CONGRESSMAN MCCAUL PROTEST JAILED JOUNRNALIST

  

District 10 U.S. Congressman Michael McCaul has sent a letter to the State Department about a journalist jailed in Venezuela. Ed Pothul has this report.

The local congressional representative sent his concerns to Roberta Jacobson, the Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs. 

McCaul ire was raised when he read in the Miami  Herald that Jim Wyss, the Herald’s Andean Bureau Chief, was detained by Venezuelan authorities Thursday while reporting on the country’s chronic shortages and looming municipal elections.  McCaul said that Wyss continued to be in custody Friday.  McCaul says Wyss was initially detained by the National Guard but now is in the custody of the Venezuelan counter military intelligence.  He says there is no basis for his detention.

In the letter, Congressman McCaul is urging the State Department to engaged with the Venezuelan government, employing all diplomatic means available to free Wyss.  McCaul says that Venezuela has a long record of suppression of basic rights under the previous Chavez regime and this detention is an apparent effort to suppress the truth about the country’s oppressive policies and poor economic and living conditions.  He calls this an ‘unacceptable shift away from the protections of civil liberties.’