and accompany the massive and peaceful protest that has been expressed overwhelmingly in the streets of the principal cities of the country,” said the statement signed by Carlos Ocariz, David Smolansky, Gerardo Blyde and Ramon Muchacho, all mayors of Caracas suburbs. “We are not going to attack human rights of those who demonstrate in this manner.”

In a related matter, Chrysler announced it was shuttering for 60 days its car assembly plant in central Carabobo state for lack of auto components, although it will continue to pay 1,150 employees. The announcement comes one month after Toyota announced it was scaling back in Venezuela for similar reasons.

AFP Photo/Leo Ramirez

Deadly Violence Returns To Ukrainian Capital After Amnesty Fails

Deadly Violence Returns To Ukrainian Capital After Amnesty Fails

By Carol J. Williams, Los Angeles Times

MOSCOW — An amnesty agreement that brought relative calm to the capital of Ukraine in recent days collapsed Tuesday in a surge of new confrontations between police and anti-government protesters that reportedly killed three and returned the city to a state of siege.

Opposition political leaders angered by Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich’s decision in late November to scrap an association agreement with the European Union had vacated Kiev City Hall and taken down barricades on major streets over the weekend in exchange for the release of detained protesters and government promises to drop all criminal cases against them.

But what began as a peaceful march by protesters to press parliament to take up legislation to reduce Yanukovich’s powers turned violent when deputies of the ruling Party of Regions postponed debate on the changes demanded by the opposition. Police tried to block the thousands of protesters from reaching the Supreme Rada building, sparking clashes that cast a pall of smoke over the city center that has been the scene of conflict for three months.

Marchers plucked cobblestones from the streets to hurl at police and security forces in riot gear, and police threw tear gas and stun grenades in an attempt to turn back the angry protesters, the BBC reported from the scene.

A statement posted on the Interior Ministry’s website warned demonstrators that clashes had to be stopped by 6 p.m. or security forces would “restore order by all means envisaged by law.” However, the standoff continued hours after the announced deadline.

Opposition lawmakers reported at least three protesters killed and more than 150 injured, according to Kiev’s Channel 5 news.

The short-lived easing of tensions apparently fell victim to renewed signals from both sides that their fight over the future of Ukraine will continue in spite of the amnesty.

Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov had announced a day earlier, when a delegation of opposition politicians was meeting in Berlin with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, that Moscow would buy another $2 billion in Ukrainian bonds on Tuesday. The de facto aid is part of $15 billion in loans and energy subsidies offered by the Kremlin in what protesters see as an attempt to buy Yanukovich’s loyalty and allegiance to the Eurasian Union, a Moscow-directed economic alliance.

Under the bailout offered by Russian President Vladimir Putin, Moscow has already bought up $3 billion in Ukrainian debt but put the rescue plan on hold last month after the resignation of Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azarov. The government chief stepped down in the face of demands by the protesters, who took his departure as an indication that Yanukovich would concede to opposition demands for representation in an interim government of technocrats.

The holdup in Russian bond-buying has been denounced by the opposition as pressure from Moscow for Yanukovich to defy the protesters’ demands for his own resignation and early presidential elections.

Russian television has cast the months-long conflict as a collusion between Western officials bent on diminishing Russia’s influence and unpatriotic Ukrainians willing to sell out their country to the 28-nation EU.

Tuesday’s coverage of the Ukrainian clashes by Rossiya-24 television included an interview by telephone with political analyst Mikhail Pogrebinsky, director of the Kiev Center for Political Research and Conflict Studies, who described the protesters as being driven by “radicals” and “fascists.”

Footage from the heart of the protest at Kiev’s Independence Square showed smoldering piles of tires and trash in the grimy tent camp that has filled the historic area near the parliament building and thwarted traffic for more than two months.

An undeclared battle for influence in Ukraine between Moscow and Washington also took on new force Tuesday when a senior Russian Foreign Ministry official accused Washington of “puppeteering” on Ukraine’s political stage.

The United States is trying to impose a “Western vector of development” on Ukraine, ministry spokesman Aleksandr Lukashevich told Russia Today television. He criticized an intercepted conversation between two top U.S. diplomats last week in which they discussed their preferences for which opposition leaders should take key government positions in an interim Cabinet.

Lukashevich called the clandestinely taped conversation between Victoria Nuland, the U.S. diplomat in charge of European affairs, and U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey R. Pyatt as “casting” for roles in the next government.

He also recalled in comments to RIA Novosti a recent statement by U.S. State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf hailing the Friday release of 234 detained protesters and calling on the Yanukovich leadership to swiftly agree to “a multiparty technical government, with genuine power-sharing and responsibility, which can earn the confidence of the Ukrainian people and restore political and economic stability to Ukraine.”

Pyatt, in a message sent via Twitter on Tuesday, expressed dismay at the deadly turn of events after hopes that the amnesty signaled an easing of the crisis.

“After weekend progress in Kyiv, sorry to see renewed violence,” Pyatt tweeted, urging that the political clash be resolved in parliament, not on the streets.

AFP Photo/Vasily Maximov