Venezuela has released all but one of dozens of protesters rounded up after an angry, pot-banging crowd reportedly surrounded President Nicolas Maduro amid mass protests over the country's crippling food shortages.
Of around 30 protesters detained, only one, apparently a journalist who released videos of the chaotic protests on social media, remained in custody yesterday, Alfredo Romero of the NGO Venezuelan Justice Forum said on Twitter.
He said there had been "many arbitrary searches and seizures of dissidents."
The incidents erupted Friday in the resort city of Porlamar on Margarita island off the country's Caribbean coast.
They came just a day after anti-Maduro critics had mobilized a vast march that filled the main streets of Caracas.
The embattled Maduro, whose state-led leftist government is fighting crippling shortages of everything from hard currency to food and toilet paper, had gone to make a speech at the opening of some remodeled public housing in Porlamar.
But social media images appeared to show Maduro finding himself surrounded by an angry crowd, which followed him closely down a street, banging pots and insulting him.
Dozens of protesters were swept up in an ensuing crackdown by authorities, reports said.
Social media images of the incident were difficult to confirm independently, but Maduro's critics said they showed the extent of the public's impatience with his handling of the economy.
Information Minister Luis Marcano, however, accused local media of exaggerating the protest. Writing on Twitter, he said the pot-banging "reflects what remains of the right (wing)."
Opposition leaders criticized the arrests.
"Neither Maduro, bodyguards, nor the Casa Militar (presidential guard) nor the ministry can avoid the sound of pot-banging in a town that wants a recall election," tweeted Henrique Capriles, a former opposition presidential candidate.
On Thursday, Maduro's opponents claimed to have mobilized a million demonstrators in Caracas in the biggest rally in decades, and vowed to hold weekly protests to demand a referendum on his ouster.
The government, however, estimated that only 30,000 people attended.
Jailed Maduro opponent Leopoldo Lopez said on Twitter that "the people made it known what they want. And they did so peacefully. More than a million Venezuelans demanding a recall vote, and change."
The rallies come at a highly volatile time for Venezuela, where a plunge in prices for oil exports, which account for more than half the country's Gross Domestic Product, has led to shortages, looting and violent crime.
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