Maduro uses armed civilians to stay in power in Venezuela

CLAMPDOWN ON MASSIVE PROTESTS AGAINST UNPOPULAR PRESIDENT TURNS VIOLENT

From labour disputes with unions to student demonstrations on university campuses, colectivos are appearing almost anywhere the government sees citizens getting out of line, Venezuelans say.

T he bikers thundered up in a phalanx of red jackets and dark clothes, some with faces covered, revving motorcycles before a thousand protesters in Caracas. They threw tear gas canisters to disperse the crowd. Then, witnesses say, they pulled pistols and fired.

Someone fell. Carlos Moreno, 17, lay sprawled on the ground, a pool of blood around his head.

“His brain matter was coming out,” recalled Carlos Julio Rojas, a community leader who witnessed the fatal shooting in Venezuela’s capital.

The uniformed men who shot Moreno were not government security forces, witnesses say. Rather, they were members of armed bands who have become key enforcers for President Nicolas Maduro as he attempts to crush a growing protest movement against his rule.

The groups, called collectives or colectivos in Spanish, originated as pro-government community organisations that have long been a part of the landscape of leftist Venezuelan politics. Civilians with police training, colectivo members are armed by the government, say experts who have studied them.

Colectivos control vast territory across Venezuela, financed in some cases by extortion, blackmarket food and parts of the drug trade as the government turns a blind eye in exchange for loyalty.

Now they appear to be playing a key role in repressing dissent. Hundreds of thousands of protesters have taken to the streets of Caracas and other cities demanding elections in Venezuela.

Appearing everywhere

Galvanised by a ruinous economy that has left basic foods and medicines scarce — as well as a botched attempt by leftists to dissolve the country’s congress last month — they present the largest threat to the country’s rulers since a coup that briefly ousted Maduro’s predecessor, Hugo Chavez, in 2002. Maduro has responded by sending National Guardsmen armed with water cannons and rubber bullets to disperse the crowds. But alongside the security forces, experts and witnesses say, are the enforcers from the colectivos, who engage in fiercer and often deadly intimidation.

“These are the true paramilitary groups of Venezuela,” said Roberto Briceno-Leon, director of the Venezuelan Violence Observatory, a non-profit group that tracks crime.

The presence of the colectivos hardly ends with demonstrations on the streets. As rising foreign debt and falling world oil prices have depleted the Venezuelan government’s coffers, it has increasingly turned to

colectivos as enforcers. From labour disputes with unions to student demonstrations on university campuses,

colectivos are appearing almost anywhere the government sees citizens getting out of line, Venezuelans say.

Eladio Mata, a hospital union leader, says he was shot last year by colectivo members when negotiations deadlocked with the University Hospital of Caracas. Mata said he had arrived to the front door of the hospital to find colectivo members blocking it. They were called, he said, by the hospital management.

Staff members tried to help him force his way through, he said, but a colectivo member shot him in the back. He was then dragged into an operating room for emergency surgery. “In this country, it’s prohibited to dissent,” Mata said.

Attacks on journalists

Dr Oscar Noya, a tropical infectious disease researcher, said his laboratory had been vandalised almost 30 times by colectivo members, who had destroyed equipment and taken electrical cables.

The colectivo bands have been accused of repeated attacks on journalists covering their activities in the streets.

However, in rare interviews in the past, group leaders have denied criminal activity and said they primarily defended the leftist cause.