6/12/2014
By TalCual
It is good, for us and the country, to bring back memories on a legal action from the Government against this newspaper that surely will leave an impression in the already humongous national record over violations of the right to free speech. And this is not a hyperbole.
If this case hasn’t been brought up anymore it is because of the magnitude of what has been happening in Venezuela over the past few months in which, as few times in its history, people have taken over the streets to protest against the blatant destruction of the country. And that the destroyers of the nation replied with the most ferocious repression through the use of military and police forces that kill and torture people and venal judges who bend the law to apply discipline and punish innocent citizens. So let’s briefly recall the case in question.
Carlos Genatios, a renowned local scientist, published an article in our pages a few months ago in which he quoted – quite superficially we must say – a phrase from the current head of the Parliament (Diosdado Cabello) saying “those who don’t like insecurity, feel free to leave the country.” That phrase was published in various print media as well and then created a wide matrix of repudiation on the part of the Government.
Cabello subsequently denied he ever said that. What is for certain is that Genatios found this phrase quite catchy as many Venezuelans did. And what could have been resolved with a simple clarification letter in the worst-case scenario led to the most unconceivable lawsuit instead.
It comes in the form of a criminal lawsuit and may represent prison terms from two to four years as much as economic sanctions against the newspaper. But not only Genatios is being accused. This lawsuit extends to members of TalCual’s board of directors, which constitutes an unprecedented action to be added to the long and sinister record of abuses to freedom of speech in the country, as has been pointed out by Eleazar Díaz Rangel, an authority on the matter and staunch supporter of the chavismo political movement.
All members of TalCual’s board of directors have been issued interim measures that prevent them from leaving the country and oblige them to weekly presentations before the court overseeing the case. As everyone can see, the wrath and legal wrongness of this accusation against TalCual for such an insignificant quote from Cabello in an opinion column is disproportionate in every way.
The judiciary authority (naturally) has acted as expected with compliance and urgency to the request of such an influential character in the spheres of power as Cabello is. It has already rejected two appeals of the people involved in the lawsuit surprisingly swiftly, one of them due to a lack of arguments to justify the interim measures as required by law.
This case was submitted to a court of appeals judge, who reminded her colleagues that they had rejected a case file a few months earlier... simply because the interim measures requested did not make any sense. It should be added that this judge has been informed already, with certificates of various distinguished local physicians, that the delicate health condition of Teodoro Petkoff, president and editor-in-chief of TalCual, makes this weekly presentation before a court particularly cruel and inappropriate. But everything has been In vain until now.
Lastly, let us add that Petkoff submitted before the Public Prosecutor’s Office an accusation against Cabello over undue use of power just almost a month before the publication of the quote in the opinion article and abuse of the mechanisms of the Parliament (aka National Assembly) to undertake an action that the own Cabello has described as strictly personal. As expected, no one has heard any news whether this accusation against the head of the Parliament was even considered by the Public Prosecutor’s Office.
But what makes the case more bizarre is that Cabello is known for being one of the greatest offenders in the history of this country, perhaps he is even the champion among all the rest making up this regime that has embraced lies and insults as its own emblem. Ukrainian politicians are toddlers compared to him. Recently, he told his military buddies from Monagas state (Cabello also happens to be an active army Lieutenant) that once the opposition succeeded in murdering President Nicolás Maduro, he would go after their children with the most perverse purposes.
And on the other side of the world, a columnist of Spain-based newspaper El País did his best in describing his condition of corrupt on a large scale; or the way a defense lawyer of former Supreme Court justice María Lourdes Afiuni, who was a political prisoner of the regime and whom Cabello is accusing without evidence of receiving substantial payments for her judicial performance, has challenged him to voluntarily remove his parliamentary immunity so he can prove her how he went “from Lieutenant to millionaire.”
This all-out war from Cabello against TalCual is simply about causing the newspaper a considerable damage and, as far as we can see, he is doing a helluva job.
By TalCual
It is good, for us and the country, to bring back memories on a legal action from the Government against this newspaper that surely will leave an impression in the already humongous national record over violations of the right to free speech. And this is not a hyperbole.
If this case hasn’t been brought up anymore it is because of the magnitude of what has been happening in Venezuela over the past few months in which, as few times in its history, people have taken over the streets to protest against the blatant destruction of the country. And that the destroyers of the nation replied with the most ferocious repression through the use of military and police forces that kill and torture people and venal judges who bend the law to apply discipline and punish innocent citizens. So let’s briefly recall the case in question.
Carlos Genatios, a renowned local scientist, published an article in our pages a few months ago in which he quoted – quite superficially we must say – a phrase from the current head of the Parliament (Diosdado Cabello) saying “those who don’t like insecurity, feel free to leave the country.” That phrase was published in various print media as well and then created a wide matrix of repudiation on the part of the Government.Cabello subsequently denied he ever said that. What is for certain is that Genatios found this phrase quite catchy as many Venezuelans did. And what could have been resolved with a simple clarification letter in the worst-case scenario led to the most unconceivable lawsuit instead.
It comes in the form of a criminal lawsuit and may represent prison terms from two to four years as much as economic sanctions against the newspaper. But not only Genatios is being accused. This lawsuit extends to members of TalCual’s board of directors, which constitutes an unprecedented action to be added to the long and sinister record of abuses to freedom of speech in the country, as has been pointed out by Eleazar Díaz Rangel, an authority on the matter and staunch supporter of the chavismo political movement.
All members of TalCual’s board of directors have been issued interim measures that prevent them from leaving the country and oblige them to weekly presentations before the court overseeing the case. As everyone can see, the wrath and legal wrongness of this accusation against TalCual for such an insignificant quote from Cabello in an opinion column is disproportionate in every way.
The judiciary authority (naturally) has acted as expected with compliance and urgency to the request of such an influential character in the spheres of power as Cabello is. It has already rejected two appeals of the people involved in the lawsuit surprisingly swiftly, one of them due to a lack of arguments to justify the interim measures as required by law.
This case was submitted to a court of appeals judge, who reminded her colleagues that they had rejected a case file a few months earlier... simply because the interim measures requested did not make any sense. It should be added that this judge has been informed already, with certificates of various distinguished local physicians, that the delicate health condition of Teodoro Petkoff, president and editor-in-chief of TalCual, makes this weekly presentation before a court particularly cruel and inappropriate. But everything has been In vain until now.
Lastly, let us add that Petkoff submitted before the Public Prosecutor’s Office an accusation against Cabello over undue use of power just almost a month before the publication of the quote in the opinion article and abuse of the mechanisms of the Parliament (aka National Assembly) to undertake an action that the own Cabello has described as strictly personal. As expected, no one has heard any news whether this accusation against the head of the Parliament was even considered by the Public Prosecutor’s Office.
But what makes the case more bizarre is that Cabello is known for being one of the greatest offenders in the history of this country, perhaps he is even the champion among all the rest making up this regime that has embraced lies and insults as its own emblem. Ukrainian politicians are toddlers compared to him. Recently, he told his military buddies from Monagas state (Cabello also happens to be an active army Lieutenant) that once the opposition succeeded in murdering President Nicolás Maduro, he would go after their children with the most perverse purposes.
And on the other side of the world, a columnist of Spain-based newspaper El País did his best in describing his condition of corrupt on a large scale; or the way a defense lawyer of former Supreme Court justice María Lourdes Afiuni, who was a political prisoner of the regime and whom Cabello is accusing without evidence of receiving substantial payments for her judicial performance, has challenged him to voluntarily remove his parliamentary immunity so he can prove her how he went “from Lieutenant to millionaire.”
This all-out war from Cabello against TalCual is simply about causing the newspaper a considerable damage and, as far as we can see, he is doing a helluva job.
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