Venezuela

Since April 30, journalists have been affected by tear gas when covering the protests; detention and prosecution at the hands of state security authorities is also a serious risk.

News coverage of opposition leader Juan Guaidó’s arrival at the international airport and his fiery speech in a Caracas plaza were largely blacked out.

Rayma Suprani has had a long career as a hard-hitting political cartoonist, having worked at Venezuela’s oldest and largest circulation newspaper, “El Universal”, for 19 years before she was fired in September 2014.

Venezuelan authorities granted Six conditional release on the night of 15 March, with orders to present himself to authorities every two weeks and refrain from speaking about his case.

IFEX-ALC demands the dropping of all charges and restrictions on Venezuelan rights defender Luis Carlos Díaz. Experts from the United Nations and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights have also expressed deep concern over Díaz’s case.

Venezuela is in the midst of a marked and alarming deterioration in the position of media outlets and conditions for carrying out journalism, as a result of ongoing harassment by state entities, coupled with the country’s economic crisis.

As of 24 January, four people had been killed so far in the protests. Police responded with tear gas and rubber bullets in parts of Caracas.

Exorbitant fines, jail sentences or the closure of media outlets… These are some of the outcomes of legal instruments used against journalism in Latin America and the Caribbean today.

The case of Tulio Alvarez has sparked concern from freedom of expression advocates, who say that the criminal law should not be used to silence people who write about public issues.

From murals to urban interventions, community art projects to writing contests, CCSCity450 is challenging residents of Caracas to reclaim the streets – an act of creative resistance in a time where crime, hunger, and free expression violations dominate daily life in the Venezuelan capital.

A court in the capital Caracas ordered Jesus Medina Ezaine to military prison; he was detained August 29 after working on a reporting project at a hospital and charged with crimes including inciting hate.

The IFEX-ALC is calling for the immediate release of Pedro Jaimes Criollo, a Twitter user detained and tortured for posting public information about the presidential aircraft on his aerospace news account.

The Committee to Protect Journalists is calling on Venezuela’s government to halt its investigation of El Nacional, and to allow the newspaper to publish freely.

Threats, harassment and assaults against media outlets and journalists continue to intensify under the Maduro administration

In what journalists fear could be a taste of things to come, Venezuela’s new anti-hate law was enforced for the first time against a news organisation when a newspaper editor was called before government agents for questioning.

The radical downsizing at El Carabobeño, which is one of the few independent news outlets in Valencia willing to criticize government officials, mirrors the crisis at regional newspapers across Venezuela.