Americas

Americas

Venezuela protests persist, dozens jailed

14 February 2014 22:56 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. President Nicolas Maduro's government kept dozens of student protesters behind bars on Friday as unrest still rumbled across Venezuela following this week's violence at political rallies that killed three, APA reports quoting Reuters.

Student demonstrators began gathering again in various cities after blocking roads and burning tires into the night to denounce repression of protests as well as a litany of complaints against Maduro from crime to shortages.

Despite a presidential ban on protests, about 200 people converged on Friday morning in Caracas' Plaza Altamira, a heartland of opposition protests in the past.

"We're going to stay out in the streets for the same reasons as yesterday and the day before: inflation, insecurity and a repressive state that refuses to release our colleagues," student Marcos Matta, 22, told Reuters.

Maduro, a 51-year-old former union activist and bus driver, accuses his foes of seeking a coup against him similar to one that briefly toppled his predecessor Hugo Chavez in 2002.

However, there is no sign the street demonstrations threaten to oust him, nor that the military, whose role was crucial to Chavez's 36-hour unseating, will turn against Maduro.

In a speech late on Thursday night, the president called supporters onto the streets for Saturday, but insisted no more protest rallies would be allowed.

"This is not Ukraine," Maduro said, in reference to months of anti-government protests there in which six people have died.

Opposition activists say 91 Venezuelan protesters remained in jail on Friday, awaiting trial on charges of violence. The government puts the figure at about 70.

Hardline opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez, whom the government is calling the "face of fascism" and the intellectual author of the violence, remained in his Caracas home on Friday despite a judge's arrest warrant for him, party colleagues said.