Venezuela Steps Up Attacks on Media

The Venezuelan government has strongly attacked domestic and international media following the closure of a television channel opposed to President Hugo Chávez.

Just hours after Radio Television Caracas went off the air, the communications minister, Willian Lara, warned CNN and a domestic television network that they were in the firing line over alleged efforts to smear and assassinate Mr Chávez.

He asked the state prosecutor to investigate Globovision, a cable news channel and Venezuela's last opposition-aligned network, for inciting attempts on Mr Chávez's life. As evidence Mr Lara cited Globovision's recent airing of footage of the 1981 assassination attempt against Pope John Paul II in Rome, accompanied by the song This Does Not Stop Here, a salsa number by Rubén Blades, now Panama's tourism minister.

In Venezuela's political climate this was a coded message to kill Mr Chávez, said Mr Lara, adding that he had consulted semiologists. "The conclusion of the specialists is that [in this segment] they are inciting the assassination of the president," he told a press conference.

The attack highlighted Globovision's isolation as the last anti-government channel following RCTV's closure on Monday, prompting accusations that the government was silencing critics.

Alberto Federico Ravell, Globovision's director, said the accusation was "ridiculous". The channel had shown the Pope's shooting as part of a week-long airing of RCTV archive footage accompanied by songs with farewell themes, he said. Several commentators said the accusation smacked of intimidation.

Jesse Chacón, the telecommunications minister, told the Guardian Globovision would be allowed to broadcast unhindered as long as it did not break the law.

Mr Lara also accused CNN, which has a bureau in Caracas, of smearing Mr Chávez by juxtaposing his face beside an al-Qaida leader and an image of unrest in China. He also complained that it used footage of violence in Mexico to illustrate a Venezuela story. The network denied the juxtaposition signified hostile intent and said it had publicly apologized weeks earlier for the Mexico footage gaffe.

In separate criticism a pro-Chávez lawyer, Eva Golinger, published documents purportedly showing that Venezuelan journalists who attended media scholarships in the US were being manipulated by Washington to destabilize Venezuela.

The interventions appeared designed to deflect criticism of the government's decision not to renew RCTV's license. The EU and groups such as Human Rights Watch and Reporters Without Borders have also expressed concern.

For the past four days anti-Chávez demonstrations have been staged in Venezuelan cities. Clashes with police involving water cannons, plastic bullets and rocks have reportedly left 11 officers and four students injured. The government said not renewing RCTV's concession was its sovereign right and that the channel had forfeited its legitimacy by backing a coup which briefly ousted Mr Chávez in 2002.

Of the three other private channels implicated in the coup two have had their licences renewed in apparent reward for softening their hostility.