A colombian journalist, and political activist based in London is accussed of paramilitarism when he controverted the CNP (Comite Nacional Preparatorio) Organisers of the 16º World Festival of youth and students in Caracas, Venezuela.
In the context of the 16º World Festival of Youth and Students, held in Caracas this august, the popular Journalist, activist and intelectual Mauricio Lopez-Arenas, who is a colombian based in London and is doing LatinAmerican studies at London University Birkbeck College, is stucked in Caracas after he was victim of robbery, where he lost his ID´s, passport, bank cards, equipment, money cell phone, among others during the closing of the festival at the Poliedro on monday 15th of August.
The worst came soonafter when he was denied the rigth to report the crime and loss of his documents in different Police offices who where sending him from one place to another, without any luck to make his report.
He ended up making the report to the Fiscal General de la Republica, highest authority for crime investigations in Venezuela.
The managment comittee from the Festival which paradoxically was suppossed to be for solidarity and to figth imperialism, didn´t want to take any responsability and lacked of any solidarity, when he continuosly went to the head offices to look for help and advise.
David Velazquez,president of the festival and his committee mentioned that they had priorities when Mauricio asked for help and refered to the fact that people like Daniel Ortega where being paid his fligth and a suite in the Hilton Caracas, while he slept in a tent without toilet services and participated actively during the festival. One of the co-ordinators said that some people was more important but not him(Mauricio)
Mauricio still insisted and asked for assistance and then was refered to the Mayor Yeguez at the third Brigade of the Army, when Mauricio arrived was told that the instructions were to take him to the border with Colombia, as if he was being deported, Lopez-Arenas explained the situation to the Mayor Yeguez, who was upset to david Velazquez attitude of wash his hands of any responsibility and send the colombian journalist to him. eventually Lopez-Arenas left the third Brigade of the army accompanied for a Venezuelan that knew the case the nigth of the robbery. this Venezuelan guy, alexander Palacios who is who is the musical director of the vice-presidence group, took Mauricio back to the Festival Offices in Parque Central and went to keep asking for a real solution to his problem. In order to have proof of the way the President of the festival was acting, Mauricio secretly recorded the answer that Velazquez was giving and found himself detained and double locked at the festival offices and suddenly his position of being victim, was changed for an accusation of being paramilitar from Colombia.
He was detained for more than four hours, and was physically and pshycologically intimidated and then freed after he agreed to delete the recording. Lopez-Arenas situation is now uncertain as he was left with no money at all and without any passport or ID. He is in the process of writhing an official complain to the Instituto de la Juventud and is denouncing the CNP(national preparatory committe) who´s president is David Velazquez to a different organisations and government instances such as the Vice Presidence and the Presidence itself. at the moment Lopez-arenas is relying on the solidarity shown by revolutionaries in venezuela and the british journalist Charley Allen
Wait for further reports and show solidarity getting in touch trough Lopez-arenas e mail:
chamantes@yahoo.co.uk, or with Charley Allan(english) phone in Caracas 0058 412 591 3912 and Alexander Palacios(spanish) 0058 416 815 0359
The worst came soonafter when he was denied the rigth to report the crime and loss of his documents in different Police offices who where sending him from one place to another, without any luck to make his report.
He ended up making the report to the Fiscal General de la Republica, highest authority for crime investigations in Venezuela.
The managment comittee from the Festival which paradoxically was suppossed to be for solidarity and to figth imperialism, didn´t want to take any responsability and lacked of any solidarity, when he continuosly went to the head offices to look for help and advise.
David Velazquez,president of the festival and his committee mentioned that they had priorities when Mauricio asked for help and refered to the fact that people like Daniel Ortega where being paid his fligth and a suite in the Hilton Caracas, while he slept in a tent without toilet services and participated actively during the festival. One of the co-ordinators said that some people was more important but not him(Mauricio)
Mauricio still insisted and asked for assistance and then was refered to the Mayor Yeguez at the third Brigade of the Army, when Mauricio arrived was told that the instructions were to take him to the border with Colombia, as if he was being deported, Lopez-Arenas explained the situation to the Mayor Yeguez, who was upset to david Velazquez attitude of wash his hands of any responsibility and send the colombian journalist to him. eventually Lopez-Arenas left the third Brigade of the army accompanied for a Venezuelan that knew the case the nigth of the robbery. this Venezuelan guy, alexander Palacios who is who is the musical director of the vice-presidence group, took Mauricio back to the Festival Offices in Parque Central and went to keep asking for a real solution to his problem. In order to have proof of the way the President of the festival was acting, Mauricio secretly recorded the answer that Velazquez was giving and found himself detained and double locked at the festival offices and suddenly his position of being victim, was changed for an accusation of being paramilitar from Colombia.
He was detained for more than four hours, and was physically and pshycologically intimidated and then freed after he agreed to delete the recording. Lopez-Arenas situation is now uncertain as he was left with no money at all and without any passport or ID. He is in the process of writhing an official complain to the Instituto de la Juventud and is denouncing the CNP(national preparatory committe) who´s president is David Velazquez to a different organisations and government instances such as the Vice Presidence and the Presidence itself. at the moment Lopez-arenas is relying on the solidarity shown by revolutionaries in venezuela and the british journalist Charley Allen
Wait for further reports and show solidarity getting in touch trough Lopez-arenas e mail:
chamantes@yahoo.co.uk, or with Charley Allan(english) phone in Caracas 0058 412 591 3912 and Alexander Palacios(spanish) 0058 416 815 0359
e-mail:
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This is outrageous, we have to know the whole and real story about it
28.08.2005 00:41
Eric Richter
more info and background
28.08.2005 08:47
RECENT YOUTH FESTIVAL SHOWS GREAT PROMISE BUT ALSO POINTS TO POTENTIAL PROBLEMS AHEAD
The success of the 16th World Festival of Youth and Students in Caracas, Venezuela, earlier this month bodes well for the city’s upcoming hosting of the World Social Forum, which will also be held in Karachi, Pakistan and Bamako, Mali, simultaneously from 24th to 29th January 2006. The youth wing of the Bolivarian Movement in Venezuela, with 6,000 eager and helpful volunteers, did an impressive job handling the logistics of housing and feeding more than 17,000 delegates from 144 countries for over a week. However, there were several problems that need to be seriously addressed if Caracas is to accommodate the 100,000 political travelers expected next year.
The biggest complaint at the festival by far was transport. Fleets of buses were laid on, shuttling delegates between the newly-completed villages that most internationals were staying in and the various venues around the city centre (as well as trips to poor neighbourhoods, or barrios, to observe the numerous social programmes, community organisations and cooperatives). The initial chaos which saw delegates stranded sometimes overnight had settled down by mid-week, but there were waits of normally over an hour while buses filled up, plus another hour for the journey to or from the villages, which were up to 20km outside of Caracas.
Spending four hours a day like this was probably the main reason many of those who could afford it (and who didn’t speak Spanish, thereby limiting the casual conversation that others found the most rewarding aspect of the festival) opted to stay in hostels nearer the venues, which for a week cost far less than the festival registration fee for “1st World” delegates ($300 for North Americans, compared to only $30 for the Colombian delegation, while over 1,400 Cuban delegates were flown in for free). With the Venezuelan government contributing over $8-million to the festival, some delegates felt a bit ripped-off.
There were plenty of festy freebies for those lucky enough to find them (books, films, t-shirts, backpacks, bottle-openers, even postage stamps) but basics like pens, paper and even programmes were in short supply. All the venues supplied radio headsets for multiple translations but there were very few actual translators to take advantage of this technology. Every night people could choose from numerous open-air hip-hop and salsa parties but buses left as early as 10pm and taxis back to the villages were very expensive. Delegates were told point-blank by soldiers they were not allowed to leave the housing without permission from their group leader, which made many feel like they were staying in a prison compound.
Another accommodation option, which may be the key to a successful WSF, was camping. Official tents sponsored by the mayor were put up in the semi-autonomous permanent space “Tiuna el Fuerte” (a play on the name of the main military barracks in Caracas, Fuerte Tiuna) which also had themed films and parties every night of the festival. In the barrio La Vega a media co-op, together with the local community, organised an alternative youth camp for the week, quite separately from the official festival, with workshops, discussions (including one about starting a Venezuelan indymedia in time for the WSF) and healthy food cooked in a communal kitchen. In return people helped out with chores around the neighbourhood such as painting the basketball-court walls. Most unexpectedly the journalist John Pilger turned up there on Saturday doing research for his new documentary about the Bolivarian Revolution.
Feeding the delegates was an ongoing challenge, with the obvious opportunity to showcase the delicious local food sadly wasted by the festival organisers. Instead of traditional Venezuelan delights such as arepas and empanadas, almost every meal consisted of a plastic disposable lunchbox filled with a ham and cheese roll, a piece of fruit and some sweets. Someone must have been making decent money out of all this because a dozen community-kitchens across the city would have been cheaper, easier and a lot tastier.
Although some delegates (particularly those from Venezuela, of which there were over 3,000) complained that the political agenda, encompassing over 100 seminars, plenaries and debates, was too narrow and hardly reflected “youth” issues, this shouldn’t be a problem at the WSF, which is generally considered more “horizontal” (ie autonomously organised) than the “vertical” (hierarchical and authoritarian) structures behind the WFYS. In certain respects, this authoritarianism was justified, as many delegates were under 18 and Caracas is still a very dangerous city. The highest priority for the organisers clearly had to be the security of delegates and there were doctors, firemen and soldiers stationed at all events.
The organisational hierarchy did lead to problems though, with the emergence of an elitist clique which called the shots but wasn’t much help when things went wrong. For example, a Peruvian delegate with an appendicitis was allegedly forced to wait six hours before the president of the Venezuelan National Preparatory Committee (CNP), David Velasquez, personally approved him being sent to hospital. Members of the US delegation claim that after being beaten up by delegates from Lybia for refusing to sell a girl from their group, they were accused by the CNP of being on drugs and making the whole thing up. And when a delegate from the UK, panicking that he wouldn’t be able to return home after his passport and money were stolen, rather naively secretly taped a conversation with the CNP, he was physically intimidated and locked in a festival office for four hours.
The delegate, Mauricio Lopez-Arenas, is Colombian but has been living in the UK for over five years and is doing a degree in Latin American studies at London University. Stranded in Venezuela without money, a passport or any ID, he turned to the festival organisers for help, who instead circulated a memo stating that he was in fact a well-known right-wing paramilitary. There have been reports of delegates being detained at the border on their return to Colombia (where he has to go to fly back to the UK) with their details recorded and “subversive” materials such as festival papers and videos confiscated. None of this seemed to matter to the CNP, who fobbed him off saying there was nothing they could do, with one member even telling him that he’s just not important enough for them to care about. Luckily a young Bolivarian from the Vice-President’s office leaped to Mauricio’s defense, taking him under his wing and providing a far better example of solidarity than anyone from the festival itself.
Preparation for the WSF is an opportunity to learn from the problems and mistakes of the WFYS, and the organisational structure this time seems to be much more inclusive. Gone are the secret plenaries with hidden agendas; now there are open meetings almost daily in Caracas and active working groups on issues such as Methodology, Logistics, Camping and Communications. If the horizontal spirit of the WSF is allowed to flourish and the challenges of transport, accommodation and security can be overcome, January should be an excellent opportunity to experience Venezuela’s peaceful and democratic revolution at its very best.
“The Liberator” Simon Bolivar keeps an eye on Monday’s opening ceremony
Young Spanish comrades at the front-line in the fight against Imperialism
Internationals carry the Venezuelan flag at the festival’s opening ceremony
Mixing pop and politics at the Peace and Solidarity Concert on Sunday
A co-operative food market is held every Saturday in semi-autonomous zone Tiuna el Fuerte
pescao
e-mail:
pescao@thenewagenda.org
Homepage:
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/world/2005/08/320724.html
mistake in original piece
28.08.2005 18:19
char
How can I help?
31.08.2005 16:39
Catherine Clark
e-mail:
cwebstercat@hotmail.com
helping
01.09.2005 09:31
char
MAURICIO’S ON HIS WAY HOME!
04.09.2005 07:20
However, there is evidence that the CNP have been spreading more false propaganda, this time that they have been providing him with accommodation and a daily allowance of 80,000 bolivars (around $37). This is in addition to labeling him a well-know Colombian paramilitary. Right now he is both happy and sad to have left Venezuela.
Other missions that were accomplished in order to achieve this success were buying a new Colombian passport (300,000 bolivars) and being issued a new British visa. Interestingly, both the Colombian and British embassies, after initially being very unhelpful, changed their attitude when they realised Mauricio was a member of the international press who had connections with the government here.
Thanks to everyone who has helped and offered support and solidarity. He couldn’t have done it without you! Special thanks to Alex from the VP’s office who really stuck his neck out and almost became a target of the CNP smear-machine. Let’s hope the Bolivarians stay strong and don’t let the authoritarians mess up the WSF here in January.
char
Mauricio From Bogota, It is Worth to to Struggle and Resist!!
04.09.2005 17:40
Es muy pertinente tambien decir que la gratitud con la gente que se solidarizo conmigo es infinita y que eso me hace seguir adelante en lo que otras personas me han dicho es un camino utopico y y que no lleva a ningu lado, pero en el cual yo creo y donde espero seguir avanzando en compañia de tod@ l@s que estamos en esa onda y creemos aun que se pueden construir alternativas mas viables para un mundo mejor.
Agradecimientos y saludos a todo el pueblo Venezolano, a Son Tizon y la gente del Tiuna... el Fuerte, a la coral de la Vicepresidencia, al Teniente Guillermo Gozalez, a Carmen Navas y obviamente al don Hugo, el comandante Chavez!
Un especial agradecimiento en Venezuela a Alexander Palacios, Maried, Belkys Ledezma y Charley Allan, Ernesto(son tizon)
ke viva la revolucion y vamos pa lante!!!
Resistencia!!
hasta la libertad siempre!
Mauricio Lopez Arenas
Mauricio Lopez-Arenas
e-mail:
chamantes@yahoo.co.uk
Special thanking note!!
04.09.2005 17:45
thanks and keep going forward looking for real freedom!!
Mauricio
Mauricio Lopez
e-mail:
chamantes@yahoo.co.uk