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Plan Avila
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Plan Avila was a military contingency plan by the Venezuelan Army to maintain public order in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas. It was infamously used in 1989 by the government of Carlos Andres Perez, in response to riots, in an event which became known as the Caracazo; hundreds were killed by military and armed police. On 27 August 2002, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights found that the 1989 implementation of Plan Avila had resulted in massive human rights violations, and ordered the Venezuelan government to review its military contingency planning to conform to international human rights standards.
The activation of Plan Avila was ordered by current president Hugo Chavez at midday on 11 April 2002, in response to public order events leading up to the 2002 Venezuelan coup d'etat attempt. High-ranking members of the Armed Forces refused to carry out the Plan. The general responsible in the palace, on contacting army headquarters at Fuerte Tiuna, was told that a group of generals had plans to arrest the President, and that the base's exits were blocked to prevent any units leaving without their permission.
Supporters of Chavez have said that the objective of Plan Avila is not to repress the population or to prevent public protest but to maintain public order and that the plan had already been applied during the visit of Pope John Paul II to Venezuela without shooting against the population.
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This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article Plan Avila
