Venezuela: The Forgotten Victims of April 11, 2002

[ChangoLoa]

Political intolerance and radicalism thrust upon the Venezuelan society have buried an episode that marked and changed the lives of hundreds of Venezuelan families forever. Nineteen families were forced to leave their homes in the middle of the night and wander through a city in turmoil to find their dead.

Some had to travel hundreds of kilometers from remote locations while others were haunted by TV images of bodies strewn on the pavement or covered with a Venezuelan flag. Others sought their loved ones amongst the hundreds of wounded and injured in hospitals while a brave few headed directly to the dreaded Bello Monte morgue fearing the worst. They are the forgotten victims of April 11, 2002. They never found justice, and their bodies have been vanished from the collective memory to give way to a parallel imaginary epic.

None of those 19 victims found justice. Politics outweighed institutions, and only two cases were heard: those of Erasmo Sánchez and Rudy Urbano Duque. Both cases were used by the government to sentence nine officers of the Metropolitan Police and three police chiefs in charge of that group to jail. No evidence was given to prove that they perpetrated those crimes. But, from a political perspective, these cases were used to fabricate a story in which the deaths of April 11, 2002 had culprits, though instead of being accountable for those actions, they were "scapegoats."

The stories of these victims speak volumes on the reality hidden by the government's denial to establish a "Commission for Truth" probing into the murders as an entity distant from the conflict affecting Venezuelans.


http://www.eluniversal.com/nacional-y-politica/120414/the-forgotten-victims-of-april-11-2002