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Although the number of murders in Venezuela far outnumber the civilian deaths in the Iraq war, there has been little publicity on the matter. One local newspaper, El Nacional, released a shocking photo of victims’ bodies on their front page, creating an uproar, and the paper was ordered by the government to stop publishing images depicting the brutal reality in Venezuela. The government is doing very little to stop the violence and is not readily releasing the grim statistics.
However, a private group, the Venezuelan Violence Observatory, has compiled a shocking number of about 118,541 murders since Hugo Chavez became President in 1999, according to the International Herald Tribune. The lack of funding for law enforcement, coupled with inadequate police salaries, play a part in the reasons behind the murders. Other factors include a dwindling economy, high inflation rate, a growing gap between the rich and the poor, and the fact that the country is inundated with millions of illegal guns. Caracas, the capital and the largest city of Venezuela, has a homicide rate of 200 per 100,000 people.
Despite these sobering numbers, there are very few arrests and over 90% of all murders remain unsolved.
The government seems to be more intent on controlling the publicity of such matters than it does on actually doing anything about them. For more coverage, go to:
global.nytimes.com/Americas
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