Archbishop says Venezuelan justice system has been hijacked

He said that although Afiuni's cell is comfortable, she is being held near prisoners that she herself sentenced and who are now making death threats against her. "She stays inside, she does not go outside to the prison yards or even to the hallway that surrounds her cell. She took advantage of my visit to see the chapel and the yard. She lives completely enclosed in her cell out of fear," he said.

http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=90994

He must be missing the big picture.

He's a partisan.

Do you defend the jailing of the judge, when such jailing was due to orders given by the President, when he was angered because the judge followed a UN Human Rights ruling? Do you realize what you are apparently defending?

There's a serious allegation about the judges conduct. I'll presume innocence and expect a fair trial.

Meanwhile, I suggested google for a reason.

Inmates who have already tried to kill her.

Chavez asked the tribunals to give her 30 years of jail which is the maximum penalty in our system.

Most of the info I have is from an unreliable press and a few cheerleaders. :hi:

As I can see, they prefer to stay with this old reactionary clergyman instead of watching the judge who's presumed innocent by being put in jail with the same people she sent there.

Even if she was declared guilty of corruption after the trial, she shouldn't be 5 months in jail like this while nothing has been proven since the trial hasn't even started yet.

:eyes:

According to what I read, a UN commission issued an opinion stating the guy Judge Afiuni freed should be released. She was abiding by the UN commission's decision. The man in question had been held in prison without being put on trial for 3 years. The Judge was jailed immediately, after Chavez went on one of his mad moments and gave orders to jail her. Which doesn't say much about the separation of powers in Venezuela. If there was a question regarding the release, the proper procedure would be for the state to appeal the decision to a higher court, and if they wanted to investigate her, they could do so without throwing her in jail the way they did.

I'm sorry, Wilms, but I'm starting to feel a little soiled by the way you guys think. You will defend anything as long as it's done by a left wing regime. I've always realized there's a certain darkness in the human soul, which leads to moral blindness. But are you so blind you don't understand what is happening to you, when you defend injustice? I've always felt progressives were a bit more decent people, although I had no illusions, but what I read in these blogs sometimes churns my stomach.

from his giant maw for YEARS, rattling on and on about how everything done by anyone in the current administration has to be condemned in the nastiest possible terms. No doubt he was one of the old schmucks who streaked over to Miraflores the moment he believed the putrid oligarchs had seized it for themselves during the 2002 coup.

http://www.catholicnewsagency.com.nyud.net:8090/images/pplucker100709.jpg

Archbishop Roberto Luckert
From a topic we covered a couple of years ago:

Sympathetic to Chávez, a New Church Draws Fire
By *SIMON ROMERO
Published: August 1, 2008

CABIMAS, Venezuela — From a makeshift chapel in a schoolhouse where a portrait of President Hugo Chávez and revolutionary slogans from his government adorn the entrance, the bishops of the new Reformed Catholic Church of Venezuela welcomed congregants to Sunday Mass.

Missionary Bishop Simón Alvarado, 39, strummed a guitar and led the small congregation in singing hymns. Bishop Coadjutor Jon Jen Siu-García, 37, preached a sermon on assisting the poor while his wife, Hiranioris Calles, 24, smiled at him from her seat on a white plastic chair.

“The church of Rome is fearful that it could lose more priests like us,” Bishop Siu-García said. He is the son of immigrants, a Cantonese father and Colombian mother, who settled in this gritty city on the edge of Lake Maracaibo. “And it should be afraid, given its level of scandal over internal abuses and hypocrisy in combating poverty.”

The defection of a handful of priests and their formation of the Reformed Catholic Church, a breakaway church openly sympathetic to Mr. Chávez’s government yet oddly allied with conservative Anglicans from Texas, has raised the ire of Roman Catholic leaders in Venezuela. Since its founding in June, the infant church has fueled a fresh debate over the interplay of religion and politics in one of Latin America’s most secular nations.

“What they want to do is put an end to the Catholic Church, but they have not succeeded,” Archbishop Roberto Luckert, one of Mr. Chávez’s most strident critics in Venezuela’s Roman Catholic hierarchy, said in a radio broadcast denouncing the new church.

He was scathing in his criticism of the church. “They get dressed up as priests, conduct baptisms and confirmations — all paid for by the government — while the people go hungry,” he said.

The leaders of the Reformed Catholic Church, however, say their new church represents a fusion of the best of Anglican and Roman Catholic traditions. And though they adamantly deny receiving financing from Mr. Chávez’s government and insist that their church has no political affiliation, they do profess solidarity with Mr. Chávez, who has repeatedly clashed with the Roman Catholic hierarchy since rising to power a decade ago.

“I share the revolutionary project of President Chávez, since it is a socialist and humanist project for the masses,” said Enrique Albornoz, a former Lutheran minister who is principal bishop, the top leader, of the Reformed Catholic Church. The church says it has about 2,000 members in Cabimas and in other oil towns in Zulia, Venezuela’s most populous state.

At first glance, Zulia might seem an unlikely origin for such a breakaway church, imbued as the new church is with liberation theology, the school of thought that shook the Roman Catholic Church in Latin America in the 1960s by advocating political activism to bring justice to the poor.

More:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/01/world/americas/01venez.html

*Simon Romero is one of the poisonous anti-progressive writers at the N.Y. Times. He has written TONS of anti-Chavez pieces, and made a laughing stock of himself among the people who recognize his name, or smell it, a mile away.

http://www.pbs.org.nyud.net:8090/newshour/images/business/jan-june06/portov5.jpg

Simon Romero

Ultimas Noticias is a Venezuelan leftist newspaper.

12.11.09: Chavez asks for the maximum possible penalty in our penal code against the judge Afiuni: 30 years of jail

http://www.ultimasnoticias.com.ve/capriles/cadena-global/detalle.aspx?idart=2744504&idcat=56657&tipo=2


12.12.09: Judge Afiuni will wait for her judgement in jail

http://www.ultimasnoticias.com.ve/capriles/cadena-global/detalle.aspx?idart=2746525&idcat=56657&tipo=2
http://www.ultimasnoticias.com.ve/capriles/cadena-global/detalle.aspx?idart=2749125&idcat=56657&tipo=2
http://www.ultimasnoticias.com.ve/capriles/cadena-global/detalle.aspx?idart=2748837&idcat=56657&tipo=2


12.17.09: Judge's brother asks for protection for his sister who's jailed with the same people she sentenced. He says that she's in danger of dying

http://www.ultimasnoticias.com.ve/capriles/cadena-global/detalle.aspx?idart=2756081&idcat=56657&tipo=2


12.20.09: Inmates try to kill judge Afiuni in jail

http://www.ultimasnoticias.com.ve/capriles/cadena-global/detalle.aspx?idart=2760840&idcat=56657&tipo=2


1.23.10: Afiuni accused of complicity in the evasion of Cedeño by the Public Ministry

http://www.ultimasnoticias.com.ve/capriles/cadena-global/detalle.aspx?idart=2837498&idcat=56657&tipo=2


4.13.10: Hearing is postponed until May

http://www.ultimasnoticias.com.ve/capriles/cadena-global/detalle.aspx?idart=2981343&idcat=56657&tipo=2

What a surprise seeing you've linked to one of them. Didn't know cluster folk read either one.

about Venezulaanalysis I have simply pointed out that when they have a picture of Chavez in the headline, one needs to understand that they aren't even trying to hide their bias. That does not of course mean that something they say is untrue.

I have an image of a bunch of grapes with faces.

By the way, i do read that Venezuelanalysis. A lot of what they have is outdated, and some of it is really really funny. Other pieces are surreal. For example, they keep the following article about Venezuela's booming economy

http://venezuelanalysis.com/indicators

It happens to be a document written in February of 2009..:evilgrin:

Here's the summary of the April 2010 report by the the Economist Intelligence Unit

Outlook for 2010-11

•Worsening power cuts will increase frustrations with the administration and deepen splits in the government, but the ruling PSUV is expected to remain the largest congressional party following legislative elections in September.

•Mr Chavez will continue to pursue a radical nationalist foreign policy line, as he seeks to deflect voters' attention from economic difficulties.

•The difficulties of managing the deep distortions that have arisen as a result of the heterodox policy framework of recent years will become even more challenging following the introduction of a dual exchange system in January.

•Venezuela is the only economy in the region where we are forecasting a renewed contraction in real GDP in 2010 and 2011 (of 6.7% and 0.5% respectively), following a 3.3% decline in 2009.

•Notwithstanding heavy-handed efforts by the government to prevent retailers from raising prices, firms will pass on at least part of their higher input costs to consumers. We expect inflation to rise to 44% by end-2011.

•Oil prices will continue to determine current-account trends in 2010-11, with higher prices boosting the surplus to 5.6% of GDP in 2010 before a fall to 3.2% of GDP in 2011.

Monthly review

•A former governor has been arrested and charged with spreading false information and incitement after he stated in a television interview that Venezuela had turned into a haven for drug-traffickers.

•The refusal of the governor of Lara state to rescind his resignation from the ruling PSUV has led to an ever-more open break with the government. This has been accompanied by strong criticism from other disillusioned chavistas.

•The electricity crisis has remained a key focus of economic policy, with supply still rationed in much of the country and the government taking further drastic measures to reduce usage.

•The National Assembly has approved a new financial sector law but it is unlikely to address weaknesses in the system that contributed to recent instability in banking and brokerage firms.

•Data released by the Banco Central de Venezuela (BCV, the Central Bank) in early March has revealed the depth and severity of the recession, with real GDP contracting by 5.8% in the fourth quarter of 2009.

http://www.reportbuyer.com/countries/south_america/venezuela/country_report_venezuela_april_2010.html

As you can see, venezuelanalysis puts out puff pieces, some of it is outright lies, some of it is old material. They are a lousy source.