Politics
Opposition leader Manuel Rosales, who was granted asylum in Peru, blamed Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez of "criminalizing politics" through judicial persecution of people who do not support the government, in an interview broadcasted on Friday by a Colombian TV station.

"Venezuelan authorities have been building a strategy based on the union of money and power to seize and hijack institutions and, from there, criminalize, persecute and ban everybody who thinks different from the current authorities," said the former mayor of Maracaibo, the second largest city in Venezuela, and leader of opposition party Un Nuevo Tiempo (A New Era, UNT) to the Colombian TV network RCN, the German news agency DPA reported.

According to Rosales, the Venezuelan government has used public funds overseas "to participate in electoral processes, racist and nationalist movements and to defend of the Colombian guerrillas.