Venezuela’s bishops have called a police attack that left nine people dead on 15 January a “massacre”.
Among the dead was Oscar Perez, a former police captain who led an attack against the government of President Nicolas Maduro last year, and was well known for his videos encouraging people to rebel. Commenting on this latest attack in a letter, the bishops warned that extrajudicial killings had eroded human rights in Venezuela. They wrote: “This act exposes the degradation and lack of respect for dignity and human rights that could touch any of us.”
Perez was killed during a standoff with police near the capital, Caracas, last Monday. Meanwhile, the US Ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, described Maduro’s denunciation of two Catholic bishops as the latest example of a government turning to tyranny. “A devil comes in a cassock to call for violent confrontations, for civil war,” Maduro said last week in reference to bishops identified by local media as Archbishop Lopez Castillo of Barquisimeto and Bishop Victory Hugo Basabe of San Felipe. Both men have denied calling for violence. “Maduro’s reign of violence, repression, corruption and bankruptcy continues to punish the Venezuelan people,” Ms Haley said on Friday last week.
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