Raphael John-Lall

Free­lance Cor­re­spon­dent

Venezue­lans from all walks of life con­tin­ue to protest in the streets, call­ing for the re­turn of Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro af­ter his re­moval by the US mil­i­tary on Jan­u­ary 3.

Pro-gov­ern­ment march­es were held across Venezuela, from Cara­cas to the east­ern states. While no ma­jor op­po­si­tion protests oc­curred with­in the coun­try, op­po­si­tion ex­ile com­mu­ni­ties or­gan­ised large demon­stra­tions in cities such as Mi­a­mi, New York and Madrid and through­out Colom­bia.

Yes­ter­day, mem­bers of the youth branch of the rul­ing So­cial­ist Par­ty marched through Cara­cas.

On Wednes­day, hun­dreds of teach­ers gath­ered in the Venezue­lan city of Maturín to de­mand the re­lease of Maduro and First La­dy Cil­ia Flo­res.

The Venezue­lan dai­ly news­pa­per Úl­ti­mas Noti­cias re­port­ed that Prof Félix Lis­boa, spokesper­son for the ed­u­ca­tion sec­tor, said that the Venezue­lan head of state em­bod­ies sta­bil­i­ty, peace, and a guar­an­tee of con­ti­nu­ity in the ed­u­ca­tion­al process. He al­so con­demned Maduro’s kid­nap­ping, de­scrib­ing it as a vi­o­la­tion of the fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ples of sov­er­eign­ty, self-de­ter­mi­na­tion and non-in­ter­fer­ence.

Prof Na­dia Par­ra echoed this sen­ti­ment, de­mand­ing the re­lease of the pres­i­den­tial cou­ple and re­ject­ing the use of mil­i­tary force to un­der­mine a con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly es­tab­lished gov­ern­ment.

“Our teach­ers, work­ers, and moth­ers who process the na­tion de­mand our rights; we do not want war, we want peace. Bring back our pres­i­dent, Nicolás Maduro,” Par­ra ex­claimed.

The teach­ers raised their voic­es in a unan­i­mous de­mand for the un­con­di­tion­al re­lease of Maduro and Flo­res.

The Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment al­so gave its first de­tails on how many Venezue­lans were killed and in­jured in the US airstrikes last Sat­ur­day.

On Wednes­day night, Venezuela’s Jus­tice Min­is­ter Dios­da­do Ca­bel­lo re­port­ed in a spe­cial broad­cast of his pro­gramme “Con el Ma­zo Dan­do” that the death toll from the US mil­i­tary at­tack against Venezuela had risen to 100 peo­ple. This fig­ure in­clud­ed civil­ians and mil­i­tary per­son­nel. He al­so re­port­ed that around 100 Venezue­lans were in­jured.

Ca­bel­lo ex­plained that al­though it was not ap­pro­pri­ate to start his pro­gramme this week, “the cir­cum­stances war­rant it” af­ter the il­le­gal at­tack per­pe­trat­ed by the US against four states of the coun­try that con­clud­ed with the re­moval of Maduro and his wife. He al­so paid trib­ute to the vic­tims who gave their lives in de­fence of Venezuela.

“In these sit­u­a­tions of at­tack, the first ca­su­al­ty is the truth be­cause ma­nip­u­la­tions and cam­paigns to dis­in­form and make peo­ple be­lieve things that are not hap­pen­ing and nev­er hap­pened come in­to play,” he said, while em­pha­sis­ing the bar­bar­i­ty and crim­i­nal­i­ty of this at­tack.

“Venezuela was the vic­tim of a bar­bar­ic at­tack ... No­body is go­ing to cov­er it up be­cause there is no way, and to­day the world is dis­cov­er­ing it in full,” he said.