A leading media watchdog has alleged that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has been imposing media censorship by trying to control ideas and restrict news with measures reminiscent of the Cold War-era eastern Europe or Cuba.
Chavez "seeks to control ideas, and to impose silence" for those critical of his Leftist government, said David Natera, President of the Venezuelan Press Bloc, in a report presented at the the Inter-American Press Association (IAPA) annual meeting in Merida, Mexico.
There have been 113 reported incidents of assaults on journalists in the past year in Venezuela, he said in his report on the state of Press freedom in the South American nation.
Natera accused Chavez, who calls himself a socialist revolutionary, of seeking to control Venezuelans by targeting the media, intimidating opponents and expropriating property as a "social control strategy" so that "the people will have to depend on the state exclusively to get jobs or food."
"To achieve this perverse end, Chavez needs silence, the silence of the media and of journalists. He needs the silence and the fear that were typical of the sad and oppressed peoples of Cold War-era eastern Europe, the Soviet Union and today's Cuba under (Raul) Castro," Natera alleged.
The report came after Chavez announced in July that his government would obtain a minority stake in Globovision, the last remaining Opposition television station with which he had a long-running battle. In May 2007, the Chavez government canceled the broadcasting license for Radio Caracas Television (RCTV), the most important independent television station in Venezuela.
And in August, a court restrained, El Nacional, one of Venezuela's leading newspaper, from publishing images depicting blood, guns and other violence for a month. The newspaper responded by replacing front-page photos with the word "censored."
However, Chavez has dismissed the allegations of media censorship and often points to the harsh criticism he is subjected to in newspapers and Globovision.
The IAPA is expected to approve individual country reports in a full document on Tuesday.
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