Miami Unites for Liberty in Venezuela at the Torch of Freedom

"There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest." - Elie Wiesel, Nobel Lecture 1986

This Saturday, August 5, 2017 at 11:00am at the Torch of Friendship located on 401 Biscayne Boulevard members of the Miami community will join together in support of freedom in Venezuela. The event is being organized through a Facebook campaign by Nicholas David, Jaime Figueras, Jessica Fernandez, and Armando Ibarra.

 Regime snipers shot young demonstrators in the head while regime agents raided the homes of opposition politicians in the dead of night to take them away to parts unknown. Maduro regime snipers were spotted this past Sunday, August 30th on roof tops shooting peaceful protesters in the head. At 4:29pm Blanco tweeted: "Adrián Rodríguez (13) was assassinated in Capacho, Táchira. Army sniper shot him in the head from the roof of a school."  At 8:18pm he tweeted: "Ender Peña died (18), shot by bullet during protest in Táchira. Transferred to a polyclinic, he didn't survive the operation." A few minutes later at 8:36pm Blanco tweeted: "Conflict escalation is very obvious. Weeks ago military fired tear gas into the chest, now firing with rifles to the head." 

Venezuela is on the brink of turning into a totalitarian communist regime. It has been a dictatorship since at least October 20, 2016 when the decision of Venezuelan voters to hold a recall referendum was illegally blocked by Nicolas Maduro. However the vote this past Sunday (manipulated to inflate the number of participants by the dictatorship) was to do away with the National Assembly and opposition parties. If implemented this would turn Venezuela into another Cuba. 

Two weeks earlier on July 16, 2017 over seven million Venezuelans voted in a non-binding plebiscite rejecting the Constituent Assembly of the Maduro regime. A general strike was successfully carried out and despite regime violence and a prohibition to protest Venezuelans still took to the streets in anti-Maduro demonstrations.

The response of the Maduro regime and their Cuban advisors has been to escalate the violence and target nonviolent protesters. Consider the plight of Wuilly Moisés Arteaga, a young man playing the national anthem with his violin at a protest, was told to shut up and was shot in the face last Saturday. From his hospital bed he said that he would return to protest in the streets, and he did. He was arrested on Thursday, July 29th beaten up and tortured for protesting against the Maduro regime to the degree that he has lost hearing in his right ear and remains jailed. This is reminiscent of Cuba not a democracy. 

For Cubans, August 5th is a special date when 23 years ago across Havana mass protests occurred calling for freedom and an end to the Castro regime. The response was a brutal crackdown and a mass exodus, but the desire to be free remains. 


 
Now is the time to stand up and protest for freedom in Venezuela and to demonstrate our solidarity with Venezuelans. The folks organizing the protest at the Torch of Freedom put it succinctly:

Dictator Nicholas Maduro stripped Venezuelan citizens of their freedoms, jailed and murdered innocent people, impoverished his whole nation, exiled hundreds of thousands, and extinguished democracy and rule of law. This is an atrocity.

We are ONE community of Venezuelan and Cuban exiles, Latinos, and Americans united in the fight for freedom and against socialism. We share the historical tragedy of losing a nation to despotism.

Please join us and thousands of friends united in solidarity with the Venezuelan people. We will be joined by elected officials, civic leaders, and opposition figures to show the world that we stand for freedom.

Saturday, August 5th, 2017
11am - 2pm
Bayfront Park - The Torch of Friendship
301 Biscayne Blvd., Miami, FL 33132 

For more information visit the Facebook event page.