Venezuela: 73 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants

ElPais.com – Briceño studying violence since 1994, five years before Chavez came to power. “The homicide rate was then 20 per 100,000 inhabitants. And you were worried. In 1998 there were 4,500 violent deaths. In 2000 almost came twice. In 2003, when Chávez served four years in power, the killings amounted to 11,300, the rate had tripled. Then, in 2004, the government banned the dissemination of data. And we created the Observatory. Our December report noted that last year there were 21,692 homicides. That is 73 per 100,000 inhabitants. That’s twice the rate of Colombia (34), three times that of Mexico (23) and Brazil (24) and much higher than that of Argentina (8), Chile (4) or Spain (1). The government does not recognize our numbers and only assumes a rate of 50 homicides, for it is far higher than that of Colombia.” Read Article