On Monday, DW’s Spanish-language TV channel posted a video on X calling Venezuela “the world’s second most corrupt country” and reporting that high-ranking politicians were allegedly involved in cocaine trafficking, extortion, and illegal gold mining.
In response, Communications Minister Freddy Ñáñez accused DW of “promoting hatred” and defaming Venezuela. On Monday evening, the National Union of Press Workers (SNTP) said DW was no longer available on the country’s two main cable distributors, Supercable and SimpleTV. On his weekly TV program that day, Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s president, justified taking DW off the air by calling it a “Nazi” broadcaster.
“By taking DW off the air over a critical report, the Venezuelan government is once again demonstrating its overt hostility to press freedom in the country,” said CPJ’s Latin America program coordinator, Cristina Zahar, in São Paulo. “Venezuelans have a right to information, especially information that holds the powerful to account. Venezuela’s government must allow DW to return to the air.”
In a statement Tuesday, DW Director General Peter Limbourg said, “We urgently call on the Venezuelan government to once again ensure the distribution of the Spanish language DW television channel as quickly as possible. This restriction of DW’s broadcast is a serious encroachment on the freedom of the people in Venezuela to find independent information themselves.”
Amid government censorship of local media, international TV stations had been an important source of independent news coverage for Venezuelans, Carlos Correa, director of the Caracas-based press freedom group Espacio Público, told CPJ. However, since 2010 at least 14 channels, including CNN and news stations from Mexico, Colombia, Peru, and other countries, have been taken off the air, according to the SNTP. The union noted that DW transmissions were also briefly blocked in 2019 following the station’s coverage of anti-Maduro protests.
The blockage of DW comes amid a wider government crackdown on dissent, including the arrest last month of a prominent critic of Venezuela’s powerful military and the expulsion of a United Nations human rights agency, as the country gears up for the scheduled July 28 presidential election, in which Maduro is seeking another six-year term.
CPJ’s calls to Venezuela’s Communications Ministry and Maduro’s press office went unanswered.
]]>Bogotá, September 14, 2023—Venezuelan authorities must immediately release freelance environmental journalist Luis Alejandro Acosta and drop all criminal charges against him, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Thursday.
On September 8, security forces detained Acosta while he was reporting on illegal gold mining in the remote Yapacana National Park in southern Venezuela, according to news reports and Marco Ruíz, general secretary of the Venezuela Press Workers Union.
On Tuesday, September 12, public prosecutors charged Acosta with promoting and inciting illegal mining, being in a protected area, and abetting criminal acts.
“The Venezuelan authorities must release Luis Alejandro Acosta at once and drop all charges against him,” said Cristina Zahar, CPJ’s program coordinator for Latin America and the Caribbean, in São Paulo. “It is outrageous that a journalist doing his job should be subjected to such embarrassment by his country’s authorities.”
Acosta reports on environmental issues in southern Amazonas state, which includes the national park, and publishes reports and videos on his personal Facebook, which has 4,900 followers.
Acosta had been reporting on military operations against illegal mining in the area when he was detained, according to a September 10 thread by the National Union of Press Workers (SNTP).
“He was reporting on his own in a risky area,” Ruíz told CPJ via WhatsApp. “All the evidence suggests that he was arrested for his journalism.”
Carlos Correa, director of the Caracas-based free-speech organization Espacio Público, told CPJ by phone that Venezuelan troops have been accused of abuses and corruption in their crackdown on illegal miners and that “for the military, it would be very uncomfortable to have someone like Acosta reporting on what they’re doing.”
CPJ’s emailed request for comment to the press department of the Attorney General’s office in Caracas did not receive a response.
CPJ has recently documented a range of threats or attacks on journalists covering illegal mining and other environmental issues in the region.
On Wednesday, January 25, officers of Venezuela’s investigative police unit detained El Nacional news editor José Gregorio Meza and human resources manager Virginia Nuñez, according to news reports and Miguel Enrique Otero, the president and editor of El Nacional, who spoke to CPJ via messaging app.
Officers brought them to the attorney general’s office in Caracas, where they were questioned about a recent article and released.
Authorities also sent citations to appear at the attorney general’s office to Otero and El Nacional reporters Carola Briceño, Hilda Lugo, and Ramón Hernández, all of whom are based outside of the country and do not plan to comply with the summonses, Otero said.
“Venezuelan authorities’ latest attempt to intimidate journalists at El Nacional by threatening them with criminal investigations is completely unacceptable,” said Carlos Martínez de la Serna, CPJ’s program director, in New York. “Authorities must drop their criminal investigations into the two editors, three reporters, and the human resources manager of the outlet, and allow them to practice journalism freely.”
The citation sent to Otero, dated January 17 and which CPJ reviewed, said he was to be formally charged but did not specify what crime he was alleged to have committed. Otero added that the other journalists were cited the same day.
Otero told CPJ that authorities have threatened Briceño and Hernández’s relatives in Venezuela in retaliation for their journalism.
Police questioned Meza and Nuñez about an article alleging that President Nicolás Maduro’s son, Nicolás Maduro Guerra, who is also a politician, was connected to two Venezuelans sanctioned in 2020 by the U.S. Treasury Department for their alleged involvement in illegal gold mining.
CPJ’s calls and text messages to the attorney general’s office and President Maduro’s press office were not answered. CPJ could not find contact information for the president’s son.
The criminal investigation is the latest move by Venezuela’s authoritarian government against El Nacional, founded 80 years ago in Caracas, which used to be one of the country’s largest-circulation and most influential newspapers. However, a newsprint shortage and government harassment, including fines, defamation lawsuits, and the seizure of its building and printing presses in 2021, forced El Nacional to become a web-only news operation with many journalists and editors living in exile.
]]>“This has had a huge impact,” said Carlos Correa, director of the Caracas-based press freedom group Espacio Público and editor of Crónica Uno. Internet blocks “can easily reduce your traffic by half.”
Since Venezuela began cracking down on independent media in 2007, most internet blockages have been conducted by CANTV, the state-run ISP that now provides two-thirds of residential connections. But journalists and internet experts told CPJ that President Nicolás Maduro’s government is increasingly forcing private ISPs, which dominate the mobile phone market, to carry out press censorship by blocking Venezuela’s few remaining independent news websites.
The flurry of blockages in February stood out because, along with CANTV, they were carried out by the country’s main private sector ISPs: Spanish-owned Movistar and locally owned Digitel, Inter, NetUno, and Supercable, according to Venezuela Sin Filtro, a watchdog project that monitors internet censorship. Besides Crónica Uno, these ISPs blocked the influential news websites Efecto Cocuyo and El Nacional, along with streaming station EVTV Miami.
During the regional elections last November, private ISPs blocked 35 independent news websites, prompting criticism from the U.S.-based Carter Center and the European Union, both of which sent teams to Venezuela to monitor the fairness of the electoral process.
“While government-aligned news websites…were constantly accessible during the campaign in every state and through any Internet provider, websites of independent online media…were very difficult or impossible to access in 16 of the 23 states,” the EU observers wrote in their post-election report.
Venezuelan news organizations have responded by setting up replicas of their original domains, known as mirror websites; distributing written and recorded-voice news dispatches on WhatsApp, Telegram, and other social media platforms; and urging their audiences to set up virtual private networks (VPNs) to circumvent the blocks.
Even with these measures, the blockages make it much harder for Venezuelans to stay informed and hurt the ability of news websites to build their brand and secure funding through advertising and donations, said César Batiz, editor of the Venezuelan independent news website El Pitazo.
He told CPJ that for the past five years El Pitazo has suffered on and off blockages from both CANTV and private ISPs. When the website was first blocked in 2017, El Pitazo’s traffic fell from 115,000 daily page views to 11,000. El Pitazo gradually recovered its audience thanks, in part, to the growing number of Venezuelans living abroad.
Batiz accuses private ISPs of doing the government’s dirty work and says they should be forced to pay damages to affected websites. He and other journalists are especially disappointed in Spain’s Movistar, the only international ISP in Venezuela. They say that Movistar, which dominates the market for mobile phone service, has more resources than Venezuelan companies and therefore more room to maneuver and resist government pressure.
“What I can’t understand is how a company with corporate governance and an ethics code that operates under the European Union principles of free expression is doing what it’s doing in Venezuela,” said Batiz, who in 2019 led a protest at Movistar’s Caracas headquarters.
Luz Mely Reyes, the top editor of Efecto Cocuyo, which is scrambling to recover readers after Movistar and other ISPs blocked the website in February, added: “Movistar should not serve as a tool for a government that doesn’t respect democratic norms.”
CPJs calls to the Caracas offices of Movistar, Digitel, Inter, NetUno, and Supercable were not answered. CPJ emailed the press department of Telefónica, Movistar’s Madrid-based parent company, but received no response. Pedro Marín, president of the Chamber of Telecommunication Service Companies, an industry group that represents Venezuelan ISPs, told CPJ via a spokesperson that he was too busy to talk.
Luis Carlos Díaz, president of the Venezuelan chapter of Internet Society, a global advocacy group that promotes unrestricted access to the internet, said it would be a mistake to come down too hard on private ISPs. He told CPJ that, like the news websites they block, these companies are also victims of government repression.
Rather than a formal judicial process, Díaz said private ISPs receive orders from the National Telecommunications Commission, known as CONATEL, to block websites. He described these orders as arbitrary administrative decisions with no legal recourse and noted that ISPs could face stiff fines, expropriation, or worse for ignoring them.
Over the past two decades, Venezuelan authorities have forced dozens of independent radio and TV stations off the air for criticizing the government, Díaz said. Last year, government officials seized the assets, including the printing press, of the independent newspaper El Nacional. In 2020, AT&T’s DIRECTV pulled out of Venezuela after it was ordered to carry two pro-government TV stations as part of its service and three of its sales executives were jailed for two months on charges of fraud and trying to destabilize the economy.
Private ISPs, Díaz said, “have a gun to their heads.”
CONATEL did not respond to CPJ’s phone calls and an email seeking comment. One industry insider, who was not authorized to talk to CPJ about censorship and therefore requested anonymity, said CONATEL nearly always relays its blockage orders to private ISPs over the phone to avoid leaving a written record.
“The companies want people to have access to all internet websites but if they receive a government order, they have to follow it,” the source said.
In 2019, El Pitazo gained access to an email in which CONATEL ordered the blocking of its domain. The Carter Center report on the November elections stated: “CONATEL has issued directives to black out and censor digital media.”
The only time the Venezuelan government has publicly acknowledged internet censorship came during a 2015 meeting with the U.N. Human Rights Commission in Geneva. William Castillo, who was then director of CONATEL, said that it had ordered the blockage of 1,060 web pages, including news websites, to “protect society.”
Andrés Azpúrua, coordinator of Venezuela Sin Filtro, told CPJ that private ISPs should be more transparent about why they are blocking websites, like the way Google notes when material is removed from its YouTube platform for copyright infringement. Instead, he said many Venezuelans remain in the dark about censorship, blaming the country’s notoriously slow internet speeds for their inability to access the news.
Díaz, of Internet Society, says the U.S. and other governments should consider sanctioning CONATEL officials, as he and other experts point out that there’s only so much private ISPs, which have struggled to survive amid Venezuela’s ongoing economic crisis, can do by themselves. If private ISPs take a bold public stand for free expression by defying government orders, they say, it almost certainly guarantees their shutdown – and less internet access for Venezuelans.
In the words of Azpúrua: “It’s better to have a censored internet than nothing at all.”
]]>Journalists and experts say private internet service providers (ISPs) are censoring the sites for the first time, though they have been unavailable on state-run networks for years.
On Tuesday, February 1 private ISPs Movistar, Digitel, Inter, NetUno, and Supercable began blocking access to news websites Efecto Cocuyo and Crónica Uno and EVTV Miami, a streaming station that reports on Venezuela, according to Venezuela Sin Filtro, a watchdog project that monitors internet censorship.
“This is a total blockage,” Celina Cárquez, editorial director of Crónica Uno, told CPJ via messaging app. “The links do not open. This has never happened to us before.” Efecto Cocuyo and EVTV Miami also reported on their websites that the blocking had been extended to more networks.
“We are very concerned to see private firms apparently carrying out state censorship,” said Carlos Martínez de la Serna, CPJ’s program director, in New York. “Authorities in Venezuela have decimated the traditional media landscape, and independent news websites are among the only sources of information left.”
CANTV, the state-run ISP, has blocked various news websites that are critical of the country’s authoritarian government for more than 10 years, but they remained accessible on the 25% of residential internet connections provided by private companies until recently, Andrés Azpurua, coordinator of Venezuela Sin Filtro, told CPJ via messaging app.
During regional elections last November, private ISPs blocked 35 independent news websites. It is unclear how many remain blocked to the general public, as some private ISPs allow access and others do not.
Luis Carlos Díaz, president of the Venezuelan chapter of Internet Society, which promotes open access to the internet, told CPJ by messaging app that private ISPs are under government orders to block these websites and that non-compliance could lead to their closure.
“This is a very serious attack on press freedom because it will cause these news organizations to lose part of their audience and then to lose financing,” Díaz said.
CPJ called each of the five companies but the phone rang unanswered. CONATEL, the government telecommunications regulator, has not spoken publicly on the recent string of blockages and CPJ’s calls, and email seeking comment were not answered. ISPs have a strong tradition of not speaking about their relationship with the government, according to Diaz and Venezuela Sin Filtro.
The National Union of Press Workers, a Venezuelan press freedom association, denounced the blockages on Wednesday in a Twitter thread, saying that the government of President Nicolás Maduro has spent years clamping down on news websites to “limit access to objective news.”
Independent news websites have become more important in Venezuela, as President Nicolás Maduro’s government moves to reduce the influence of independent newspapers, TV, and radio stations through fines, defamation lawsuits, advertising boycotts, closures, and other measures, according to CPJ research.
Over the past years, CPJ has documented the blockage of independent news websites in Venezuela.
]]>On October 14, a criminal court in the capital of Caracas issued an arrest warrant for Deniz, editor at digital investigative reporting outlet Armando.Info who is in exile in Colombia, according to his lawyer Ana Bejarano who spoke with CPJ via messaging app and shared a copy of the warrant with CPJ. The warrant says that Deniz is under criminal investigation under the Anti-Hate Law for “inciting hate,” a charge that carries up to 20 years in prison. The warrant did not provide detail on the journalist’s alleged criminal conduct.
On October 15, agents from Venezuela’s criminal and forensic investigative police bureau (CICPC) raided the home of Deniz’s parents in Caracas, according to news reports and Joseph Poliszuk, an Armando.Info editor who spoke with CPJ via messaging app.
According to those same sources, the journalist’s brother, sister-in-law, and nieces were at the home at the time of the raid, which lasted for hours during which agents searched the home without taking anything. Afterward, authorities took Deniz’s brother into custody at CICPC headquarters, interrogated him, and released him without charge, according to news reports.
“There can be no doubt that the raid on exiled journalist Roberto Deniz’s home, the order to arrest him, and other instances of harassment, are in direct retaliation for his investigative reporting on corruption at the highest levels of the Venezuelan government,” said CPJ Latin America and the Caribbean Program Coordinator Natalie Southwick. “Venezuelan authorities must cease their harassment of Deniz and his family, and allow him and his colleagues at Armando.Info to continue their sensitive and significant work, free of harassment.”
On the same day as the raid, Deniz posted a tweet claiming that the arrest warrant was in response to his ongoing coverage of “the businesses and relationship between Alex Saab and Nicolás Maduro.”
Saab, whom news reports describe as a financial fixer for Maduro, the Venezuelan president, sued Deniz for criminal defamation on the basis of his and other Armando.Info journalists’ reporting in 2017 that implicated Saab in alleged corruption in Venezuela’s state-run food distribution program, as CPJ documented. Following the suit, Deniz and three Armando.Info editors – Poliszuk, Ewald Scharfenberg, and Alfredo Meza — fled the country in 2018.
Also on October 14, Bejarano said, the same court requested the International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL) to issue an international “red notice” for Deniz, which asks law enforcement around the world to “locate and provisionally arrest a person pending extradition, surrender, or similar legal action,” according to INTERPOL. Bejarano shared a copy of the court request with CPJ.
CPJ contacted INTERPOL via a form on its website to determine if the organization had chosen to issue the notice for Deniz, who was not listed on the organization’s database of fugitives as of today.
On October 16, Saab was extradited from Cape Verde — where he had been in detention since June 2020 following an INTERPOL red notice — to the U.S. to face money laundering charges, according to news reports and the U.S. Department of Justice. Lawyers for Saab say that the charges against him are “politically motivated,” according to news reports.
Venezuela’s anti-hate law was approved by the National Constituent Assembly in November 2017; as CPJ documented at the time, the law does not define basic terms like hate, leaving it open to broad interpretation. The law has been used to retaliate against journalists, as CPJ has documented.
CPJ emailed the CICPC for comment but did not get a response. CPJ’s calls to the Supreme Tribunal of Justice, which heads the judiciary in Venezuela, were not answered.
]]>“We are relieved that the Venezuelan government’s torturous five-year legal harassment of journalist Braulio Jatar is finally over,” said CPJ Program Director Carlos Martinez de la Serna, in New York. “Jatar never should have been forced to spend one day in prison or under house arrest. It was clear from the start that authorities were punishing him for daring to cover a protest against President Nicolás Maduro.”
Venezuelan intelligence officers first detained Jatar, who manages the news website Reporte Confidencial, on September 3, 2016, one day after he covered local residents jeering at President Nicolás Maduro during a visit to Margarita island, as CPJ documented at the time. Authorities accused him of money laundering, claiming that he was planning to fund a “terror attack” during the summit of the Non-Aligned Movement scheduled to begin on the island on September 13 that year.
After spending almost three years in detention and house arrest, Jatar was conditionally released on July 8, 2019, but was barred from leaving the country and required to present himself before the court every 15 days, as CPJ documented.
On September 10, 2021, the Second Trial Court of the state of Nueva Esparta acquitted him of those money laundering charges, according to news reports.
]]>At about 7 p.m. on May 14, National Guard agents executing an order issued by a Caracas court raided the newspaper’s headquarters in the Los Cortijos area of Caracas, evacuated the outlet’s staff, and took control of the building, according to a report by El Nacional, a statement by the newspaper’s lawyer Juan Garantón as quoted by El Nacional, and a tweet by the National Union of Press Workers, a local media workers’ advocacy group.
The building was seized as partial payment in a civil defamation suit that the outlet lost in April, according to those sources. Garantón told CPJ today via messaging app that the paper’s employees and representatives have not been allowed to enter the building since the raid, but have continued publishing on the outlet’s website from other locations.
“The seizure of the headquarters of El Nacional as partial payment of damages to Diosdado Cabello is the latest step in a long and arbitrary process of judicial harassment and abuses against the daily for daring to report on corruption allegations,” said CPJ South and Central America Program Coordinator Natalie Southwick, in New York. “By taking control of the headquarters of one of the most influential outlets in the country, Venezuelan authorities have shown they will go to extraordinary lengths to suppress independent news.”
On April 16, the Venezuelan Supreme Tribunal ordered El Nacional to pay the equivalent of more than $13 million in civil damages to Diosdado Cabello, a congressman and the vice president of the ruling Socialist Party, as CPJ documented at the time; Cabello had sued the newspaper over its republication of a January 2015 story from the Madrid-based newspaper ABC.
Founded in 1943, El Nacional is an independent newspaper that has been critical of President Nicolás Maduro’s government; the daily published its last print edition in December 2018 due to government restrictions on newsprint, and has continued publishing online.
CPJ emailed Cabello for comment, but did not receive any response. Following the raid, he posted a tweet stating that “the process of payment of compensation has begun,” adding “we will prevail!!”
CPJ called the Bolivarian National Guard at the number listed on its official website, but the person who took the call said they did not have information on the issue.
]]>On April 19, at around 4 a.m., unidentified individuals set fire to the regional headquarters of the National Union of Journalists (CNP) in the city of Cumaná, in the northeastern state of Sucre, according to media reports, Mónica Salazar, secretary-general of the union’s Sucre division, who spoke to CPJ via messaging app, and a preliminary report by the Cumaná Fire Brigade, which Salazar shared with CPJ.
The fire brigade’s report said the fire was manmade, and identified a hole in the building’s ceiling that was likely used by the arsonists to enter the headquarters. Though no one was harmed in the attack, the headquarters were completely destroyed, Salazar told CPJ.
“We are very concerned by the arson attack on the Sucre headquarters of the Venezuelan National Union of Journalists, an organization that has been at the forefront of the fight against the repeated attacks by the Venezuelan government on the independent press,” said CPJ Central and South America Program Coordinator Natalie Southwick, in New York. “Venezuelan authorities must act diligently and quickly to investigate this attack, identify those responsible, and bring them to justice.”
The CNP is a professional organization that counts more than 26,000 Venezuelan journalists as registered members, and advocates for press freedom and journalists’ rights, according to Edgar Cárdenas, secretary-general of the union’s Caracas division, who spoke with CPJ via messaging app.
On April 20, the CNP filed a complaint to the Venezuelan judicial police, Salazar told CPJ, adding that they have not heard any results from the investigation and that no suspects have been identified.
CPJ called the Cumaná headquarters of the Venezuelan judicial police for comment, but no one answered.
The CNP called the fire “intentional” on its Twitter account, adding that the arsonists sought “to silence the fight carried out by the guild.” The organization regularly denounces abuses committed against journalists and media organizations by Venezuelan authorities.
A local journalist who asked to remain anonymous, citing security concerns, told CPJ, “Salazar and the other directors of the CNP-Sucre, who all are local journalists and correspondents in the state, are the eyes of what is happening there, and they have been very critical of what the government does.”
“We know we are a target. This is an attack against the exercise of journalism,” Salazar told CPJ.
]]>On April 16, the Civil Cassation Chamber of the Supreme Tribunal ordered El Nacional to pay 237,000 petros—a cryptocurrency run by the Venezuelan government—equivalent to about US$13.3 million, to Diosdado Cabello, a congressman and the vice president of the ruling Socialist Party, according to news reports and a report by El Nacional.
The ruling stemmed from a civil defamation suit Cabello filed against the newspaper over El Nacional’s republication of a January 2015 story from the Madrid-based newspaper ABC, which alleged he was connected to a drug-trafficking ring, according to those reports.
El Nacional president and editor Miguel Henrique Otero told Colombian broadcaster NTN24 that the ruling will allow the Venezuelan government to seize El Nacional’s building, printing press, and other property.
“The exorbitant damage award of $13 million imposed by Venezuela’s Supreme Tribunal on El Nacional in a defamation case filed by a government official seeks to further punish the daily for its independent coverage and sends a chilling message to other media outlets,” said CPJ Central and South America Program Coordinator Natalie Southwick, in New York. “This is a clear case of judicial harassment against one of the few remaining independent outlets in Venezuela, which has managed to keep reporting against all odds.”
In May 2018, a Caracas court found El Nacional guilty of damaging Cabello’s reputation and ordered the newspaper to pay him 1 billion bolivars, the legal Venezuelan currency; however, due to the bolivar’s hyperinflation, Caballo’s lawyer filed a motion to the tribunal to change the currency of the damages, according to the court’s decision.
“It’s an astronomical amount… There is no way [to pay it],” Juan Garantón, El Nacional’s lawyer, told Reuters. CPJ contacted Otero via messaging app for comment, but did not receive any reply; CPJ was unable to find contact information for Garantón.
Following the April 16 judgment, El Nacional filed a motion to the tribunal, which CPJ reviewed, arguing that the bolivar is the legal currency of Venezuela and the newspaper should not be required to pay in petros.
Founded in 1943, El Nacional has been extremely critical of President Nicolás Maduro’s government; the daily published its last print edition in December 2018 due to restrictions the government imposed on access to newsprint, as CPJ documented at the time; the outlet has published solely online since then. In recent years, the Venezuelan government has used political pressure on state-run newsprint companies to stifle critical reporting, according to CPJ research.
“I don’t think El Nacional will disappear. We are on the web. What will disappear are the installations and the printing press. But we will continue to inform the public,” Otero told NTN24.
Otero lives in Madrid in self-imposed exile, after a judge issued a decision in May 2015 barring him, along with 21 other media executives, from leaving the country as a result of Cabello’s defamation suit, as CPJ documented at the time.
The United Nations has repeatedly called on Venezuela to ensure that its court system can function independently, and has expressed concern that the Socialist Party has pressured courts to act against political opposition groups.
CPJ emailed Cabello for comment, but did not receive any response.
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