Venezuela Seizes Offices of Independent Newspaper
International | May 16, 2021
CARACAS, Venezuela—President Nicolas Maduro’s authoritarian government seized the headquarters of one of the country’s last remaining independent newspapers, in a move that could jeopardize the regime’s efforts to improve relations with Washington.
A judge accompanied by Venezuelan national guardsmen clad in bulletproof vests and maroon berets raided the 162,000-square-foot property of El Nacional late Friday in an industrial part of eastern Caracas. They acted on a Supreme Court order to take the property as part of a $13 million judgment against the media outlet.
The headquarters was already largely vacant as workers have been contributing from home amid the pandemic, and the paper has been an exclusively online publication since 2018. It ceased its print edition after the government, which held a monopoly on imports, cut the company’s access to imported newsprint. The paper’s website, too, has been restricted by Venezuela’s telecommunications regulator on numerous occasions since then…..
(Excerpts from the Wall Street Journal)