Venezuela Protests News: Police And National Guard ‘Retake’ City Of San Cristóbal

Vladimir Padrino López, head of the Venezuelan armed forces’ strategic operations branch, announced on Sunday that the country’s national guard and police had cleared opposition protestors’ barricades in streets throughout the city of San Cristóbal, the cradle of a recent wave of demonstrations. Writing on his Twitter page, Padrino López said authorities had ended the “curfew imposed by terrorism” on several avenues, according to El Universal. Some 11 people were arrested during an operation involving 250 agents, confirmed national police head Manuel Pérez Urdaneta.

The news comes less than two weeks after San Cristóbal mayor Daniel Ceballos, a member of an opposition party who had repeatedly criticized the federal government’s decision to send in members of the national guard to restore order in the city, was arrested by Bolivarian National Intelligence Service (SEBIN) agents. Ceballos was stripped of his duties and sentenced less than a week later to 12 months in a military prison for “civil rebellion” and “criminal association” after refusing to order the dismantlement of the barricades. His lawyer, Ana Leonor Acosta, told Ultimas Noticias the trial had been “full of irregularities,” adding that the tribunal had taken only eight minutes to decide the case.

BBC notes that Venezuela’s supreme court ruled that Ceballos had violated the country’s constitution by failing to guarantee public order and charged him with having offered support to what it described as “paramilitary” groups engaging in protests in the city. Demonstrations which have sprung up in cities across Venezuela in February and March began in San Cristóbal after students took to the streets to demand an end to impunity following the attempted rape of another student. Authorities arrested five in those initial protests and sent them to a holding center in the faraway city of Coro, sparking new demonstrations which spread to other cities.