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Thousands of Venezuelan women wearing white shirts rallied in Caracas on Saturday, ahead of a women’s march in ongoing opposition protests against President Nicolas Maduro.
The march in the capital city of Caracas is expected to be the largest of a series of nationwide coordinated women’s marches called for Saturday.
Riot police units of women officers provided security.
Opposition protests have often started peacefully but degenerated into violence when security forces block marchers and masked youths fight them with stones, Molotov cocktails and fireworks shot from pipes turned into homemade mortars.
According to the state prosecutor’s office, at least 37 people have died, 717 have been injured and hundreds arrested in the widespread unrest this past month around the volatile South American OPEC nation.
Venezuela’s opposition, which now enjoys majority support after being in the shadow of the ruling Socialist party since the 1998 election win of former President Hugo Chavez, says his successor Maduro has become a dictator and wrecked the economy.
The president says they are seeking a violent coup with U.S. support, and is setting up a “constituent assembly” super body to shake up public powers, change the constitution, and possibly replace the existing legislature. The opposition is boycotting Maduro’s constituent assembly process, saying it is a ploy to keep him in power.
Polls show the ruling Socialists would badly lose any conventional vote due to four years of economic crisis that has led to debilitating food and medicine shortages.
Reuters
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