A total of 155,788 murders in Venezuela since 1999

[ChangoLoa]

Since 1999, the homicide rate has trebled. That very year, when President Hugo Chávez just took office at Miraflores; the Government gave the National Guard a mission concerning a succession of at least 20 security plans. In the interim, 155,788 murders have taken place.

Those officials from the National Guard taking on patrolling and police tasks is one of the aspects that Director of NGO Cofavic, Liliana Ortega finds inappropriate when it comes to making a balance over the Government's performance with regard to security. "The control for public order may not be in the hands of military officers," she claims. "This an international standart still not applied in Venezuela."

In 1999, 5,968 homicides were recorded and. 13 years later, 2011 ended at 19,336 murders. According to the numbers confirmed by NGO Venezuelan Observatory of Violence, murders have risen tremendously by 223% under the current government.

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According to the non-governmental organization Iraq Body Count, in Iraq, 162,000 people were killed between 2003 and 2011. Although the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela has never been invaded, NGO Venezuelan Observatory of Violence was able to confirm 124,221 murders occurred in the country during the same period of time. That is to say, with no bombs or tanks, just right here in front of us, 76% out of the casualties occurred after Saddam Hussein's fall in Bagdad and other Iraqi cities were recorded.

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http://www.eluniversal.com/nacional-y-politica/120609/a-total-of-155788-murders-in-venezuela-since-1999

[dipsydoodle]

1. Please provide comparative figures for all other countries in the world.

.

[joshcryer]

4. Wikipedia has a comprehensive page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate

Unfortunately Iraq is not on there to give us a decent comparison.

[Arctic Dave]

2. Is this an annual type of junk reporting that gets trotted out?

Tried to google the NGO butthere seems to be nothing out there about them. Weird.

Could they just be a fictitious group set up by the State Department to stir up nonsense. That's what I read at an NGO site, Crap Stiring for Fun.org

[joshcryer]

3. That's because, typically, you're searching in English.

Why don't you search in Spanish instead?

The NGO is "Observatorio de Violencia de Venezuela."

[Judi Lynn]

6. They roll that story out reguarly. We've seen it probably every year after Chavez was elected

by a LARGE majority, and re-elected by large majorities.

Anyone who's read the "news" remembers they used to do this to Cuba, over and over and over again, with at least three different themes they used for variety.

Anyone who's watched the way our corporate media works is been "on" to this crap a long time.

Anyone who aspires to kick up a duststorm with it assumes we are as stupid and shallow as right-wingers. They should just take it to Free Republic and mumble about it there.

[joshcryer]

7. I love how you say that "they" should "take it to FR" as if leftists shouldn't be concerned...

...about incredibly high murder rate.

You can't dispute the numbers.

VVO is not in fact connected to the state department.

VVO is an independent organization in Venezuela.

You just dismiss it and slander others they should "take it to Free Republic" because you have no other response to Chavez' government's failure to provide security for his people and creating a situation in Venezuela where the murder rate is as high as a war zone.

It reminds me very much of how much priority was placed on Colombian union murders while dismissing entirely the tens of thousands of Colombian's killed who weren't involved with unions (or at least couldn't be used as a martyr for that condemnation).

What a disgusting and callous display.

[joshcryer]

9. Enjoy this song about Caracas, since you're so concerned about the Venezuelan people.

[naaman fletcher]

12. So, you are saying that the figures are not true?

Is not, then what is your objection to factual reporting?

[joshcryer]

5. That's 0.5% of Venezuela's population. If that was the US it would be 1.5 million murders.

In reality the US in that same time period had about 100k murders. Or 10x less.

Of course, I was told this was no big deal because "South America is a bloody place to begin with." A purely callous observation, to be sure.

[joshcryer]

8. The lowest points for me at DU are when people dismiss the wholesale murder of populations.

The dismissive hateful attitudes really get to me.

[ocpagu]

10. The problem is that some DUers want us to believe...

...that Venezuela was some kind of paradise on Earth before Chávez was elected. That Venezuela was perfect, and Chávez brought hell.

When you criticize Chávez, blaming his administration for all the problems that Venezuela has always had, much before he came to power and that were not created by him (high murder rates is one of them - it's endemic in all Latin America, and it has always been like that), and at the same time you try to disqualify his administration pretending to ignore all the benefits that he brought - and HE DID, as it is quite clear by the fact that Venezuelans keep voting him and approving his government, which is a sign that Venezuelans themselves don't blame Chávez for problems that they know are difficult to be solved and that won't be solved by his government alone - this argument loses legitimacy.

It's a typical right-wing approach. They do the same thing in Argentina - blaming Cristina Kirchner for economic problems created by Meném, blaming Dilma Rousseff for the existence of favelas that were created decades before Dilma was born, blaming Morales for drug trafficking when Bolivia has always suffered with that, etc.

That's the problem.

[joshcryer]

11. Venezuela has not always been in the top 5 most murderous places on the planet.

And you do it again, of course, because it's impossible to actually care about human beings when a single figure is the focus of ones praise.

"high murder rates is one of them - it's endemic in all Latin America, and it has always been like that"

So it's no big deal, right?

I do not ignore the benefits that Chavez' administration brought, but I do point out the objective fact that Brazil lowered its poverty faster, and reduced crime at the same time, than Venezuela. And all that without windfall oil profits. Venezuela had windfall oil profits, and still managed to reduce poverty slower than Brazil, and still managed to turn the country into a war zone. The praise for Chavez is misplaced liberal knee-jerk ignorance, because he claims to be anti-imperialist (nevermind he's selling Venezuela piecemeal to China). His system is not the best and it deserves feint praise at the most.

The latest primary elections in Venezuela prove that in fact a lot of Venezuelans are not happy with Chavismo, so your "he's won elections a lot" is a bit stale. I mean, he hasn't won an election in 6 years. A lot can change in 6 years. And boy, has it ever. 70-80k more Venezuelan's died from murder from one election to the next.

[naaman fletcher]

13. Which DUers are those?

I have not seen anyone claim that Venezuela was great before Chavez was elected.

[ChangoLoa]

14. Huh? Never seen them around here...

All I've heard is scorn for previous governments (specially the ones who applied the IMF reform in the late 1980's) and disappointment for some highly important aspects of the current administration... such as this one.

A 223% increase in homicides is not as insignificant and harmless as some Chavez cheerleaders would like us to believe. The fact that this number multiplied by 3,23 under his mandate, during the last 13 years, is huge, but overall it shows that you're wrong in your assertion : "problems that Venezuela has always had, much before he came to power". This particular problem has increased at a remarkably fast pace.

And the first ones to suffer from this boom of violence are the people living in the poorest areas. In my opinion, when you honestly care about deep social and institutional disfunctionments that affect people, you give them priority over support for any given party. Otherwise, your political world is a chapel and your arguments simply made out of thin air.