Venezuela relocates baseball championship after player is shot

[naaman fletcher]

Venezuela has moved the women's baseball world championship tournament to militarised stadiums outside Caracas after a Hong Kong player was shot during a game, prompting an outcry over the city's violent crime epidemic.

Hong Kong withdrew from the tournament and games were briefly suspended after an apparently stray bullet hit Cheuk Woon-yee in the left calf during a tie against the Netherlands on Friday.

Doctors removed the bullet and the player was expected to recover but that did not spare authorities from embarrassing questions about a wave of violence which has made Caracas one of the world's most dangerous capitals.

In the absence of complete official figures watchdog groups estimate 16,000 people are murdered in Venezuela every year and that less than 93% of cases go unpunished, breeding impunity. Police kill an estimated 900 people every year.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/aug/16/venezuela-baseball-championships-moved

[Bacchus39]

1. worth posting the rest

I assume the last paragraph citing the paper Tal Cual is tongue-in-cheek. that the government is concerned about the photo displaying the results of the violence, rather than doing anything to combat the violence itself.

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To safeguard a showcase sporting event, authorities hosted the baseball championship in Fuerte Tiuna, a military base and supposedly Caracas's safest site. President Hugo Chávez regularly stays there overnight.

But as Cheuk took her position at third base during the fourth inning of Friday's game a shot rang out and she fell to the ground. Venezuela's vice-president, Elias Jaua, said the bullet was a stray. It was unclear where it originated. Speculation centred on hillside slums and the base itself.

Cheuk, a bandage around her leg, was pushed in a wheelchair through the airport as her team prepared to leave Venezuela. "We're very sorry about decision to pull out, but we respect it," said Hector Rodriguez, the sports minister. After a brief suspension the tournament was moved to the city of Maracay, west of Caracas, "to reassure all of the participating teams", said Rodriguez.

Games resumed yesterday amid a show of force. Army and national guard troops with armoured vehicles reinforced police checkpoints leading to the main stadium. Other troops searched the pockets and bags of people entering the stadium, all watched by a military helicopter hovering overhead. Tight controls were also in place at a second stadium inside an airbase.

Government critics said the shooting was further evidence that violent crime was out of control, a common perception which is hurting Chávez's administration in the run-up to legislative elections next month.

Dozens are killed in Caracas each weekend alone, bloodletting which often exceeds Baghdad's. Most of the victims are poor young men from slums caught up in gang violence.

Emergency wards struggle with the influx. "It's like a slaughterhouse," said Giselle Torres, a cleaner mopping dark stains from the floor of Domingo Luciani, a hospital in eastern Caracas.

The newspaper El Nacional caused a sensation last week by publishing a front page photograph of about a dozen corpses piled in a morgue closed to media since homicide rates started soaring. The editor, Miguel Henrique Otero, said the intention was to show the facility was overwhelmed.

Prosecutors launched an investigation into El Nacional, which could face a fine or other sanctions. The ombudsman said publishing such an image risked damaging young people's "psychic and moral" wellbeing.

Another newspaper, Tal Cual, re-published the photograph on its front page today . "Turns out the problem is the picture," said the editor, Teodoro Petkoff, in an accompanying editorial. "The problem isn't the 16,000 murders each year ... That's not the problem. The photo is the thing."