Venezuelan protesters trained by neo-Nazis

Venezuela’s Foreign Minister, Elias Jaua, is touring Latina America explaining the government’s version of the causes of the recent opposition protests.

According to the Agencia Venezolana de Noticias, Jaua has so far visited Bolivia, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Brazil: “giving details of the reality of the country and of a plan, with foreign funding, to topple the Bolivarian Revolution. [The plan] is also supported by international media corporations that distort the truth about what the Venezuelan people are living, and instead promote the vandalism of violent shock groups of the right.”

In Buenos Aires, Jaua explained that “the protests in Venezuela are not the result of political or social dissatisfaction, but are the result of a strategy planned for five years, (…) in order to overthrow the democratic government.”

In Brazil, Jaua declared that “the violent [protests] groups have a racist character and have been trained under the guidance of neo-Nazis and neo-fascists, financed by United States institutions, such as the NED [National Endowment for Democracy] and USAID, among others.”

On February 25, before leaving for his South American tour, Jaua was the protagonist of an incident with a reporter of the private TV channel TELEVEN. Jaua declared that Colombian ex-president Uribe Vélez (often accused by the Venezuelan government to be the mastermind behind conspiracies against the country) is the “boss of the aggression against Venezuela, he is a paraco [paramilitary] and is harming our fatherland, but we will defeat him.” The TELEVEN reporter asked Jaua if he had any proofs of the accusations against Uribe, Jaua lost his temper and retorted: “are you Venezuelan or Colombian?”

The next day, on February 26, Colombian Foreign Minister María Teresa Holguín, publically asked Jaua to show respect for Uribe Vélez: “We ask [Jaua] to refrain from such expressions against Uribe (…). All countries have their problems, but we are being asked to believe that all of Venezuela’s problems come from Colombia.”    

Truth Commission to be formed, but Maduro already announces the results

As expected, President Maduro’s interview yesterday on Telesur was a detailed account of his conspiracy theory explaining recent protests in Venezuela.

Here are some quotes from the interview illustrating the official narrative of events:

“This is not just another conspiracy campaign or another guarimba (street protest), it is a continued coup d’état, which has been decided by the power circles of the United States, in cahoots with the business leaders of Venezuela, and directed and conducted on the streets by part of the Venezuelan extreme right.”

“All in the opposition know about this plan, all the business leaders of the country, many of them have been secretly selling their assets. But they have not been able to do this because the people have been able to defeat them.

“They (the opposition) are trying, through a campaign of lies and manipulations, with a lot of money from outside the country and supported by the power brokers of the United States, to lead our country to an internal civil war, of violence against our people.

“They are financing the coup d’état from Colombia, they are training fascists groups, what they want is to inoculate us with hatred, mutual hatred among Venezuelans, and thus lead us to a confrontation, so that we will kill each other. They want to break the unity of the Armed Forces, to break the civic-military union, and take us to the brink of a United States intervention.”

Maduro ended the interview calling for the formation of an independent “Truth Commission” which would investigate recent events. However he also announced the future results of the Commission's report: “Research all this violence, all the denunciations of the on-going coup d’état, all the international and national lies, so that we can unearth this monster that has been activated in order to justify a foreign intervention in Venezuela.”  

SEBIN and the conspiracy inside the government

Yesterday Maduro referred to claims that officers of the SEBIN (intelligence police agency) may have fired with hand guns against student protestors on February 12. 

Maduro explained that there is a possibility that these officers are conspirators inside the government. He has declared before that some officers of the SEBIM may have disobeyed his orders to remain in their barracks during the protests. Director of the SEBIN, General Bernal Martínez, was sacked last Tuesday.

International media plot against Maduro

In a press conference with international reporters yesterday President Maduro again pointed to the US State Department, Colombian ex-President Álvaro Uribe, and the “international media” as being behind the recent opposition protests in the country, which he characterized as an “on-going coup” against his government.

Most of the conference was devoted to what he called a “international media campaign to demonize” his image: “some in the media, such as CNN, have participated in the campaign organized by the right, which is similar to the one they organized against comandante Chávez at the end of 2001 and the beginning of 2002.”

Earlier, the Communication Ministry (MINCI) had announced it was opening an investigation against CNN for its reporting of the recent events in Venezuela. CNN reporters Osmary Hernández and Patricia Janiot were stripped of their press credentials and asked to leave the country.

According to the Agencia Venezolana de Noticias (AVN) “The President denounced mass media for promoting a campaign that aims at dividing Latin America, and also seeks to create a perception that Venezuela is at the doors of a civil war, thus filling millions of people in the world with hatred.”

The plot by the US State department, in cahoots with the “international mass media” would, according to Maduro, include “the continuous attack by violent groups in the country in order to weaken the government by causing civil commotion, [confronting] the people against the people, causing division among the armed forces, with the aim of justifying the intervention of a military force of NATO or the United States.” The note press published by AVN added that “these plans also include the toppling of the government and have been plotted and decided by power groups in the Pentagon and the offices of the Department of Defense of the United States.”

The President however also said that it was time to “solve our differences with the United States through diplomatic and political means,” and offered his willingness to exchange ambassadors between the US and Venezuela.