[R-G] Venezuela: Human Rights Watch versus democracy

[Anthony Fenton]

http://21stcenturysocialism.com/article/venezuela_human_rights_watch_versus_democracy_01734.html

Venezuela: Human Rights Watch versus democracy

The US-based NGO Human Rights Watch has issued a new report on  
Venezuela. The report blatantly distorts the truth in order to promote  
the regime-change agenda of the United States administration.

On Sept 18th 2008, Human Rights Watch (HRW) released a report entitled  
'Venezuela: Rights Suffer Under Chavez'. The report has been  
characterised by the Venezuelan government as biased and inaccurate.

The HRW report comes in the wake of an intensification of attacks on  
Venezuela by various branches of the US administration. These include:

• the re-establishment of the Fourth Fleet – previously decommissioned  
in 1952, the Fourth Fleet is reportedly made up of 25 warships,  
deployed around South America; and about which, several Latin American  
countries, Brazil, Argentina and Venezuela, amongst them, have  
expressed deep concerns;

• John Walters, the US drug Czar, has accused Venezuela of inaction in  
the war on drugs;

• the US State Department recently discussed the possibility of adding  
Venezuela to the list of nations that sponsor terrorism;

• the allegation that the Venezuelan government was behind the  
suitcase stuffed with US$800,000 brought into Argentina by Venezuelan- 
American citizen, Antonini Wilson, but, which, in reality, was  
denounced by Chavez and Argentine President Cristina Fernandez, as a  
dirty operation, about which nothing has been conclusively  
demonstrated, but which has become the focus of intense media  
attention. Despite repeated requests by both Argentina and Venezuela,  
US authorities have refused to extradite Antonini to face questions;

• sanctions by the US Treasury of several Venezuelan officials over  
unproven allegations that they aided the Revolutionary Armed Forces  
(FARC) of Colombia.

Most recently, following the expulsion of the US Ambassador from  
Bolivia over his relations with right wing extremists, Venezuela  
expelled its US Ambassador in solidarity, and the US responded by  
expelling the Venezuelan Ambassador from the USA.

On 10th September 2008, a plot to assassinate President Chavez and  
carry out a military coup was exposed. The plot was led by high level  
retired and serving military officers.

This is the context, one of of acute tensions between Venezuela and  
the US, for the publication on 18th September of the Human Rights  
Watch report on Venezuela. Its key theme, as outlined by José Miguel  
Vivanco, Americas director at HRW, is as follows:

     “Ten years ago, Chávez promoted a new constitution that could  
have significantly improved human rights in Venezuela. But rather than  
advancing rights protections, his government has since moved in the  
opposite direction, sacrificing basic guarantees in pursuit of its own  
political agenda.”

The 230-page Report makes the charge that “Discrimination on political  
grounds has been a defining feature of the Chavez presidency.”  
Although Venezuela under President Chavez is by no means perfect, it  
bears no relation to the country depicted in HRW’s 2008 Report.

The key allegation, that discrimination on political grounds has been  
a defining feature of the Chavez presidency, looks absurd when it is  
understood that the civil service remains largely full of supporters  
of the old regime, some of whom have allegedly engaged in criminal  
actions, such as the destruction of key operational facilities of the  
national oil company PDVSA during the oil lock-out that brought the  
country’s economy to near collapse.

The lock-out took place almost immediately after the short-lived  
overthrow of President Chavez in a military coup in April 2002. The  
coup was backed by the military high command, the main private media,  
the national employers’ organisation and the old discredited trade  
union federation CTV.

Following the coup, there was a campaign to oust Chavez through a  
recall referendum in 2004. When that failed, the opposition boycotted  
the 2005 parliamentary election in order to try to question the  
legitimacy of the government. Throughout these tense events,  
opposition politicians and private media talked openly of violently  
overthrowing the government and adopted an intensely confrontational  
attitude.

The recently revealed plot for another coup attempt and plans to  
assassinate President Chavez, just before regional and local elections  
in November, are in line with the stance taken by the opposition at  
crucial moments.

Expanding democracy

Contrary to HRW’s allegations that the Venezuelan government practices  
‘political discrimination’ against the opposition, the government’s  
attitude to the opposition’s persistent efforts to use violent and  
unconstitutional means to overthrow it, has been one of tolerance and  
magnanimity. Last year, President Chávez pardoned political opponents  
who backed the failed 2002 coup against his democratically-elected  
government. “It’s a matter of turning the page,” Chávez said. "We want  
there to be a strong ideological and political debate - but in peace.”

In this spirit, the government has often welcomed input from the  
opposition, for example, inviting the leaders of student protests to  
address the National Assembly. Not a common occurrence anywhere else  
in the world.

All political parties in Venezuela operate without any constraints.  
The majority of these parties are in the opposition; their difficulty  
is that they do not enjoy the high levels of support of the fewer pro- 
government political parties.

Opposition parties in Venezuela can and do organise public meetings,  
rallies, demonstrations, street marches; their spokespersons speak  
regularly on TV and radio – and they never moderate their language,  
their criticism, or their opposition to the government. They stand  
candidates for elections, hold national party events, issue  
proclamations, statements, hold press conferences, publish books,  
pamphlets, disseminate anti-government propaganda – in the streets and  
through the media, without any governmental sanctions whatsoever.

The great majority of private newspapers and television stations in  
the country support the Opposition and they face no restrictions other  
than the normal ones that exist in any democratic country, such as  
those governing libel and defamation. No Venezuelan newspaper has ever  
been subjected to any censorship by the Chavez administration. There  
are no political prisoners of any kind in Venezuela.

With regard to the judiciary, contrary to the 2008 HRW report’s  
contention, under Chavez the independence and probity of the judiciary  
has been significantly strengthened by dealing with the corruption  
with which it was previously riddled. HRW’s own 2004 report recognized  
this:

     “When President Chávez became president in 1999, he inherited a  
judiciary that had been plagued for years by influence-peddling,  
political interference, and, above all, corruption...In terms of  
public credibility, the system was bankrupt.”

At the same time, all democratic institutions have been strengthened  
in Venezuela, exemplified by the internationally verified efficiency  
and scrupulous fairness of the National Electoral Council, which has  
had no hesitation in upholding electoral results unfavourable to the  
government such as the defeat of the 2007 constitutional referendum –  
a result accepted immediately by President Chavez and his government.

HRW’s assertion that the Venezuelan media balance is shifting in  
favour of Chavez is misleading. In fact, the opposition media enjoy  
unrestricted freedom but they are increasingly seen as grossly biased  
and as having lost the political argument. The reality remains that  
the private media, which largely supports the opposition, controls the  
largest share of the airwaves, and there are no major pro-government
national daily newspapers.

HRW’s allegation that the government “has sought to remake the  
country’s labor movement in ways that violate basic principles of  
freedom of association,” also bears no relation to reality.

There are six national trade union federations in Venezuela (CTV,  
CUTV, UNT, CODESA, CGT, and CST), all of which function with total  
freedom and without the kind of draconian anti-trade union legislation  
which disfigures the USA and many of its allies.

Industrial relations are evolving positively. Furthermore, the level  
of trade union membership is rising – before Chávez came to office in  
1999, 11% of workers were in unions; the figure now is estimated to be  
over 20%. Thus, HRW’s allegation that the government violates basic  
principles of union association is not borne out by the facts.

The charge of the HRW 2008 report that the Chávez government has an  
“aggressively adversarial approach to local rights advocates and civil  
society organizations” is equally false. With varying degrees of  
success, the government has been empowering millions of hitherto  
excluded people through an array of social organizations, such as –  
tens of thousands of - communal councils, which aim to democratize  
local government.

There are also 200,000 cooperatives, women’s organizations, indigenous  
organizations, Afro-descendants organizations, organizations of gays  
and lesbians, and so forth. The numbers of these organizations have  
mushroomed because their rights have, for the first time ever, been  
either enshrined in the 1999 constitution or are being actively  
promoted and the government has been keen to assist them.

Additionally, as part of the implementation of the principles of  
participatory democracy enshrined in the 1999 Constitution, the  
government has made successful efforts to enfranchise ever larger  
layers of the traditionally excluded.

In terms of the traditional electoral process, the number of  
registered voters has increased phenomenonally. When Chávez was first  
elected President in 1998 the number of registered voters was  
11,013,020. This has increased to 16,109,664 (a staggering 60%  
increase) by the time of the 2007 Constitutional Referendum.

At the same time, Venezuela has held more internationally recognized  
democratic elections than virtually any other country in the world in  
the decade Chávez has been in office.

To argue, as does the HRW, that this situation corresponds in any way  
to stifling civil society is to deny reality.

US-funded opposition

The government, however, has had serious concerns about illegal  
activity by a relatively small number of NGO-type bodies funded by the  
USA, which engage in campaigns to subvert the constitutional order.  
The US funded SUMATE ‘NGO’, for example, centralized the collection of  
signatures to unseat Chavez in 2004, and its leader, Corina Machado,  
endorsed the 2002 coup.

The publicly acknowledged funding of such so-called NGOs comes from US  
government sources including the infamous National Endowment for  
Democracy, USAID, the International Republican Institute (IRI), the  
National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, the American  
Centre for International Labour Solidarity and the Centre for  
International Private Enterprise. The government of Venezuela charges  
that these organisations are channels for the covert funding of  
opposition groups to seek to undermine democratic institutions and the  
elected government.

This charge is amply confirmed by international experience. One  
example illustrates this. On hearing of the ousting of Chávez in April  
2002, International Republican Institute President, George A. Folsom,  
issued the following statement:

     “Last night, led by every sector of civil society, the Venezuelan  
people rose up to defend democracy in their country. Venezuelans were  
provoked into action as a result of systematic repression by the  
Government of Hugo Chavez. Several hundred thousand people filled the  
streets of Caracas to demand the resignation of Lt. Col. Chavez.”

The chairman of the IRI since 1993 has been the current Republican  
presidential candidate John McCain, who has made no bones about his  
intense antagonism to progressive governments in Latin America,  
especially, Chavez. His campaign website even featured an online  
petition calling for support in his quest to “stop the dictators of  
Latin America.” The petition called for the removal of Chávez “in the  
name of democracy and freedom throughout our hemisphere.” Although the  
petition was taken down, it is an indication of his thinking, as  
leader of this NGO funder and a possible future president of the USA.

In a similar vein, several months after the failed 2002 coup, the US  
State Dept established an Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI) in  
Caracas, with money from USAID and which operates out of the US  
Embassy with, among other stated objectives: “to provide fast,  
flexible, short-term assistance targeted at key transition needs.”  
‘Transition’ has to be seen in the context of the US administration’s  
doctrine of its right to seek to externally promote ‘regime change’ in  
countries which it perceives as pursuing policies against the  
interests of the sections of the US it represents.

The Chávez government has been expanding democracy and social progress  
to unprecedented levels. And in truth, there is no serious evidence of  
any systematic effort or policy aimed at attacking human rights; in  
fact, all evidence points in the opposite direction. Therefore, it is  
difficult not to conclude that HRW’s 2008 report, as on previous  
occasions, does not have the purpose of constructive criticism of  
shortcomings or possible flaws in the process of social progress and  
democratization underway in Venezuela – which would be welcome – but  
that it distorts reality to depict a country on the verge of becoming  
a nasty dictatorship.

The imbalance in the  HRW report is evident in that, for example, it  
does not even mention the substantial progress that has been made in  
improving the human rights of the immense majority of the population  
by such means as:

• the reduction of poverty (by 34%);

• the eradication of illiteracy;

• the expansion of education from 6 million people participating in  
education in 1998 to more than 12 million in 2008;

• the access to free health care increased to the great majority of  
the population, about 20 million people, by 2008;

• the provision of subsidized food benefiting 12-14 million people in  
2008;

• the reduction in unemployment to historic low levels of around 7% in
2008;

• the promotion of a far greater role of women in society and the  
economy; and

• the dramatic increase in social spending that has taken place in  
Venezuela since the election of Chavez.

The unbalanced and plain misleading character of HRW’s reports on  
Venezuela has been consistent and has coincided uncannily with the run- 
up to important electoral contests such as the forthcoming November  
elections this year. It issued a communiqué on Venezuela with similar  
unsubstantiated themes in June 2004, just two months before the recall  
referendum against Chavez. In October 2007, it published a statement  
expressing similar preoccupations just two months before the  
constitutional referendum. And HRW published its 2008 report on 18th  
September, just two months away from regional and local authority  
elections in Venezuela in November 2008.

All these reports have echoed US anti-Chavez propaganda: ‘a  
dictatorship is in the making in Venezuela’. Back in June, John McCain  
said in a speech to the Florida Association of Broadcasters: “Hugo  
Chavez has used the cloak of electoral legitimacy to establish a one  
party dictatorship in Venezuela.”

The question presents itself: who stands to gain from Human Rights  
Watch activity in Venezuela – the population of the country or the  
Washington administration seeking to undermine an elected government  
seen as breaking free of its traditional economic and political  
domination?


Dr Francisco Domínguez is head of the Centre for Brazilian and Latin  
American Studies at Middlesex University, UK.