Protests broke out across Venezuela against authoritarian President Nicolás Maduro’s disputed re-election, as the government threatened to crack down on opposition leaders and the international community called for a breakdown of poll results.
Maduro’s victory, which was announced on Monday, has been challenged by the opposition’s candidate Edmundo González. González, a retired diplomat, led Maduro by at least 20 points in independent polls and had a clear lead in exit surveys and quick counts on Sunday.
By the afternoon, people in a number of neighbourhoods across Caracas were shouting “Fraud!” and banging pots and pans from their windows in protest. Disturbances were reported in poorer neighbourhoods as well as middle-class areas, while demonstrators set up a roadblock of burning tyres on the edge of the city on the road to the airport in nearby La Guaira.