Is Chávez cracking down on journalists?

Roger Santodomingo, the editor of the Venezuelan web site Noticiero Digital, resigned last week in the face of increasing threats from supporters of autocrat Hugo Chávez. Santodomingo received a letter that had been circulating at his son's school which called him a "traitor", and began receiving voicemails that suggest that his son would be run over while walking home from school. The cherry on the sundae occurred yesterday when his car was set ablaze while it was parked outside his home.

Chávez has been working hard to stifle media opposition to his "Bolivarian revolution", but the targeting of Santodomingo marks a new low in Venezuela's rapidly diminishing press freedoms. Just as when a Chavista mob attacked the offices of the (now closed) RCTV, Chávez could wash his hands of it and blame overzealous supporters. However, Chávez cannot wash his hands either of the incendiary anti-opposition press rhetoric that inspires his followers to use violence, much less forget that power in Venezuela is from the top down. If Chávez doesn't issue a statement calling on his party's regional leaders to stop, or even condemn, the violence, the attacks on journalists will continue. Granted, the Mercedes Marxists in America and Europe are embarrassed by Chávez's institution of Cuban style repression of journalists. A law passed in 2005 threatens journalists with legal action for "insulting" public officials, and while it had used mostly as a threat to journalists unfriendly to Chávez, the government has gone on the offensive with a spate of prosecutions.

Is anyone starting to realize why Hugo gets along so famously with Robert Mugabe and Alexsandr Lukashenko?

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