•  caracas
• Wednesday, February 23, 2011
• Inter Press Service

For the first time in over 20 years, a Venezuelan government gave in Tuesday to the demands of students, more than 60 of whom were on hunger strike, and released or promised better conditions for members of the opposition who are in prison.

'We feel victorious,' student leader Roderick Navarro, one of five students who called off their hunger strike in front of the Brazilian embassy, told IPS. 'The government made fun of the protest that began on Jan. 31, but has had to give in to our demand for dialogue and debate on human rights in Venezuela.'

The administration of leftwing President Hugo Chávez agreed to immediately set up a roundtable with the students to study the situation of people described by the protesters as political prisoners, with the participation of the inmates' lawyers and families.

After 13 students declared a hunger strike outside the offices of the Organisation of American States (OAS) in Caracas, a growing number of university students joined the fast, camping out in front of the embassies of Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica and Paraguay, while others did so in some 10 other Venezuelan states.

In what they called 'Operation Freedom', the students were demanding that the government authorise visits by OAS Secretary General José Miguel Insulza and by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) to assess conditions in prisons and to study the cases of 27 opponents of President Hugo Chávez who they consider political prisoners.

They are demanding the full release of several of the imprisoned opponents; the release on bail of others; and health exams and improved prison conditions for others who have been convicted of different crimes. The prisoners include three political leaders elected to the single-chamber Congress in the September legislative elections, who the courts have disqualified from taking their seats, which the opposition and human rights activists say is unconstitutional.

The government, whose mediator, Interior Minister Tarek El Aissami, was a student leader in the 1990s, agreed to negotiate demands with respect to several imprisoned Chávez opponents, and to study the conditions in some prisons, but continued to oppose a visit by Insulza or the IACHR.

'Since President Jaime Lusinchi (1984-1989) agreed to negotiate with students who were protesting to demand health insurance and preferential transportation for students, no government has given in to a student protest,' Marino Alvarado, head of Provea, a local human rights group, told IPS.

'We were ready to take this to the very end,' Laurent Saleh, the leader of the group fasting outside the OAS, commented to IPS. 'We were inspired by the example of Franklin Brito (a farmer who died in August 2010 after a five-month hunger strike demanding respect for his property rights), and we were not fighting for ourselves but for the rights of others.' Saleh also reported that the agreement with the government includes a visit this week with Minister El Aissami to a prison in Caracas.

© Inter Press Service (2011) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service