Venezuela's Chavez targets freedom of press: watchdog

[naaman fletcher]

Chavez seeks to control ideas, and to impose silence" for those critical of his leftist government, said David Natera, who delivered a report on the state of press freedom in the South American nation at the IAPA annual meeting here.

There have been 113 reported incidents of assaults on reporters in the past year in Venezuela, the report found.

Natera said Chavez has shut down and harrassed some media and expropriated others as a "social control strategy" so that "the people will have to depend on the state exclusively to get jobs or food."

"To achieve this perverse end, Chavez needs silence, the silence of the media and of journalists. He needs the silence and the fear that were typical of the sad and oppressed peoples of Cold War-era eastern Europe, the Soviet Union and today's Cuba under (Raul) Castro," the report charged.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hii2ZkaNSzYJ-_l3miVAW9NTXH1w?docId=CNG.74bac5b4cc9462fd7346e1c94b90120a.01

[Joe Chi Minh]

1. Great news! Thanks for that, naaman. I wonder if they met the same fate as some

of our non-embedded Western journalists in Iraq. Those Taliban are blighters, aren't they? Why, they're nothing but trouble! Hmmm.... HM! I don't believe all that conspiracy stuff. I think those Taliban must have mistaken Tillman for a journalist, don't you? (Just shows you: journalists need special protection in those kind of war situations, don't they). Surely, Ugo wouldn't go that far...

[bemildred]

2. I'm just trying to understand Chavez and silence being in the same sentence. nt

[Joe Chi Minh]

3. I thik he's trying to explain that, while he's been democratically elected

on multiple occasions, the billionnaire oligarchs, who have always considered the country their private fiefdom, are doing their darnedest to 'not be nice'.