Tonight, the Metropolitan Police used tear gas near where the funeral of one of the victims of yesterdays confrontation was being held. As with so many other things in Venezuela these days, there are two versions of the events. The Government says that the Metropolitan Police provoked the incident and tear gassed the funeral home. The police says that fifteen persons who were attending the funeral went to the police module which is in the street behind the funeral home and began shooting at them. The cops then used tear gas that reached the funeral home and created the confusion that they were being attacked. I know that area quite well and indeed the module is in the street behind the building where the wake was taking place. Fortunately, the Government TV station was covering the funeral live and other TV stations were broadcasting the signal, which shows clearly at least one man shooting straight into the police module. Two cops suffered bullet wounds.
Picture of one of the shooters from the Government’s TV image…..
It appears to me, that the Government, who in my opinion is directly responsible for the violence and the deaths that took place yesterday, wants to divert attention from their responsability. They are saying that the two deaths were caused by the Metropolitan Police run by the opposition Mayor of the Metropolitan area of Caracas, a charge that may be true, but it is far from proven. In fact, I was amazed yesterday at the fact that the Metropolitan police had plastic shields, tear gas, no gas masks and only batons. I saw only two or three of them with guns and they were the high officers. The Governemnt fails to mention that the pro-Government demonstrators were bused in, had no permit and the opposition march, which was peaceful, was not allowed to go through to its ending point. This allowed for a “perfect” confrontation between the two groups (The opposition being 50 times larger) with the police and military police in the middle. Given the increased violence of the last two days (Last night a truck of Chavistas showed up to beat up peaceful pot-bangers from the opposition in front of the Government’s National Radio), I can only conclude that the Hugo Chavez Government is simply setting the stage for a repressive state of emergency as a way of stopping the consultative referendum, once the Supreme Court rejects the last injunction introduced by the Government.
The Devil's Excrement 
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