Venezuela fails to protect the people

Observer/Guardian:

The building is painted peach and there are palm trees in front, but there is nothing cheerful about Plaza Auyantepuy. It is a place of death. In the basement, a dungeon-like warren, men in rubber boots and surgical masks swing through the double door every few hours and wheel in another corpse. The earlier arrivals lie on trolleys, turning yellow.

One floor above, relatives of the dead huddle in small, silent groups. Some hold handkerchiefs to their faces to guard against the smell. There is nothing to guard against the grief. This is the national forensic science laboratory in Caracas, the capital of Venezuela, and it is the epicentre of a murder epidemic.

'My son left home this morning at 7am. They rang me at 9.15am to say he was shot,' said Genny Cedeno, 38, clutching a photograph of 18-year-old Carlos. Tears welled in her eyes and she shook her head. 'He had a right to live.'

Yards away sat another family which had just identified the body of Ernesto Salcedo, 29, a security guard who vanished last Saturday. He had a wife and two children.

In the past few years Caracas has become one of the most violent cities on the planet. Armed gangs competing over turf and drug deals wage ruthless, low-level warfare in the slums. Nationally, homicides have soared to more than 13,000 a year, with 2,710 in Caracas alone, according to leaked government figures. That gives a national rate of 48 per 100,000 people. In some Caracas slums the rate rises to 130. The rate in England and Wales is 1.4.

In opinion polls Venezuelans consistently rank safety as their main concern, with 64 per cent expressing fear of being attacked in the street. Kidnappings have also surged, especially 'express kidnappings' in which victims or relatives pay an immediate relatively modest ransom.

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Chávez speaks in public daily, often for hours, but seldom mentions insecurity. He has blamed crime on capitalism and poverty, and said if his family was starving he would steal. 'The perception that crime has soared is a weak point for him,' said Steve Ellner, a political scientist at Venezuela's University of the East. 'He can't talk about crackdowns because that would contradict his whole discourse.'

Some critics claim the President's denunciations of inequality and 'squealing oligarchs' have encouraged youths to ease their poverty the fast way, with a gun. Partly thanks to Chávez's social programmes, poverty levels have dropped from 53 to 37 per cent. Yet crime has spiked. Corrupt and inept policing has been compounded by a flood of cocaine from neighbouring Colombia. Changing the justice minister every year - there have been 10 under Chávez- has wrought institutional havoc.

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The statistics disproves Chavez thesis on the cause of crime. Crime has gone up as the poverty level decreased. Either Chavez is wrong or the poverty is declining because the thieves are becoming more successful. Certainly Chavez's attitude is not one that will lead to a decrease in crime. It is the attitude of liberals about the cause of crime and they are usual wrong on that subject too.