Hello, friends of Steemit, lovers of freedom.

As if it weren't enough to attack the media which, within Venezuela, are disturbing to it because they express themselves in a critical way, the illegitimate and anti-popular government of Nicolás Maduro has also been taking a series of actions to deny the country can access to the international media, as happened with CNN in its Spanish version. As will be remembered, in February 2017, the National Telecommunications Commission of the Venezuela, CONATEL, suspended the transmission of CNN en Español by private cable television providers.

Ten years earlier, Chavez himself had decided not to renew the license for the use of radioelectrical waves, which in this country are public and administered by the government, thus avoiding the broadcasting of the television channel Radio Caracas TV, RCTV, which was very critical of its administration.

Citizens protest against the closure of RCTV in front of its headquarters

Shortly after Globovisión, the only national channel dedicated 24 hours a day to news broadcasting, and closely linked to the opposition, was sold and since then has softened its editorial orientation. By the way, Raúl Gorrín, who has been president of the channel, was accused in November 2018 by the US justice system of "conspiracy to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act", "conspiracy to commit money laundering" and other financial crimes, and is pointed out as one of the financiers of a part of the opposition leadership.

One of the many cases for which Raúl Gorrín is accused

Likewise, since the end of the first decade of this century various media have been sold under strange circumstances and, of course, their editorial line has been changing, among them the dean of Venezuelan newspapers, El Universal, and also those belonging to Cadena Capriles, an important editorial group.

As can be seen, the political-military-entrepreneurial enclave known as the Bolivarian Revolution has a long list of censored media, bought irregularly or simply taken out of circulation in an attempt to silence or, at least, prevent citizens from hearing the voices that are critical to them or from listening about the inefficiency, abuse of power and the gigantic corruption that has characterized the record of this mafia that falsely calls itself socialists.

But censoring access from computer equipment located in Venezuela or whose Internet is provided by the state Compañía Anónima Nacional Teléfonos de Venezuela, National Company Telephones of Venezuela, CANTV, the only provider of telephone service, Internet and telecommunications in the country is the new practice that Maduro's government has been implementing to try to silence the growing unease of the population.

Strong repression against protests during 2017

Many of the written media have had to close their print for lack of paper, the distribution of which is monopolized by the government, so they have had to be reduced to publishing via the Internet. But if you try to enter from this country the digital version of El Nacional, which after 70 years had to stop circulating on paper, El Pitazo, La Patilla, Caraota Digital, among many others, you will find that access has been blocked.

This is the context in which the censorship of Wikipedia, the polyglot digital encyclopedia founded in 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger, has taken place, starting January 12 of this year, when a contributor published an article mentioning the recently appointed president of the National Assembly, Juan Guaidó, as the "51st president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela," ignoring, as a good part of Venezuelans have been doing, Nicolás Maduro as president, who in his recently finished administration plunged Venezuela into the worst social and economic crisis since the Federal War waged in the mid-19th century.

In this way, and in case there was any doubt that this is a dictatorship, Maduro and his henchmen block Venezuelan students and the general public from entering a platform that has published more than 48 million articles in more than 300 languages, written by volunteers from around the world who collaborate in this gigantic effort to democratize knowledge.

Wikipedia blocked. A capture from my own computer.

In this way, the Venezuelan dictatorship joins a select club of countries that have blocked Wikipedia. In fact, it is so select that it only had two members: China and Turkey. Now the ridiculous illegitimate government of Maduro has joined.

I say that Maduro is ridiculous because he thinks that with these measures that violate human rights he will be able to hide what is evident: the absolute failure of his corrupt management.