Watch A Venezuelan News Anchor Quit In Protest While Live On Air
If you blinked, or walked out of the room you might have missed it when Reimy Chavez quit his job as an anchor on Venezuela's Globovision news channel over government censorship.
It took about 19 seconds for him to get all of this out:
"Respected viewers it's 7:02 pm at night. We are again on air with another round of informative Globovision news that will be particularly emotional for me, Rudy Chavez Perche. This will be the last day I will be working on this television for reasons against my will and of differing values. We begin with more notes..."
And that was that.
The violent situation in Venezuela has only worsened since protests broke out in February. Even with dozens dead, anti-government demonstrators still fill the streets protesting everything from food shortages to corruption.
This weekend, opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez, who has been imprisoned for 45 days since giving himself of to President Nicolas Maduro's administration, was just charged with crimes that carry a 14 year prison sentence.
"...the truth is this government's worst enemy - so it is attempting to gag every voice that speaks out," Lopez said in an interview with The Telegraph this weekend. "This is the strategy of a government that is fearful of its own legitimacy - and has concluded that the only way to maintain power is to remove its opponents entirely."
Chavez told Fusion News that under new, pro-government ownership, Globovision lost all sense of breaking news. Every night it would simply broadcast the state TV channel to see what the government leadership was saying. When the protests broke out on February 12th, too, Globovision was silent.
Now Chavez has no job - he said he had no "Plan B" when he quit because he did it out of conviction. And when Fusion asked him what people outside the country should know about what's going on in Venezuela, he said this:
"They should know that there is a big lack of respect for the law here, that occurs daily. They should know that in this country there is no separation of powers. For example, with Chavez and also now, you see the president saying on TV that x person should be imprisoned, and not many days pass before that person is imprisoned. There is almost no respect for human rights here."
Watch Chavez Perche quit in the video below: