Venezuelan Universities Shut Down For 24 Hours In Protest Of Students’ Detention

One hundred days after anti-government protestors first took to the streets of several Venezuelan cities in a call for the resignation of president Nicolás Maduro, faculty members with at least 18 private and public universities staged a walkout on Thursday to support students’ right to protest and demand the release of those who remain jailed in connection with demonstrations. Víctor Márquez, president of the Venezuelan Federation of University Professor Associations (FAPUV), the group which organized the walkout, told EFE that about 80 percent of professors at those universities had joined the call.

“What we’re defending today is the students’ right to protest, respect for the constitution and respect for the universal declaration of human rights,” he said. The FAPUV says that since protests began, over three thousand students have been arrested, with 164 still in detention. About 11 of them were arrested two weeks ago during a raid on student encampments on a major Caracas highway, near the offices of the UN. Some 243 students were arrested in total during a fracas ensuing after the encampments were disassembled, and one National Guardsman was shot to death.

Members of the professors’ federation held small marches in Caracas, Valencia and Maracaibo, where anti-government protests have been especially fierce. Other smaller cities saw walkouts too, including Mérida, Marturín, Maracaibo, Coro, Puerto Ordaz and San Cristóbal -- where protests originated in early February as a march against impunity after a student narrowly escaped being raped near campus. Some 42 people have died in connection with protests and hundreds are still detained.