<html>
<body>
<font size=3> <br>
Published on <i>venezuelanalysis.com</i>
(<a href="http://www.venezuelanalysis.com">
http://www.venezuelanalysis.com</a>)<br><br>
<hr>
<br>
</font><h1><b>Human Rights Watch in Venezuela: Lies, Crimes and Cover-ups
</b></h1><font size=3>Author: <br>
James Petras<br><br>
Human Rights Watch, a US-based group claiming to be a non-governmental
organization, but which is in fact funded by government-linked
quasi-private foundations and a Congressional funded political propaganda
organization, the National Endowment for Democracy, has issued a report
"A Decade Under Chavez: Political Intolerance and Lost Opportunities
for Advancing Human Rights in Venezuela" (9/21/2008 hrw.org).
The publication of the "Report" directed by José Miguel Vivanco
and sub-director Daniel Wilkinson led to their expulsion from Venezuela
for repeated political-partisan intervention in the internal affairs of
the country. <br><br>
A close reading of the "Report" reveals an astonishing number
of blatant falsifications and outright fabrications, glaring deletions of
essential facts, deliberate omissions of key contextual and comparative
considerations and especially a cover-up of systematic long-term,
large-scale security threats to Venezuelan democracy posed by Washington.
<br><br>
We will proceed by providing some key background facts about HRW and
Vivanco in order to highlight their role and relations to US imperial
power. We will then comment on their methods, data collection and
exposition. We will analyze each of HRW charges and finally
proceed to evaluate their truth and propaganda value. <br><br>
<b>Background on Vivanco and HRW <br><br>
</b>José Miguel Vivanco served as a diplomatic functionary under the
bloody Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet between 1986-1989, serving no
less as the butcher's rabid apologist before the Inter-American
Commission on Human Rights. His behavior was particularly egregious
during the regime's brutal repression of a mass popular uprising in the
squatter settlements of Santiago in 1986-1987. With the return of
electoral politics (democracy) in Chile, Vivanco took off to Washington
where he set up his own NGO, the Center for Justice and International
Law, disguising his right-wing affinities and passing himself off as a
‘human rights' advocate. In 1994 he was recruited by former US
federal prosecutor, Kenneth Roth, to head up the ‘Americas Division' of
Human Rights Watch. HRW demonstrated a real capacity to provide a
‘human rights' gloss to President Clinton's policy of ‘humanitarian
imperialism'. Roth promoted and supported Clinton's two-month
bombing, destruction and dismemberment of Yugoslavia. HRW covered
up the ethnic cleansing of Serbs in Kosovo by the notorious Albanian
terrorists and gangsters of the Kosovo Liberation Army and the
unprecedented brutal transfer of over 200,000 ethnic Serbs from the
Krajina region of Croatia. HRW backed Clinton's sanctions against
Iraq leading to the deaths of over 500,000 Iraqi children. Nowhere
did the word ‘genocide' ever appear in reference to the US
Administrations massive destruction of Iraq causing hundreds of thousands
of premature deaths. <br><br>
HRW supported the US invasion and occupation of Afghanistan where Kenneth
Roth advised the US generals on how to secure the colonial occupation by
avoiding massive civilian deaths. In words and deeds, HRW has
played an insidious role as backer and adviser of US imperial
intervention, providing the humanitarian ideological cover while issuing
harmless and inconsequential reports criticizing ‘ineffective' excesses,
which ‘undermine' imperial dominance. <br><br>
HRW most notorious intervention was its claim that Israel's murderous
destruction of the Palestinian city of Jenin was ‘not genocidal' and thus
provided the key argument for the US and Israeli blocking of a UN
humanitarian mission and investigative report. As in all of its
‘research' their report was deeply colored by selective interviews and
observations which understated the brutality and killings of Palestinian
civilians by the Israeli state - even while the fanatics who run the
major pro-Israel organizations accused HRW of bias for even mentioning a
single murdered Palestinian.<br>
Method <br><br>
HRW currently makes a big play of its widespread interviews of a broad
cross section of Venezuelan political and civic society government and
opposition groups, as well as its consultation of most available
documents. Yet the Report on Venezuela does not reflect anything of
the sort. There is no careful, straightforward presentation of the
government's elaboration and justification for its actions, no academic
critiques of the anti-democratic actions of anti-Chavez mass media; no
discussion of the numerous journalists' accounts which expose systematic
US intervention. The Report simply records and reproduces
uncritically the claims, arguments and charges of the principle
publicists of the opposition while dismissing out of hand any documented
counter-claims. In other words, Vivanco and company act as lawyers
for the opposition rather than as serious and objective investigators
pursuing a balanced and convincing evaluation of the status of democracy
in Venezuela. <br><br>
The political propaganda intent of Vivanco-HRW is evident in the timing
of their ‘investigations' and the publication of their propaganda
screeds. Each and every previous HRW hostile ‘report' has been
publicized just prior to major conflicts threatening Venezuelan
democratic institutions. In February 2002, barely two months before
the US backed military coup against Chavez, HRW joined the chorus of coup
planners in condemning the Chavez regimes for undermining the ‘separation
of powers' and calling for the intervention of the Organization of
American States. After the coup was defeated through the actions of
millions of Venezuelan citizens and loyalists military officers, HRW
moved quickly to cover its tracks by denouncing the coup - but
subsequently defended the media moguls, trade union bureaucrats and
business elites who promoted the coup from prosecution, claiming the coup
promoters were merely exercising their ‘human rights'. HRW provides
a novel meaning to ‘human rights' when it includes the right to violently
overthrow a democratic government by a military coup d'etat. <br><br>
Following the military coup in 2002 and the bosses' lockout of 2003, HRW
published a report condemning efforts to impose constitutional
constraints on the mass media's direct involvement in promoting violent
actions by opposition groups or terrorists. President Chavez'
"Law for Social Responsibility in Radio and Television"
provided greater constitutional guarantee for freedom of speech than most
Western European capitalist democracies and was far less restrictive than
the measures approved and implemented in Bush's US Patriot Act, which HRW
has never challenged, let alone mounted any campaign against. <br><br>
Just prior to the political referenda in 2004 and 2007, HRW issued
further propaganda broadsides which were almost identical in wording to
the opposition (in fact HRW ‘Reports' were widely published and
circulated by all the leading opposition mass media). HRW defended
the ‘right' of the US National Endowment for Democracy to pour millions
of dollars to fund opposition ‘NGO's', such as SUMATE, accusing the
Chavez government of undermining ‘civil society' organizations.
Needless to say, similar activity in the US by an NGO on behalf of any
foreign government (with the unique exception of Israel) would require
the NGO to register as a foreign agent under very strict US Federal laws;
failure to do so would lead to federal prosecution and a jail term of up
to 5 years. Apparently, HRW's self-promoted ‘credibility' as an
international ‘humanitarian' organization protects it from being
invidiously compared to an agent of imperialist propaganda.
<br><br>
<b>HRW: Five Dimensional Propaganda</b> <br><br>
The HRW Report on Venezuela focuses on five areas of politics and society
to make its case that democracy in Venezuela is being undermined by the
Presidency of Hugo Chavez: political discrimination, the courts, the
media, organized labor and civil society. <br><br>
<i>1.Political Discrimination</i>
<ul>
<li>The Report charges that the government has fired and blacklisted
political opponents from some state agencies and from the national oil
company.
<li>Citizen access to social programs is denied based on their political
opinions.
<li>There is discrimination against media outlets, labor unions and civil
society in response to legitimate criticism or political activity.
</ul><br>
Between December 2002 and 2003, following the failure of the military
coup of the previous April, the major business organizations, senior
executives of the state oil company and sectors of the trade union
bureaucracy organized a political lockout shutting down the oil industry,
paralyzing production through sabotage of its computer-run operations and
distribution outlets in a publicly stated effort to deny government
revenues (80% of which come from oil exports) and overthrow the
democratically elected government. After 3 months and over $20
billion dollars in lost revenues and hundreds of millions of dollars in
damage to machinery, with the aid of the majority of production workers
and technicians, the bosses ‘lockout' was defeated. Those officials
and employees engaged in the political lockout and destruction of
equipment and computers were fired. The government followed normal
procedures backed by the majority of oil workers, who opposed the
lockout, and dismissed the executives and their supporters in order to
defend the national patrimony and social and investment programs from the
self-declared enemies of an elected government. <br><br>
No sane, competent, constitutional lawyer, international human rights
lawyer, UN commissioner or the International Court official considered
the action of the Venezuelan government in this matter to constitute
‘political discrimination'. Even the US State Department, at that
time, did not object to the firing of their allies engaged in economic
sabotage. HRW, on the other hand, is more Pope than the Pope.
<br><br>
Nothing captures the ludicrous extremism of the HRW than its charge that
citizens are denied access to social programs. Every international
organization involved in assessing and developing large social programs,
including UNESCO, the World Health Organization and the UN Food and
Agricultural Organization, have praised the extent and quality of the
coverage of the social programs instituted by the Chavez government
covering 60% of the population and almost 100% of the poor. Since
approximately between 20-30% of the poor still vote for the opposition,
it is clear that needy citizens critical of the government have equal
access to social programs, including food subsidies, free health care and
education. This social safety net is more inclusive than ever
before in the history of Venezuela. In fact some of the poor
suburbs of Caracas, like Catia, which voted down the 2007 referendum, are
major recipients of large-scale, long-term social assistance programs.
<br><br>
Only scoundrels or the ill informed could be convinced of the HRW charge
of discrimination against mass media outlets, labor unions and civil
society groups. The opposition controls 95% of the newspapers, a
majority of the television and radio outlets and frequencies, with the
widest national circulation. The government has ‘broken' the ruling
class monopoly on information by funding two major TV stations and a
growing number of community based radio stations.<br>
There are more trade union members and greater trade union participation
in enterprises, internal debates and free elections than ever before
under previous regimes. Rival lists and intense competition for
office between pro and anti-government lists are common in the trade
unions confederation (UNT). The entire HRW ‘Report' is based on
complaints from the authoritarian CTV(Confederation of Venezuelan
Workers/Confederacion de Trabajadores de Venezuela) bureaucrats who have
lost most of their supporters and are discredited because of their role
in supporting the bloody April 2002 coup. They are universally disdained;
militant workers have not forgotten their corruption and gangster tactics
when they collaborated with previous rightwing regimes and employers.
<br><br>
<i>2. The Courts<br><br>
</i>HWR claims that President Chavez has "effectively neutralized
the judiciary as an independent branch of government". The
claim that the judiciary was ‘independent' is a new argument for HRW -
because a decade earlier when Chavez' 1999 constitution was approved by
referendum, HRW decried the ‘venality, corruption and bias of the entire
judicial system'. After years of releasing the leaders of the 2002 coup,
postponing rulings and undermining positive legislation by elected
legislative bodies and after revelations of high and lower court bribe
taking, the Government finally implemented a series of democratically
approved reforms, expanding and renewing the judicial system. The
fact that the new court appointees do not follow the past practices of
the opposition-appointed judges has evoked hysterical cries by HRW that
the new reformed courts ‘threaten fundamental rights'. The most
bizarre claim by HRM is that the Supreme Court did not ‘counter' a 2007
constitutional reform package. In fact the Supreme Court approved
the placing of constitutional reforms to a popular referendum in which
the Chavez government was narrowly defeated. The Venezuelan Supreme
Court subsequently respected the popular verdict - unlike US Supreme
Court, which overturned the popular vote in the 2000 and 2004
Presidential elections, a constitutional crime against the popular will,
which Kenneth Roth, Vivanco and the rest of HRW have yet to
condemn. <br><br>
<i>3. The Media<br><br>
</i>Every outside media specialist has been highly critical of the
advocacy of violent action (leading up to the coup) and gross
falsifications and libelous ‘reports' (including racist epithets against
Hugo Chavez) propagated by the ruling class-dominated mass media. A
single opposition television network just had one of its many outlets
suspended for openly backing the opposition military seizure of power, an
action that any Western capitalist democracy would have taken in the wake
of a violent uprising. HRW did not, has not and will not condemn
the arrest of dozens of US and international journalists, some brutally
beaten, covering the Republican and Democratic Presidential
Conventions. Nothing even remotely resembling the extraordinary
powers of ‘preventive detention' of journalists by the US Homeland
Security/local and state police forces exists in Venezuela. The
wanton destruction of journalists' cameras and tape recorders by the
police at the US Republican Party Convention would be un-imaginable in
Venezuela today. In contrast the only offense prosecuted in
Venezuela against the media is the act of supporting and advocating
violence aimed at overthrowing democratic institutions. Like all
countries, Venezuela has laws dealing with libel and slander; these are
far weaker than any comparable statutes in the countries upholding the
tradition of the Magna Carta. HRW blatantly falsifies reality by
claiming state control of the print media: All one needs to do is peruse
any newsstand in Venezuela to see a multiplicity of lurid anti-government
headlines, or tune into the radio or television stations and view news
accounts that compete for the worst anti-Chavez propaganda found in the
US Fox News or CNN. <br><br>
<i>4. Organized Labor</i> <br><br>
HRW claims that the Venezuelan government has violated ‘basic principles
of freedom of association' because it requires state oversight and
certification of union elections and that by denying the right to bargain
collectively to non-certified unions, it undermines workers' rights to
freely join the union of their choosing and to strike. Practically
every government in the West has rules and regulations regarding
oversight and certification of union elections, none more onerous than
the US starting with the Taft-Hartley Act of the 1940's and the ‘Right to
Work' Laws current in many states, which have reduced the percentage of
unionized workers in the private sector to less than 3%. In
contrast, during the Chavez Presidency, the number of unionized workers
has more than doubled, in large part because new labor legislation and
labor officials have reduced employer prerogatives to arbitrarily fire
unionized workers. The only union officials who have been
‘decertified' are those who were involved in the violent coup of April
2002 and the employers lockout intended to overthrow the government,
suspend the constitution and undermine the very existence of free
unions. Former Pinochet official Jose Miguel Vivanco delicately
overlooks the gangsterism, thuggery and fraudulent election procedures,
which ran rampant under the previous rightwing Venezuelan labor
confederation, CTV. It was precisely to democratize voting
procedures and to break the stranglehold of the old-guard trade union
bosses that the government monitors oversaw union elections, many of
which had multi-tendency candidates, unfettered debates and free voting
for the first time. <br><br>
I attended union meetings and interviewed high level CTV trade unions
officials in 1970, 1976 and 1978 and found high levels of open vote
buying, government and employer interference and co-optation,
collaboration with the CIA-funded American Institute of Free Labor
Development and large-scale pilfering of union pension funds, none of
which was denounced by HRW. I attended the founding of the new
Venezuelan union confederation, Union Nacional de Trabajadores (UNT) in
2003 and a subsequent national congress. I have witness a totally
different unionism, a shift from government-run ‘corporate' business
unionism to independent social movement unionism with a decidedly class
oriented approach. The UNT is a multi-tendency confederation in
which diverse currents compete, with varying degrees of support and
opposition to the Chavez Government. There are few impediments to
strikes and there is a high degree of independent political action with
no inhibition to workers resorting to strikes in order to demand the
ouster of pro-employer labor officials. <br><br>
For example, this year, steel workers in the Argentine-owned firm SIDOR,
went on strike several times protesting private sector firings (HRW, of
course never discussed private sector violations of workers
rights). Because the Venezuelan Labor Minister tended to take the
side of the employers, the steelworkers marched into a meeting where
Chavez was speaking and demanded the dismissal of his Minister.
After conferring with the workers' leaders, Chavez fired the Labor
Minister, expropriated the steel plant and accepted workers demands for
trade union co-management. Never in Venezuelan labor history have
workers exercised this degree of labor influence in nationalized
plants. There is no doubt that there are government officials who
would like to ‘integrate' labor unions closer to the state; the new
unionists do spend too much time in internal debates and internecine
struggles instead of organizing the informal and temporary worker
sectors. But one fact stands out: Unionized and non-unionized
Venezuelan workers have experienced greater social welfare payments,
rising living standards, greater job protection and greater free choice
in union affiliation than any previous period in their history. It
is ironic that Vivanco, who never raised a word against Pinochet's
anti-labor policies, an uncritical apologist of the AFL-CIO (the
declining and least effective labor confederation in the industrialized
West), should launch a full-scale attack on the fastest growing,
independent and militant trade union movement in the Western
hemisphere. Needless to say, Vivanco avoids any comparative
analysis, least of all between Venezuelan and US labor over the spread of
union organizing, internal democracy and labor representation in
industry, social benefits and influence over government policy. Nor
does HRW refer to the positive assessment by independent international
labor organizations regarding union and labor advances under the Chavez
Presidency. <br><br>
<i>5. Civil Society and HRW: The Mother of All Perversities<br><br>
</i>Jose Miguel Vivanco, who kept quiet during his years as a state
functionary serving the Chilean dictator Pinochet, while thousands of
protestors were beaten, jailed and even tortured and killed and
courageous human rights groups were routinely assaulted, shamelessly
claims that President Chavez has adopted "an aggressively
adversarial approach to local rights advocates and civil society
organization." <br><br>
President Chavez has actively promoted a multitude of independent,
democratically elected community councils with over 3 million affiliated
members, mostly from the poorest half of the population. He has
devolved decision-making power to the councils, bypassing the
party-dominated municipal and state officials, unlike previous regimes
and US AID programs, which channeled funds through loyal local bosses and
clients. Never has Venezuela witnessed more intense sustained
organization, mobilization and activity of civil society movements.
This cuts across the political spectrum, from pro-Chavez to pro-oligarch
neighborhood, civic, working class and upper class groups. Nowhere
in the world are US-funded groups, engaged in overt extra-parliamentary
and even violent confrontations with elected officials, tolerated to the
degree that they enjoy freedom of action as in Venezuela. In the
US, foreign-funded organizations (with the exception of Israeli-funded
groups) are required to register and refrain from engaging in electoral
campaigning, let alone in efforts to destabilize legitimately
constitutional government agencies. In contrast, Venezuela asked
the minimum of foreign government-funded self-styled NGOs in requiring
them to register their source of funding and comply with the rules of
their constitution, that is, to stay out of virulent partisan political
action. Today, as yesterday, all the ‘civil society' organizations,
including these funded by the US, which routinely attack the Chavez
government, can operate freely, publish, assemble and demonstrate
unimpeded. Their fundamental complaint, echoed by HRW, is that the
Chavez government and its supporters criticize them: According to
the new HRW definition of civil society freedom,the opposition has the
right to attack the government - but not the other way around; some
countries can register foreign-funded organizations - but not Venezuela;
and some government can jail terrorists and coup-makers and identify and
criticize their accomplices - but not Venezuela. The grotesque
double-standard, practiced by Human Rights Watch, reveals their political
allegiances: Blind to the vices of the US as it descends into a
police state and equally blind to the virtues of a growing participatory
democracy in Venezuela. <br><br>
The ‘Report' contains egregious omissions. It fails to mention that
Venezuela, under President Chavez, has experienced twelve internationally
supervised and approved elections, including several presidential,
congressional and municipal elections, referenda and recall
elections. These have been the cleanest elections in Venezuelan
history and certainly with more honest vote counting than one would find
in the US presidential contests. <br><br>
The ‘Report' fails to report on the serious security threats including
the recording of phone conversations of active and retired high military
officials planning to violently seize power and assassinate President
Chavez. Under the extraordinary degree of tolerance in Venezuela,
not a single constitutional right has been suspended. In the US,
similar terrorist actions and plans would have led to a state of
emergency and the probable pre-emptive mass incarceration of thousands of
government critics and activists. HRW ignores and downplays
security threats to Venezuelan democracy - whether it involves armed
incursions from Colombian paramilitary groups allied with the pro-US
Venezuelan opposition, the assassination of the chief federal prosecutor
Danilo Anderson who was investigating the role of the opposition in the
bloody coup of April 2002, the US-backed secessionist movement in the
state of Zulia, the collusion of the mass media with violent student mobs
in assaulting Chavez supporters on campus or the economic sabotage and
panic caused by the private sector's hoarding of essential food and other
commodities in the lead-up to the 2007 referendum. <br><br>
One of Vivanco's most glaring omissions is the contrast between
Venezuela's open society approach to the hundreds of thousands of
undocumented immigrant workers from Colombia and the US authoritarian
practice of criminalizing its undocumented laborers. While the US
Homeland Security and Immigration police have implemented arbitrary mass
arrests, assaults and deportation of working heads of immigrant families
- leaving their wives and children vulnerable to destitution, Chavez has
awarded over a million undocumented Colombian immigrant workers and
family members with residency papers and the opportunity for citizenship.
<br><br>
HRW has yet to protest Washington's brutal denial of human rights to its
Latin American and Asian immigrant workers in recent months. HRW
did not issue a single protest when US-backed local oligarch politicians,
local government officials and racist gangs in Bolivia went on a rampage
and slaughtered three dozen unarmed Indian peasant workers.
Vivanco's squalid selective slandering of Venezuela is only exceeded by
his systematic silence when there are abuses involving US collaboraters!
<br><br>
<b>Conclusion</b> <br><br>
The Human Rights Watch Report on Venezuela is a crude propaganda document
that, even in its own terms, lacks the minimum veneer of ‘balance', which
the more sophisticated ‘humanitarian' imperialists have put out in the
past. The omissions are monumental: No mention of President Chavez'
programs which have reduced poverty over the past decade from more than
60% to less than 30%; no recognition of the universal health system which
has provided health care to 16 million Venezuelan citizens and residents
who were previously denied even minimal access; and no acknowledgment of
the subsidized state-run grocery stores which supply the needs of 60% of
the population who can now purchase food at 40% of the private retail
price. <br><br>
HRW's systematic failure to mention the advances experienced by the
majority of Venezuelan citizens, while peddling outright lies about civic
repression , is characteristic of this mouthpiece of Empire. Its
gross distortion about labor rights makes this report a model for any
high school or college class on political propaganda. <br><br>
The widespread coverage and uncritical promotion and citation of the
‘Report' (and the expulsion of its US-based authors for gross
intervention on behalf of the opposition) by all the major newspapers
from the New York Times, to Le Monde in France, the London Times, La
Stampa in Italy and El Pais in Spain gives substance to the charge that
the Report was meant to bolster the US effort to isolate Venezuela rather
than pursue legitimate humanitarian goals in Venezuela. <br><br>
The major purpose of the HRW ‘Report' was to intervene in the forthcoming
November municipal and state elections on the side of the far-right
opposition. The ‘Report' echoes verbatim the unfounded charges and
hysterical claims of the candidates supported by the far right and the
Bush Administration. HRW always manages to pick the right time to
issue their propaganda bromides. Their reports mysteriously
coincide with US intervention in electoral processes and destabilization
campaigns. In Venezuela today the Report has become one of the most
widely promoted propaganda documents of the leading rightist anti-Chavez
candidates. <br><br>
For the partisans of democracy, human rights and self-determination,
every effort should be made to expose the insidious role of HRW and its
Pinochetista propagandist, Vivanco, for what they are - publicists and
promoters of US-backed clients who have given ‘human rights' a dirty
name.<br><br>
<br>
<hr>
<b>Source URL (retrieved on <i>Oct 1 2008 - 12:06</i>):</b>
<a href="http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/3841">
http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/3841<br><br>
<br><br>
</a></font><x-sigsep><p></x-sigsep>
<font size=3 color="#FF0000">Freedom Archives<br>
522 Valencia Street<br>
San Francisco, CA 94110<br><br>
</font><font size=3 color="#008000">415 863-9977<br><br>
</font><font size=3 color="#0000FF">
<a href="http://www.freedomarchives.org/" eudora="autourl">
www.Freedomarchives.org</a></font><font size=3> </font></body>
</html>