Venezuelan agents attack reporter covering court's takeover of congress' powers

MIAMI – Agents of the Venezuelan National Guard roughed up a reporter who was working outside of the Supreme Court in Caracas in what international leaders have described as an "aggression" against journalists who are covering an attack against democracy in Venezuela.

After the incident involving Elyangelica Gonzalez, a Venezuelan who reports for Colombia's Caracol Radio and Univision Network, Colombian Foreign Minister Maria Angela Holguin expressed "concern and rejection at this attack on the free exercise of freedom of expression." 

The reporter was covering students who were protesting the Venezuelan Supreme Court's decision to strip congress of power.  While Gonzalez was reporting live on a student protest on Thursday, she said that about 10 men pushed and kicked her. They restrained her and confiscated two phones. One was crushed in front of her.

"You're detained! Shut up! Sit down," she said a man shouted. "I'm holding you because I feel like it."

Under a torrent of international condemnation over the Supreme Court's decision, a short video of the reporter's attack was shared worldwide on social media. In Miami-Dade's Doral neighborhood, Venezuelan exiles said the video was seen as an example of the "dictatorship" that has taken over. 

The video shows the men surrounding Gonzalez, while she is on the ground and then dragged across the concrete and carried through a gate. Gonzalez told colleagues that she was terrified and all she could think about was her children. 

Even some loyal Chavistas were protesting the Supreme Court's decision. Venezuela's top prosecutor Luisa Ortega, a long-time government loyalist, said it was her "unavoidable historical duty" as the nation's top judicial authority to denounce the "rupture" of the constitutional order.

"We call for reflection, so that the democratic path can be retaken," Ortega Diaz said to the loud applause of her aids on Friday.