''Nobody in the world should be surprised if in Venezuela, within a short time, we start closing down television stations,'' Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez told a roaring crowd at the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, on Jan. 26. ``No freedom is unlimited.''
Arguing that there is a ''media tyranny'' in Venezuela, Chávez is moving against Venezuela's independent media on five fronts, in an effort to dismantle the last major challenge to his avowed intentions to stay in power until the year 2021. His five-pronged strategy:***
University Rector Giuseppe Gianetto told Union Radio that 18-year-old Ricardo Sanchez, an international studies major, was kidnapped by agents as he left an opposition youth protest in Caracas on Wednesday. Sanchez was blindfolded, beaten and burned with an object before agents released him early Thursday in a Caracas slum, Gianetto said. Sanchez was under the protective custody of university attorneys who were filing a complaint with the attorney general's office.
"This kind of vile and cowardly torture hasn't been seen in this country for a long time," said Gianetto. "Not even youths can use their constitutional rights to go out and protest peacefully."
"There wasn't any detention of any student," the Interior Ministry official said in a telephone interview.[End]