In Venezuela we call our movement “Un Mundo Sin Mordaza” and in English we call it “A World Without Censorship,” though it literally translates as “A World Without Gags.” We’re trying to convey that we’re not against a specific president. Rather, we’re against the gag order that he’s trying to impose on us, which limits freedom of speech, private property, and our nation’s development. Young people want a peaceful life, but the violent, belligerent language coming from the government makes the peaceful coexistence of a united society very difficult in Venezuela, and it damages our development. What we aspire to is a government committed to defending human rights and respecting democracy while it is in office.
Our movement is “A World without Censorship.” It’s an organization aimed at having offices around the world that defend freedom of speech. You may be asking yourselves why we have an organization that tries to defend freedom of speech around the world if our true goal is to help Venezuela preserve its own freedom of speech. The reason is that we realized the best way to help ourselves is by helping other countries, and that’s why we created this organization. Our main focus is on freedom of speech, because once you lose this right it will trigger a domino effect and you’ll start losing all others. Because if you have the right to life, housing, education, and property but you don’t have the proper channels to claim these rights, then you’ve got nothing. That’s why freedom of speech is so important to us.
Another goal we want to achieve is to inform people about what’s going on. Because each day in Venezuela everyone’s very concerned with earning a living and they’re not necessarily worried about their civil and political rights, which are also important but maybe not as immediately important. People are very concerned with immediate needs because of the difficult situation Venezuela is currently going through. What we try to do is convince them that if the human rights situation worsens, the day-to-day will also get worse. There will be less and less food to buy, less access to water and electricity; and that’s why it’s so important that we return to a respectful democracy, regardless of who is in power. Chavez could be reelected in two years’ time, yet the important thing is not that he becomes president but that he becomes a president who respects the human rights of all Venezuelans.
Rodrigo Diamanti of Venezuela is president of “Un Mundo Sin Mordaza” (A World Without Censorship), a network that promotes freedom of speech in the Americas and around the world.
In 2007, Diamanti obtained a bachelor’s degree in economics from the Andres Bello Catholic University of Caracas. Two years later he received a master’s degree in political studies from Complutense University in Madrid. He is a founding member of the Venezuela Student Movement of 2007, which works for free and fair elections, transparent governance, freedom of expression and association, and reconciliation in Venezuela.
Diamanti is a senior fellow of the Alliance of Youth Movements (Movements.org) and has lectured in Turkey, Spain, Mexico and the United States.
Venezuela is a South American country of 28.5 million people with a history of multiparty constitutional democracy. President Nicolas Maduro took office after Hugo Chavez succumbed to cancer in 2013.
During the 1998-2013 presidency of Colonel Hugo Chavez, a series of constitutional and legal changes were implemented that make it far more difficult for citizens to change their government. The Chavez government systematically used public resources to secure its power, closed down independent news media, and used legal and extralegal means to harass and intimidate its critics.
Soon after his first election, Chavez called for a new constitution that would give expanded powers to the president and replace Venezuela’s bicameral Congress with a unicameral national assembly. The new constitution was approved by referendum in 1999. Chavez acquired substantial control of the military, the judiciary, the electoral commission, and the news media. The government closed Radio Caracas Television Internacional (RCTV Internacional), the country’s largest television network, and forced into exile the president of Globovision, the other major opposition-aligned network.
The Chavez government’s increasingly repressive methods generated strong public opposition, including a series of public protests by students, workers, and others who were not previously aligned with the political opposition. In the 2010 National Assembly elections, opposition parties received the majority of the votes, but under the new electoral rules the government took a substantial majority of the seats in the Assembly.
Venezuela’s vast oil resources allowed Chavez to implement policies that steered the country towards a socialist economy. The country’s oil wealth funded a major expansion of government social programs, much to the approval of government supporters in the lower class. Oil became the foundation of Venezuela’s relationship with Cuba, which has strengthened substantially over the last few decades due to shared ideology and financial and security interdependence. Venezuela has replaced the Soviet Union as Cuba’s major benefactor, financially supporting the Castro regime. Cuba in turn has supported the transformation and strengthening of the Venezuelan military. In 2004, the two nations founded the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA), a group of socialist and social democratic nations working toward economic integration. ALBA and its member nations often champion anti-American policies and sentiments. This alliance has led to close ties between Venezuela and nations such as Ecuador, Nicaragua, and Bolivia.
Immediately after Chavez’s passing, Vice President Maduro assumed the role of interim President. He then went on to narrowly defeat an opposition candidate by a 1.5 percent margin in the April 2013 presidential elections. Maduro has pledged to complete Chavez’s socialist transformation of Venezuela.
Recently, Venezuela has struggled with a rising crime and homicide rate, blamed by some on a recent economic downturn, the availability of arms, and the weak judicial system. However, Chavez and Maduro both have linked this increase in crime to the media’s portrayal of both fictional and real violence and have continued to influence what programming and content is available. Both leaders have expanded the security forces within the country, calling on police, militias, and the military to fight crime.
In Freedom House’s Freedom in the World report, Venezuela earned “partly free” status, with an overall rating of 5. A rating of 1 represents the most free and 7 represents the least free.
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