Unrest in Venezuela increasingly violent

Drone attack sparks crackdown

This past April, a number of Venezuelan military dissidents were holed up in neighbouring Colombia plotting to overthrow the government of President Nicolas Maduro when they were approached by a group with similar plans.

The second group, mostly civilians, wanted to assassinate Maduro and suggested joining forces. They showed videos of armed drones being tested on a Colombian farm.

The military dissidents declined to participate. They found the civilians unprofessional and weren’t interested in killing Maduro. Their goal was to capture him and put him on trial.

Two weeks ago, when Maduro was speaking at a military parade in Caracas, drones packed with plastic explosives detonated nearby in a failed assassination attempt. A participant in the April Bogota meeting said in an interview that he believes the people his group met with were the perpetrators.

His group, which included members of all four armedservice branches, was later infiltrated by the Venezuelan security services. Several dozen were arrested, breaking up the most serious attempt to overthrow Maduro in his five years in office. The plan was called Operation Constitution. The man remains abroad.

The government appears to be using the plot to pursue political opponents who may have nothing to do with it, an approach used in the past. It has at times arrested opponents and accused them of sabotage as the economy and basic services have collapsed. In the past, the plots were mostly invented for political purposes; now they’re increasingly real.

In the past two weeks, the government has announced the arrests of two high-ranking national guardsmen, a congressman and almost a dozen other people, many younger than 30.

The Venezuelan Justice Organization, a humanrights watchdog, says there are currently about 150 servicemen and women behind bars.

One group claiming responsibility for this month’s attempt is a network of online activists called Soldados de Franela, or Soldiers in Tshirts, named after the way street protesters hide their faces. The escaped plotter, however, doesn’t think they are the people he met with in Bogota.

What is clear is the depth of despair spreading across Venezuela as it descends into a lawless failed state where crime is rampant, those who can are leaving and hunger gnaws away at many of the nation’s remaining 30 million inhabitants. For at least a year, there have been multiple small-scale rebellions, largely unconnected.

Soldiers in T-shirts formed following a wave of anti-government unrest in 2014. In 2017, it began disseminating messages and videos of Oscar Perez, an elite police officer who commandeered a helicopter and called upon Venezuelans to rise up against the government. Security forces killed him in January in an hours-long shootout that was, in part, broadcast across social media.

One of the Soldiers in Tshirts leaders confirmed Perez’s death the day of the raid in an interview with CNN en Espanol. Whatever their role in the most recent attack, he said, the group is growing.

“This is not a defeat,” he said. “The government wants to view it as a trophy, but there are more of us. We are thousands.”