Venezuelan ‘Security Situation is Absolutely Out of Control’

Maduro employing ‘hundreds of thousands of people with arms’

BY: Daniel Wiser and Adam Kredo
February 17, 2014 12:00 pm

Observers say Venezuela’s security situation is spiraling “absolutely out of control” as socialist President Nicolas Maduro continues to crack down on pro-democracy protesters who have taken to the streets to demand that he resign.

Protests in Venezuela entered their sixth day on Monday with students and other demonstrators braving violent attacks from state police and pro-Maduro militias, according to former and current U.S. officials.

Maduro has even employed Iranian-style paramilitary Basij militias in a bid to quell the violence, according to Roger Noriega, a former United States ambassador and assistant secretary of state for western hemisphere affairs.

“They’ve used it to control the population and pretend this is not the state [using violence], but a confrontation between protesters,” he explained. “The reality is in addition to those motorized forces, they have militias and hundreds of thousands of people with arms. The security situation is absolutely out of control.”

The Obama administration remained silent about the violence until Saturday, when Secretary of State John Kerry cautiously called for “calm.”

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