Venezuela

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez Frías should refrain from making threatening statements and ensure the press is allowed to work without government interference, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has said. Chávez accused private media outlets of destabilising democracy in comments earlier last week. During his weekly radio and TV programme "Aló, Presidente" on Sunday, Chávez said...

On February13, 2009, Venezuelan authorities arrested Rafael Segundo Pérez, a former sergeant for the Carabobo police, in connection to the January 16 killing of journalist Orel Sambrano, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported quoting local news reports. Pérez is accused of working as a hired assassin and conspiring to commit a crime. Police Commissioner Robinson Castillo told...

A Venezuelan journalist who recently reported on drug trafficking and corruption was shot to death on Friday in Valencia, a city in the north-central province of Carabobo, according to news reports and interviews, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. A motorcycle-riding assailant shot Orel Sambrano, left, director of the local political weekly ABC de la Semana and Radio América...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has called for a review of the trial of alleged regional drug baron Ceferino García, who was acquitted by a court in Maturín, in the northeastern Venezuelan state of Monagas, on August 28 of masterminding the murder of Mauro Marcano. A radio and newspaper journalist, Marcano was gunned down outside his Maturín home on September 1, 2004. "This verdict is a victory...

Javier García, news anchor for the Caracas-based television station Radio Caracas Television Internacional (RCTV), was found dead in his Caracas apartment on Sunday. García, 37, was last seen by friends and family on Friday night, according to local and international news reports. On Sunday afternoon, García’s brother entered the anchor’s Caracas apartment and called the local fire department when...

Unidentified gunmen killed Pierre Fould Gerges, vice president of the Caracas daily Reporte Diario de la Economía, on Monday following dozens of death threats against the paper’s senior administrative staff over the last year. The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said Tuesday that Venezuelan authorities must conduct a thorough investigation and determine whether Gerges’...

A journalist was beaten up and subjected to electrical shocks by officials of the Carabobo State Police in Venezuela after he was accused of damaging some furniture in the reception area of El Periódico newspaper and carrying a gun without a permit, according to the Instituto Prensa y Sociedad (IPYS). On May 5, Fabián Chacón, legal representative of journalist Leocenis García, stated that his...

The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) has called on the government of Venezuela to allow for the restoration of on-air broadcasting by Radio Caracas Televisión (RCTV). The channel's transmission equipment was seized after its shutdown on May 27 last year and this action would be "one way of beginning to re-establish freedom of the press in the country," the organisation declared in a...

Opposition-aligned Venezuelan TV channel RCTV has been allowed by the country's Supreme Court to remain on cable, just hours before a government-set deadline that could have removed it from the cable lineup. The Supreme Court of Justice said in a statement Wednesday that it suspended the telecommunications commission's order for Radio Caracas Television and other cable channels to register as...

The resumption of broadcasting by Radio Caracas Televisión (RCTV) on cable and satellite on 16 July 2007 has been followed by an announcement by information and communication minister William Lara that the law will amended to oblige pay-TV cable and satellite broadcasters to carry the same occasional government programming that terrestrial broadcasters are already obliged to transmit. The system...