#a tribute to the voices silenced by violent occupation and genocide. to the stories they could tell.

[stil-lindigo]

moments, momentous

may i rest here? just for a moment. my legs drag behind me like shackles. i've left divots in my wake, a two-pronged rake in the dirt, tracks to and from new and old battles. hold me, dear stranger, just for a moment. smooth my hair and dry crusted tears. i'll do the same for you, just in a moment, may we speak of "future" not in days but in years.

[sharedarticlesworld-blog]

Carol Prunhuber: "Venezuela is a war between the state and the population."

In Venezuela, the rule of law died. This is as strong a truth as the death of 157 people in the 2017 protests -according to unofficial figures-, whose cases today rumble and go unpunished, while the regime hides them under the carpet of a badly called consecrated revolution for 20 years. The same happens in countries with warlike conflicts.

"Venezuela is the Syria of Latin America," says Carol Prunhuber.

The specialized journalist relates a history of crimes, murders, torture, military trials of civilians, arbitrary arrests and acts of corruption, which was triggered by the protests of 2014, and which weighs on the shoulders of Nicolás Maduro and his military and paramilitary forces.

Over time, the number of victims has increased. Prunhuber, a journalist and expert in the conflicts in Kurdistan, compiled the testimonies of the victims in Sangre y asfalto, a kind of atrocious newspaper that vindicates the struggle against authoritarianism in Venezuela.

Comparisons with countries like Syria or Iraq sound terrifying, but the sound is revealed in the 23,047 violent deaths with which 2018 closed, according to the Venezuelan Observatory of Violence. Syria, for its part, ended that period with a total of 19,799 deaths.

"Venezuela lives a war every day, the war of the State against the population," Prunhuber said in an interview with El Estímulo.

The journalist, who during the 1980s dedicated herself to denouncing the international silence surrounding the genocide of the Kurdish people - which culminated in the publication of the book The Passion and Death of Rahman the Kurd - cannot fail to recall the testimonies of these protests in Iran and compare them with the current situation in the country of the Bolivarian revolution.

"It's different because the Kurds are armed. They have been fighting their leaders for years. The similarity is that they are people who are oppressed by the regimes. Where their wars are, they are considered a second-class population, while the first-class are with the government and the second-class have no access to anything.

This second-class citizenship also includes the families and close friends of the victims, whose voices Prunhuber picks up. Also, in the book, he used testimonies published in social networks and the press, plus interviews with two journalists.

His first meeting with the parents of those murdered by the repressive forces of the State was during the presentation of Sangre y asfalto in Madrid on April 4, two years after the demonstrations.

"We're never going to get the brush of justice because the government continues to dance on the blood of the boys," said Israel Cañizales, whose son, Armando, was shot in the trachea when he protested in Las Mercedes, Caracas, in 2017.

The man denounced that the regime has turned a blind eye to the crimes. In 100 percent of the cases, the culprits have not been identified, the hearings have been postponed on multiple occasions, and the culprits have not been tried.

"These people have become spokespersons for the suffering of an entire nation, there you have the real testimony of what is happening in the country," says the writer.

"It is for them that she wanted to safeguard the memory, to gather the cries and tears in a document so that they would not disappear, so that the executioners would not change history," she said.

The text also includes nearly 200 color photographs provided by photojournalists.

Prunhuber accuses a blind left that prefers not to read and not to be informed so as not to know, of the text "Verdades alternativas de Almudena Grandes" (Alternative Truths of Almudena Grandes), written lightly on March 31 in his El País column. "It is necessary to speak to them".

The former journalist of El Nacional and the French agency Gamma TV, followed closely the events of 2014 in Florida, United States.

Realizing the repetition of the events three years later, he decided to collect the testimonies and archive them for later use. "I was indignant, I was shocked by the chronicles of ordinary people suffering, I who had been with the Kurdish guerrillas in Kurdistan could not believe that something similar was happening in my country.

After two years of research and compilation of material, the journalist assures that the book comes at a time when the Venezuelan opposition has taken a turn in the fight against the Maduro regime, with interim president Juan Guaidó at the head of the leadership. Although Prunhuber doesn't believe in coincidences, he says the book was supposed to come out in September 2018, but it was delayed.

Is his book a vindication of the youth movement and even of student leaders? It is a tribute to the whole country, but without a doubt also to the youth who are the engine of dissidence.

Guaidó is the result of that youth, leader of the student movement of 2007 and his book comes out at the moment when it has become the head of the opposition. Yes. Guaidó is part of that generation that are effectively the leaders of the movement. That generation that has never left the street, in which many were born and grew up with chavismo and died in it, too. Now a large mass of people from popular sectors that are the majority of the country has been added to that protest, which makes it more important. Guaidó what he doesn't have is baggage, but he does have courage, expertise, charisma, intelligence and a back full of pellets from that era. It was always said that this generation was the one that was going to change the country and it is doing it.

Is this shift what has changed the international community's view of Venezuela?

He (Guaidó) and Almagro's work have helped a lot internationally. It has been very hard because Chavismo has been in charge of keeping alive in the region the myth of the left over U.S. imperialism; the U.S. boot and the interventions. But what is affecting change is the danger of immigration to the rest of Latin America and Europe.

We are the Syria of Latin America. Suddenly, Venezuela becomes an exporter of an immense mass of people and that affects the bordering countries and affects the balance of Latin America. Disaster is spreading. The same thing is happening as it did decades ago with drug trafficking. Also the political change in Latin American governments, which became right-wing or conservative, has allowed us to gain international support. And, of course, Trump. I don't support him, but he has tightened the screws that Barack Obama could not.

Is there a war in Venezuela?

In Venezuela there is a war, a war of the State against the population. But in this case, the Venezuelan is an unarmed people and has not taken up arms to overthrow any regime. What we have are sticks of cardboard and stones, a situation of unusual helplessness, and we follow the Constitution to the letter. The Kurds, on the other hand, which are 40 million people who do not have a state, are armed. But who is going to arm themselves in Venezuela if they are all malnourished?

Is the country suffering the consequences of the regime's links with extremist leaders in the Middle East?

In 2008, when I published the story of Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou, the Kurdish leader assassinated in Vienna, Maduro was on his honeymoon with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and that is why I speak of Iran in the book. I was then surprised by Iran's presence in Venezuela. I knew that Hugo Chavez was going further. That's when the fear of Hezbollah's presence in the country began. The expansion that Iran established or even the direct links that Tareck El Aissami has both in Syria and Lebanon with Islamic terrorists, who were given Venezuelan passports. There is an intriguing Middle East much deeper than we see. With Chavez and 21st century socialism the door was opened to Islamic terrorism in Latin America, which has ramifications we don't understand.

Is that interventionism?

We are an occupied territory, an occupation invited by a regime. We are occupied by Cuba, Russia, the ELN, Hezbollah and now Chinese soldiers are arriving. We will have Chinese boots too. It's been going on for years.

It is not a very hopeful panorama, do you have hopes?

We can't lose hope. The situation is difficult and very dark, but that doesn't mean that we don't have to continue. However, I don't know what the solution is. Remembering the Kurdish experience, when there was the attack with chemical bombs against the population. People, out of fear, left in a mass exodus. Bernard Kouchner, then Minister of Health and Humanitarian Aid, as well as founder of Médecins Sans Frontières, introduced the doctrine of the right to humanitarian interference into the United Nations. This consisted of authorizing the use of force when there was a people massacred by their state, when it was a question of protecting national sovereignty and when there was an attack on national peace. The doctrine can be used without a majority vote of the Security Council. In Venezuela it is a possibility because there is a danger of international peace, a problem of sovereignty because we are occupied and a population massacred by its State.

Original Source: http://elestimulo.com/blog/carol-prunhuber-venezuela-es-una-guerra-entre-el-estado-contra-la-poblacion/