‘I’ve been living in fear:’ Venezuela uses social media to crush dissent over disputed election

‘I’ve been living in fear:’ Venezuela uses social media to crush dissent over disputed election

Wilmer knew the situation was serious when he started to fear his own cousin. 

The 24-year-old university student had been discussing the aftermath of Venezuela’s presidential election in a family WhatsApp group, when his relative — a police officer and government supporter — sharply rebuked him for saying the result was a sham.

Days after initial anti-government protests following President Nicolás Maduro’s re-election at the end of last month, people were still being arrested for taking part in the demonstrations, or for content they were publishing in messaging apps or online. 

Wilmer and some other family members didn’t want to risk being next. They stopped responding in the group and set up a smaller and safer one instead.

“I’ve been living in fear,” said Wilmer, who has attended protests and previously criticized the government openly on social media. CBC News is only using the first name of Wilmer and other members of the public interviewed for this article due to the threat of government reprisals that have escalated since the election. 

“I’m terrified that they’ll check my phone and I’ll go to prison. The few dreams I have will be destroyed.” 

Venezuela’s electoral body, which is closely aligned to the government, declared Maduro the winner following the country’s July 28 election. This was despite pre-election opinion polls, as well as exit polls, signalling he was set for a dramatic loss after years of an economic and humanitarian crisis, corruption and a quarter of the population having left the country.

The government has so far failed to publish a vote count to back up its alleged victory claims, while the opposition has presented vote tallies appearing to show their candidate, retired diplomat Edmundo Gonzalez, won by a landslide with 67 per cent of the vote, compared to Maduro’s 30 per cent.

The opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, who was banned from running as the bloc’s candidate in the election, has called for national and global protests this Saturday in support of their victory.

But those calling fraud on Maduro’s ‘win’ feel vulnerable. His regime has attempted to quell dissent with thousands of arrests. It’s attempting to stifle citizens’ use of technology and social media, while using those tools to implement intimidation campaigns designed to stop people from speaking out. 

‘I leave my real phone at home’

Many people say the government’s strategies are working.

“I’m barely using social media now because I’m nervous about the consequences,” opposition supporter Dorkis told CBC News. “I leave my real phone at home if I go out, and take an old, ‘clean’ one that has basically nothing on it.” 

The 56-year-old, who lives in Caracas, has been heeding the advice of human and digital rights organizations to delete photos and social media statuses, hide sensitive apps and carry alternative devices amid police spot checks in the street and the monitoring of online content by intelligence services.

“These are the kinds of preparations human rights organizations take when people are crossing borders, which we now have to recommend for ordinary people just leaving their house,” said Andres Azpurua, director of Ve Sin Filtro, an organization that documents censorship and human rights abuses involving technology and the internet in Venezuela.

Activists and journalists are particularly at threat and are among those sent to the country’s detention facilities. A number of news websites have been posting articles without reporter names, and some are now using AI avatars rather than real people for their online video content to protect the safety of their journalists.

Around 2,400 people have been detained since the election, according to government figures. The United Nations has condemned the “fierce repression directed by the state” connected to protests or opinions on social media, as have other international organizations and governments. 

But it’s not only individuals the Maduro regime is cracking down on — it’s social media platforms themselves too. 

Crackdown on TikTok, X

Maduro, who has been in power since 2013 following the death of his predecessor Hugo Chavez, recently branded TikTok as “fascist” after he automatically received a temporary suspension of his account, which has 2.8 million followers, for what the app described as “promoting violence.”

He also publicly deleted the messaging service WhatsApp on state TV, and encouraged citizens to do the same, accusing it of being used to “threaten Venezuela.” 

But for Azpurua from Ve Sin Filtro, Maduro temporarily blocking X, formerly Twitter, for 10 days in Venezuela is the most significant move.

“The main goal of this X ban is to prevent people reaching news fast in a moment where people want the most,” he told CBC News, explaining X is how Venezuelans keep up-to-date about protests and post-election developments.

Venezuela’s media landscape has long-been dominated by state-run outlets and news sites and many citizens heavily rely on social media for unfiltered information.

It’s not the first time social media platforms have been blocked. In 2019, social media sites were regularly restricted as a way to limit access to information at critical moments, such as during opposition speeches. But these bans were just for a few minutes at a time — not days.

“Right now, internet censorship is in its darkest days in Venezuela,” Azpurua said. “It is affecting not only freedom of expression, freedom of opinion, but also freedom of information in a tremendously significant way.”

Government app to report protesters

While digitally isolating the population to suppress information access is one strategy favored by the government, using social media and tech to intimidate users is another.

One video posted to the official Instagram account of one of the state intelligence services aims to make an example of lawyer and opposition coordinator Maria Oropeza, who had been vocal online with her criticism of arbitrary detentions. She livestreamed her own arrest at home by hooded and masked security forces.

The government video, which later went viral on X, showed Oropeza’s arrest and arrival in handcuffs at a presumed detention facility, set to a nursery rhyme from the horror movie Nightmare on Elm Street. It ended with the words “Operation Knock Knock continues” — a reference to the government’s campaign of rounding up people from their homes and putting them in prison for alleged hate crimes and terrorism.

The same account also features a video of a Chucky doll from another horror film, telling citizens that they should behave. The caption reads “Knock, Knock.”

Torture and degrading treatment have allegedly been used for years by security services as tools of repression for political prisoners in Venezuela.

“It’s terrifying seeing these videos,” said Antonio, a 70-year-old retiree, who’s also a member of one of the parties making up the main opposition bloc. The Caracas resident knows another opposition member who was recently arrested and is now limiting what he puts online.

“I’m reluctant — 100 per cent reluctant — to share content now,” Antonio told CBC News. “As soon as I get any social media that I find that it could be compromising, I just delete it.”

The government had also been encouraging members of the public to denounce people via its VenApp, a government phone application that is usually used to report problems with public services. It introduced a new category to report those who had been protesting. The app has since been removed by Apple and Google from their stores.

For Wilmer, he regrets that he’s had to limit contact with his cousin and other government supporters in his family for fear they might report him. The regime, he said, has succeeded in sowing mistrust and fear — even among relatives.

But he and others say they’re not giving up on making sure the man they voted for, Edmundo Gonzalez, takes office in January 2025.

“I’m scared but I’ll continue going to protests,” Wilmer told CBC News. “It’s an important way to vent the helplessness and anger I feel over this stolen election.”

Published at Mon, 29 Jul 2024 20:55:46 +0000

5 charged in Matthew Perry’s death, including his assistant and 2 doctors, prosecutor says

A prosecutor says five people have been charged in connection with Matthew Perry’s death, including the actor’s assistant and two doctors. 

U.S. Attorney Martin Estrada announced the charges Thursday, saying the doctors supplied Perry with a large amount of ketamine and even wondered in a text message how much the former Friends star would be willing to pay.

“These defendants took advantage of Mr. Perry’s addiction issues to enrich themselves. They knew what they were doing was wrong,” Estrada said.

Perry died in October due to a ketamine overdose and allegedly received several injections of the drug on the day he died from his live-in personal assistant. The assistant, Kenneth Iwamasa, is the one who found Perry dead later that day.

Ketamine is a powerful anesthetic that is sometimes used to treat chronic pain and depression.

The actor went to the two charged doctors in desperation after his regular doctors refused to give him ketamine in the amounts he wanted. DEA Administrator Anne Milgram said in one instance the actor paid $2,000 US for a vial of ketamine that cost one of the physicians about $12.

Two of the people, including one of the doctors charged, were arrested Thursday, Estrada said. Two of the defendants, including Iwamasa, have pleaded guilty to charges already, and a third person has agreed to plead guilty.

Multiple messages left seeking comment from lawyers or offices for all the defendants have not yet been returned.

Prosecutor says defendants tried to cover up their involvement

Among those arrested Thursday are Dr. Salvador Plasencia, who is charged with seven counts of distribution of ketamine and also two charges related to allegations he falsified records after Perry’s death.

The other person arrested Thursday is Jasveen Sangha, who prosecutors described as a drug dealer known as the “ketamine queen.” Sangha supplied the ketamine that caused Perry’s death, authorities said.

Sangha and Plasencia could make their first court appearances later Thursday.

Records show Plascencia’s medical license was in good standing with no records of complaints, though it is set to expire in October.

A San Diego physician, Dr. Mark Chavez, has agreed to plead guilty to conspiracy to distribute ketamine. Prosecutors allege Chavez funnelled ketamine to Plasencia, securing some of the drug from a wholesale distributor through a fraudulent prescription.

The prosecutor said the defendants exchanged messages soon after Perry’s death referencing ketamine as the cause of death, then tried to cover up their involvement in supplying the drug to the actor.

Los Angeles police said in May that they were working with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service with a probe into why the 54-year-old had so much of the drug in his system.

WATCH | Legal implications for those charged in Perry’s death 

Iwamasa found the actor face down in his hot tub on Oct. 28, and paramedics who were called immediately declared him dead.

The assistant received the ketamine from Erik Fleming, who has pleaded guilty to obtaining the drug from Sangha and delivering it to Iwamasa. In all, he delivered 50 vials of ketamine for Perry’s use, including 25 handed over four days before the actor’s death.

His autopsy, released in December, found that the amount of ketamine in his blood was in the range used for general anesthesia during surgery.

Perry had been undergoing ketamine infusion therapy

The decades-old drug has seen a huge surge in use in recent years as a treatment for depression, anxiety and pain. People close to Perry told coroner’s investigators that he was undergoing ketamine infusion therapy.

But the medical examiner said Perry’s last treatment 1½ weeks earlier wouldn’t explain the levels of ketamine in his blood. The drug is typically metabolized in a matter of hours.

At least two doctors were treating Perry, a psychiatrist and an anesthesiologist who served as his primary care physician, the medical examiner’s report said. No illicit drugs or paraphernalia were found at his house.

Ketamine was listed as the primary cause of death, which was ruled an accident with no foul play suspected, the report said. Drowning and other medical issues were contributing factors, the coroner said.

Perry had years of struggles with addiction dating back to his time on Friends, when he became one of the biggest television stars of his generation as Chandler Bing, alongside Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc and David Schwimmer for 10 seasons from 1994 to 2004 on NBC’s mega-hit sitcom.

Drug-related celebrity deaths have in other cases led authorities to prosecute the people who supplied them.

After rapper Mac Miller died in 2018 from an overdose of cocaine, alcohol and counterfeit oxycodone that contained fentanyl, two of the men who provided him the fentanyl were convicted of distributing the drug. One was sentenced to more than 17 years in federal prison, the other to 10 years.

And after Michael Jackson died in 2009 from a lethal dose of propofol, a drug intended for use only during surgery and other medical procedures, not for the insomnia the singer sought it for, his doctor Conrad Murray was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in 2011. Murray has maintained his innocence.

Published at Thu, 15 Aug 2024 18:14:02 +0000