Chavez' government plans to remove more than 5,000 small miners from the Las Cristinas sector

Miners in southeastern Venezuela were blockading a road linking the country with Brazil to protest a government plan to forcibly evacuate 5,000 of them from the area, a mine workers' leader said. President Hugo Chavez' government 'plans to remove more than 5,000 small miners from the Las Cristinas sector' of Bolivar state, 'and when 24 hours had passed today since the beginning of the blockade two army convoys arrived that supposedly are going to try' to remove them, labor leader Abelardo Diaz said from the area.