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Students protesting Chavez TV network closure clash with police
By Rafael Noboa
AFP
CARACAS
Petroleumworld.com 05 29 07Police in the Venezuelan capital on Monday fired rubber bullets and tear gas at university students protesting President Hugo Chavez's shutdown of a popular but critical TV station.
Several people were injured in the outbreak of violence, including a police whose leg was broken, a police official said.
Protests continued through the day Monday after the openly anti-government Radio Caracas Television network went off the air at midnight Sunday, because the government refused to renew its license. Mainly a broadcaster of comedies and drama serials, it was replaced by TVes, a state-backed "socialist" station which opened with cultural shows.
One of the country's leading dailies, El Nacional, denounced the closure as "end of pluralism in Venezuela," and slammed the government's growing "information monopoly."The archbishop of the city of Merida, Baltasar Porras Cardoso, compared Chavez to Hitler, Mussolini and Cuban leader Fidel Castro -- who is a close friend of the left-wing Venezuelan president.
" Every day, the sectarianism of this government narrows the room for maneuver of those who don't agree with it completely," the Catholic cleric wrote in Brazilian daily O Estado de Sao Paulo.
Thousands of students gathered at the Briones Plaza in eastern Caracas Monday chanting anti-government slogans in a largely peaceful protest throughout most of the morning. They were joined by white-collar workers from nearby buildings, journalists, and RCTV actors and staff.
Around 3 pm (1900 GMT) city police fired tear gas and rubber bullets into the crowd, an AFP journalist on the scene reported.
Armando Soto, with the metropolitan police, said police intervened when a "group of violent protesters began to throw rocks and bottles" at them.Several people were injured, Soto said, one of them a police officer rushed to the hospital with a broken leg.
Some of the side streets were blocked off with wood and garbage which the protesters set ablaze.
" This is the first time in eight years that the university students hold a massive protest," said Leopoldo Lopez, an opposition leader and neighborhood mayor.
Protest marches were also reported in the cities of Valencia, 100 kilometers (62 miles) southwest of Caracas, and San Cristobal 650 kilometers (400 miles) southwest of Caracas.
Criticism of the RCTV closing came in from around the world.
The EU's German presidency said it worried Venezuela let the network's broadcast license expire "without holding an open competition" for a successor station.
The media rights group Reporters Without Borders said the move was "a serious violation of freedom of expression and a major setback to democracy and pluralism."
RCTV's former owner, Marcel Granier, said Chavez was driven by "a megalomaniacal desire to establish a totalitarian dictatorship" in an interview with US-based Univision television.
The US Senate last week unanimously approved a resolution condemning the move.
Meanwhile, Chavez supporters held a huge, night-to-dawn public party outside the network studios to celebrate the birth of the new "socialist television" and the end of the bitterly anti-Chavez media outlet.
TVes president Lil Rodriguez said the move reflected "our sovereignty."
RCTV, which aired soap-opera "telenovelas" and variety shows, had one of the largest audiences in Venezuela and is one of the few stations with national broadcast capabilities.
The government will now control two of the four nationwide broadcasters in Venezuela, one of them state-owned VTV.
AFP 28 2216 GMT 05 07
Copyright© 2007 AFP. All Rights Reserved.
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