Militias storm Venezuela congress, attack lawmakers
CARACAS, Venezuela — Pro-government militias wielding wooden sticks and metal bars stormed congress on Wednesday and began attacking opposition lawmakers during a special session coinciding with Venezuela’s independence day.
Four lawmakerswere injured and blood was splattered on the neoclassical legislature’s white walls. One of the injured, Americo de Grazia, had to be taken in a stretcher to an ambulance while suffering from convulsions, said a fellowcongressman.
“This doesn’t hurt as much as watching how every day how we lose a little bit more of our country,” Armando Arias said as he was being treated for headwounds.
The attack, in plain view of national guardsmen assigned to protect the legislature, comes amid three months of often-violent confrontations between security forces and protesters who accuse the government of trying to establish a dictatorship by jailing foes, pushing aside the oppositionlegislature and rewriting the constitution to avoid fair elections.
Tensions were already high after Vice President Tareck El Aissami made an unannounced morning visit to theNational Assembly, accompanied by top government and military officials, for an event celebrating independence day.
The short appearance at the congress by top officials who have repeatedly dismissed the legislators as a band of U.S.-backed conspiratorswas seen by many as a provocation.
El Aissami said global powers are once again trying to subjugate Venezuela.
“We still haven’t finished definitively breaking the chains of the empire,” he said, adding that President Nicolas Maduro’s plans to rewrite the constitution— a move the opposition sees as a power grab — offers Venezuela the best chance to be truly independent.
After he left, dozens of government supporters set up a picket outside the building, heckling lawmakers and eventually invading the legislature themselves.
Despite the violence, lawmakers approved a plan by the opposition to hold a symbolic referendum on July 16 that would give voters the chance to reject Maduro’s plans.
Later Maduro condemned the violence, but complained the opposition doesn’t do enough to control “terrorist attacks” committed against security forces by anti-government protesters.
The clash followed Tuesday’s appearance of a 5-minute video posted by a former police inspector who allegedly stole a helicopter and fired on two government buildings last week.
Oscar Perez, repeating a call for rebellion among the security forces, said that he was in Caracas after abandoning the helicopter along the Caribbean coast and was ready for the “second phase” of his campaign to free his homeland from what he called the corrupt rule of Maduro and his “assassin” allies.