The blocking of news and censorship is total. The regime of Nicolás Maduro ordered the closure of 96 radio stations so far this year to silence Venezuelans and maintain absolute control of information and the press in view of the electoral season.
Silence is palpable as soon as you drive a few kilometers from Caracas by road and try to tune into a station to distract yourself along the way. Nothing is heard on FM and AM broadcasts, only the high-pitched, high-frequency whistling of empty, closed Hertzian waves.
It is the news blockade that the Chavista government has imposed on the country. The former director of Caracas Newspaper, Laurentzi Odriozola, describes it as “Silence. They have succeeded ”as the current official electoral plan initiated by Hugo Chávez 23 years ago and continued by Maduro.
In his conversation with ClarioneOdriozola claims that what is happening in the country is “terrifying”. “We have fallen into the lack of information, we have to find out what is happening here from international agencies or foreign TV channels such as TVE “.
last run
The latest attack on radio stations across the country ended last week with 15 new closures and 2 with expired licensesthat added to the 79 previously denounced by the National Press Union (SNTP) accumulate almost a hundred radio stations closed so far this year, from January to October.
The union assured that the closures of the last 15 stations were mostly in the border states of Táchira, Zulia, and in Sucre, on the east coast of the country, which account for 70% of the stations in the region. The radios of Falcón and Isla de Margarita were also affected.
Nicmer Evans, opposition primary candidate, has indicated the closure of radio stations responds to the government’s plan to silence opponents who are conducting an election campaign to elect the only opposition candidate for the future presidential elections.
Radio stations have a large circulation in Venezuela and are a major source of information. “The arbitrary cessation of its broadcasts in some stations, affects citizenship and also to its employees who have been left without a source of income, ”said the NGO Espacio Público.
As reported by Espacio Público, the National Telecommunications Commission (CONATEL) is responsible for most of the station closures – more than 200 – in the last 13 years.
So Maduro – he has been in charge for almost 9 years – maintains the hegemony of the radio and television media. “It is nothing more than continuing to bring informational and communicative obscurantism across the country,” wrote the National College of Journalism (CNP) on Twitter.
The CNP added that in addition to the closure of radio stations, the regime implements “selective blocks” that are “applied daily to various information portals”, which, added to the “continuous lack of power and internet” in the country “without doubt, contributes to the censorship policy promoted by the Venezuelan state, which has placed us on the threshold greater than informational obscurantism “.
Reviews
At the meeting in Madrid, the Inter-American Press Association (IAPA) stressed that radio stations and television channels are at the mercy of (CONATEL), the regulatory body that has “unlimited powers” to exercise “absolute censorship”.
“Any nonsense is an excuse (in Venezuela) cancel concessionsthat have been transferred to people linked to the government (…) under the pretext of not having an operating permit, are closed in retaliation for their editorial line “, reads the IAPA report.
In recent years, “it can be said that independent journalism has ceased to exist in the country, as the government has increased repression of the work of journalists and increased censorship by blocking and closing 40 digital media outlets and a hundred other radio stations. “, underlined the IAPA.
Independent newspapers and magazines have also stopped circulating in the Caribbean country because the government has a monopoly on paper. One of the last to close was El Nacional. Its editor-in-chief, Miguel Henrique Otero Silva, made serious complaints.
“In Venezuela, the regime orders to deactivate freedom of expression by blocking the Internet, which is the only way independent journalism is expressed; and it does so by ordering telephone companies block all independent journalism web pages“, he expressed.
Otero described the Maduro regime as being responsible for censorship in the country and the telephone companies as material perpetrators. “The telecommunications companies are complicit in the dictatorship”, which also collaborate with the illegal espionage of two million users.
PB
Source: Clarin
