Can a government really supress media? Even in modern day internet world?
Seems shocking that they can do a lot, maybe not total media black out, but silence can also be devastating, if you are being shot at.
I am writing this on saturday morning about at 07:00 (GMT+2 Finnish time).
I did read about this situation from a friend´s Facebook post, that pointed to an blog article about Venezuela´s situation, about an hour ago when I woke up.
Post had been published 10 hours ago.
This situation has started escalating from 19.2.2014 (according to this post). But actual happenings started already on 12.2.2014.
New York Times has posted about Venezuelan situation in this article (on 20.2.2014).
“If I have to declare a state of exception in Táchira, I’m ready to declare it and send in the tanks, the troops, planes, all of the military force of the country,” the president said. He also threatened to jail other opposition politicians and protest leaders.
Quote from that NYT article.
ABC has released an article on this too. Which gives good info about the birth of these protests.
This article, "Uniformados y civiles dispararon en Candelaria el 12F", would probably be interesting, but I dont know that language and video presented on page wont open to me from youtube. And I am now at saturday morning too lazy to translate that text with google translate.
There is also a petition in change.com about Venezuela to board of directors of LA Philharmonics.
When and how this has been widely published in US and in Global media? I really don´t know. I´m sure it should have been earlier.
But what I know is that I haven´t heard about this from our local newspaper or seen on TV news. Maybe I just missed it - that can happen. And yes, I know that we have Sotchi olympic games, we have situation in Kiev, which is very pressing at the moment to the Europe and to relationships of Ukraine, Russia and Europe. This of course gets more coverage in our media, but could Venezuelan government really have had so much influence over all the modern day media and publishing of happenings at their country, that it takes many days for media to pick up on situations like this.
If government and its close supporters own local broadcasting, it seems to have a real influence in media coverage for that country. Publicity probably wont be totally shutdown, partly because of people living outside that country and still being tightly connected to their former neighbours. Internet connections can of course be easily shutdown by government. That´s no trick in a place like Venezuela, where government can and does use brutal force and torture against its own civilians. If government holds local telecom companies, they don´t even have to break anywhere, just a phone call with suffice.
Does it only seem like, or is it real, that now there are many protests and violence against protesters going on around the globe? Thailand´s yellow and red shirts (or one side against police) have their clash at Bangkok again, Ukraine´s civilians are being shot at city center of Kiev and protesters in Venezuela are being shot by police.
I hope these things get attention and that political and government issues are dealt with. Corruption, crime and bad politics are related to all of these.
I also think that not all protesters involved in these clashes see opposition much better than government ruling. Because in many corrupted countries oppisition is not much better or less corrupted than current rulers. Main point might just be a cry for better life, no matter who is in charge.
Best wishes to people of Venezuela
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