Venezuela Detains Strike Leader - Businessman Detained on Charges of Treason and Rebellion

www.washingtonpost.com By Scott Wilson Washington Post Foreign Service Thursday, February 20, 2003; 12:11 PM

BOGOTA, Colombia, Feb. 20--Venezuela's secret police have arrested one opposition leader and are searching for another as President Hugo Chavez follows through with his pledge to punish those behind the financially crippling general strike that failed to oust him from office.

Carlos Fernandez, head of Venezuela's largest business federation, was arrested late Wednesday night by eight secret service agents as he dined at an upscale restaurant in eastern Caracas. Fernandez was taken to the headquarters of the Disip, as the secret-police agency is known, where opposition leaders say he is being held on charges of treason, "civil rebellion" and illegal assembly.

At the same time, government authorities are searching for Carlos Ortega, head of Venezuela's largest labor federation who along with Fernandez was the most public figure behind the two-month strike that faded earlier this month. Ortega told Venezuelan media this morning that Fernandez's arrest was a "terrorist act" and that he would not turn himself him.

The arrests followed the discovery earlier this week of three dissident Venezuelan army soldiers and an opposition activist, whose bodies bore the signs of torture. International human rights groups said the killings appeared to be politically motivated and demanded an immediate investigation.

Fernandez's arrest came a day after government and opposition negotiators agreed to an eight-point declaration renouncing violence and inflammatory rhetoric as they seek a solution to the political crisis that has shaken the oil-rich nation for more than a year. The document was the first accord to emerge after three months of talks being mediated by Cesar Gaviria, the secretary of the Organization of American States.

But the government's apparent retaliation against opposition leaders has cast the agreement and the talks themselves into question. A person close to the negotiations said this morning, "The government thinks they have everything under control. Now they can go on the offensive. It's going to be very hard to keep people out of the streets, and the opposition may just step away from the table. Things could get very bad."

Indeed, thousands of anti-Chavez protesters took to the streets in response to Fernandez's arrest, many of them in front of the headquarters of Petroleos de Venezuela, the state oil company where many employees continue their walk-out against Chavez. Opposition leaders said the arrests were designed to undermine a successful petition drive that could set a referendum on Chavez's rule perhaps as early as this year.

"This arrest is an open provocation against the Venezuelan public," said Felipe Mujica, an opposition congressman with the Movement Toward Socialism party. "The government is trying to distract the public's attention from the process that is already underway to remove Chavez through an electoral solution. We want a peaceful solution. Nonetheless, we are going to mobilize the public against this act."

Chavez, a populist firebrand first elected in 1998 on a pledge to help Venezuela's poor, has survived two attempts to force him from office during the past year. An opposition movement comprising labor and business groups, leftist political parties and middle-class civilians has accused Chavez of trying to impose a Cuban-style dictatorship on Venezuela, packing the courts, the armed forces and the oil industry with allies on behalf of his "social revolution."

Chavez was briefly ousted last April when a white-collar walkout at Petroleos de Venezuela prompted a general strike, street violence and a short-lived military-led coup. The United States endorsed the interim government that replaced Chavez until its collapse.

The second attempt began Dec. 2 when the opposition began a general strike designed to force Chavez to resign or move up the 2006 presidential elections to this year. A former lieutenant colonel who led his own failed coup in 1992, Chavez survived the strike by creating a makeshift supply system that kept the country in food and gasoline at great expense to the public treasury. Six people died in violence associated with the protest.

The private sector, reeling after missing the vital Christmas season, lifted the strike Feb. 3. But workers at the state oil company, which supplies the government with almost half its budget and the United States with 15 percent of its oil imprints, remains on strike even though the government has production back up to more than half its pre-strike level of 3 million barrels a day.

Since then, Chavez has promised "an offensive" against his political opponents that has apparently begun with the arrest of Fernandez. In the weeks ahead, Chavez will also likely begin depriving opposition businesses of dollars and other foreign currency, as he has promised, under a new exchange mechanism that he adopted earlier this month to protect the fading Bolivar, as the national currency is known.

"We are extremely concerned by these retaliatory operations by the government against the leaders of the opposition," said Jose Miguel Vivanco, head of the Americas division of Human Rights Watch. "The risk here is that the government has decided to criminalize political expression and the actions of the opposition. That is obviously a violation of a fundamental freedom."

Opposition leaders met this morning to decide how to respond to the recent round of arrests. At least one of the charges against Fernandez -- "civil rebellion" -- does not appear in the criminal code, said opposition members who also complained that some of them were stoned by pro-Chavez mobs this morning as they gathered for a meeting.

The OAS talks are not scheduled to resume until Wednesday, giving both sides time to plan their next steps. Gaviria is out of the country at the moment, but his aides say he is talking with both sides in an effort to keep the talks alive.

Rafael Alfonzo, an opposition negotiator who represents Fedecamaras, the business federation that Fernandez heads, said this morning that "this [non-violence pact] was the first agreement we had at the table and this [Fernandez's arrest] is the first violation we have had."

"Obviously, we must do something about this," Alfonzo said. "Some [opposition] people complained when we signed the agreement, but we believed in it. Now we have this demonstration on the government's part that shows clearly that we do not have a democracy and freedom in this country."