[R-G] Venezuela Expels 'Rights' Activists

[Anthony Fenton]

September 20, 2008
Venezuela Expels Rights Activists
By SIMON ROMERO
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/20/world/americas/20venez.html?_r=1&em=&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin

CARACAS, Venezuela — President Hugo Chávez’s government expelled two  
activists from Human Rights Watch late Thursday night after chafing at  
their documentation of widespread political discrimination,  
intimidation of union members and a subservient judiciary.

Armed men in uniforms apprehended José Miguel Vivanco, a Chilean  
citizen who is Americas director for the New York-based group, and  
Daniel Wilkinson, an American who is deputy director for the Americas,  
and placed them on a flight to São Paulo, Brazil, where they arrived  
on Friday morning.

“About 20 men, some of them in military uniform, intercepted us when  
we arrived at our hotel after returning from dinner Thursday night,”  
Mr. Vivanco said in a telephone interview from São Paulo. He said he  
struggled briefly with the security officials when he tried to send a  
message on his Blackberry to The New York Times about the expulsion.

The officials then disabled the Blackberries of the two men and  
prevented them from contacting anyone in Venezuela, including  
diplomats from the embassies of Chile or the United States. “They  
informed us of our apprehension and told us they had entered our rooms  
and had packed our belongings,” Mr. Vivanco said.

The expulsion, broadcast partly on state television here, comes at a  
time of increasingly erratic actions by Mr. Chávez. In the last week,  
he expelled the American ambassador, rounded up military officers and  
accused them of plotting to kill him and clashed with the Vatican over  
its granting of political asylum to a political opponent.

The Foreign Ministry said in a statement that Mr. Vivanco violated the  
law by entering the country on a tourist visa to do human rights work.  
The ministry also said that Human Rights Watch, which is an outspoken  
critic of the Bush administration, was acting in concert with the  
United States government in a campaign of aggression against Venezuela.

“Accusing us of being part of a conspiracy is a distraction tactic  
used to attack the messenger,” Mr. Vivanco said. “We have never had  
this experience anywhere in this hemisphere.”

The expulsion of the two men came after they released a long report  
here on Thursday documenting rights violations in Venezuela. They  
pointed to Mr. Chávez’s dismantling of judicial independence and his  
use of a 2002 coup that briefly ousted him from office as a pretext  
for consolidating power by weakening rights protections.

The report also discussed the government’s intimidation of local human  
rights defenders and nongovernmental organizations, documenting the  
use of state television to carry out attacks on activists doing work  
that criticized Mr. Chávez’s creation of a military reserve under his  
command.

“Our expulsion reveals yet again the degree of intolerance of this  
government,” said Mr. Vivanco.