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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Billionaire-backed Human Rights Watch lobbies for lethal US sanctions on leftist governments as Covid crisis rages</h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">Ben Norton - April 8, 2020<br></div>
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<h3>Regime change-hungry HRW is proudly taking credit for
crushing new US sanctions on Nicaragua while pushing to escalate
Washington’s economic war on Venezuela. The Grayzone presents a deep
dive into the “human rights” arm of US empire.</h3>
<h3>By Ben Norton</h3>
<p>Human Rights Watch, the leading so-called rights organization in the
United States, has actively lobbied for Washington to impose suffocating
sanctions on leftist governments in Latin America. The group has even
praised the Donald Trump administration for ramping up its aggressively
destabilizing regime-change measures.</p>
<p>NGOs like Human Rights Watch (HRW) depict targeted sanctions as a
more palatable alternative to military action, although these measures
are widely recognized by international legal experts to be a form of
economic warfare that have led to the deaths of many thousands of
civilians, destroyed the livelihoods of countless people, and devastated
entire nations’ economies.</p>
<p>As the <a href="https://thegrayzone.com/category/coronavirus/">coronavirus pandemic</a>
spread across the globe, HRW operatives took credit for new sanctions
the Trump administration had imposed on Nicaragua’s democratically
elected leftist government. Among those cheering on the escalation of
economic warfare was HRW Australia development and outreach manager
Stephanie McLennan, who chirped that the fresh round of sanctions were
“great news!”</p>
<p>Unilateral sanctions are designed to cripple the economies of
countries whose governments are being targeted for regime change,
locking them out of the US-dominated financial system and collectively
punishing the entire civilian population, depriving them of basic human
rights so that Washington can install a more friendly regime. The US
government routinely implements these coercive measures without the
backing of the United Nations or other international bodies.</p>
<p>Rather than challenge the unilateral economic war waged across the
globe by the US, Human Rights Watch is taking credit for the escalation
of Washington’s assault on Nicaragua – and at the very moment when the
small country of just 6 million people grapples with the deadly Covid-19
outbreak, and an arduous peace and reconciliation process.</p>
<p>In 2018, the Trump administration backed a bloody coup attempt in
Nicaragua, in which right-wing extremists shot, tortured, and killed
state security forces and leftist Sandinista activists, burning down
buildings and setting people on fire, in hopes of destabilizing the
government. When the putsch fizzled out, <a href="https://thegrayzone.com/2018/06/19/ned-nicaragua-protests-us-government/">opposition groups funded by the US government</a> turned to economic warfare and sanctions as the next weapon in the regime-change arsenal.</p>
<p>Purported <a href="https://thegrayzone.com/2019/08/25/deaths-for-dollars-nicaraguas-human-rights-organizations/">“human rights” organizations in Nicaragua</a>
that work closely with the right-wing opposition played a major role in
this coup attempt, selling outlandish, fabricated statistics that were
eagerly regurgitated by the corporate media and international NGOs like
HRW.</p>
<p>HRW’s staunch support for US sanctions clearly demonstrates how the
group has been instrumentalized as an arm of US pressure against
independent states in the Global South, especially socialist ones. NGOs
like HRW provide cover for economic warfare, preventing nations like
Nicaragua from rebuilding and healing the social divisions that have
been exacerbated through successive US-backed destabilization campaigns.</p>
<p>The same strategy is apparent in Venezuela, another leftist country
in Latin America targeted by an ongoing US coup attempt. Having spent
over a decade demonizing the socialist government in Caracas, HRW is now
calling for more painful sanctions to be levied against the country,
which is already under an <a href="https://thegrayzone.com/2019/10/11/life-resistance-venezuela-ben-norton-us-blockade/">illegal, unilateral US blockade</a> that has caused the deaths of at least <a href="https://thegrayzone.com/2019/05/06/us-state-department-publishes-then-deletes-sadistic-venezuela-hit-list-boasting-of-economic-ruin/">40,000 civilians</a>, and perhaps as many as <a href="https://thegrayzone.com/2020/03/17/us-sanctions-venezuelas-health-sector-coronavirus/">100,000</a>.</p>
<p>Scholars and independent human rights experts have long criticized
HRW for its blatant double standards against Venezuela. In 2008,
following a wave of sabotage and violence by the country’s US-backed
opposition, HRW published a massive report uncritically echoing the
unsubstantiated claims of right-wing activists as supposed facts, while
systematically whitewashing their violence. The dubious report prompted
more than <a href="http://www.coha.org/2008/12/taking-human-rights-watch-to-task/">100 scholars</a>
to pen an open letter panning HRW for its failure to meet “minimal
standards of scholarship, impartiality, accuracy or credibility.”</p>
<p>Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth has led the charge
for more sanctions on Nicaragua and Venezuela. His pleas for escalating
the US economic war have been vociferously amplified by José Miguel
Vivanco, the director of HRW’s Americas division.</p>
<p>Vivanco is a close ally of the right-wing opposition forces in Latin
America, and is notorious for advancing their most maximalist positions
under the guise of human rights concern. He rejects virtually any
effort at negotiations with the leftist states that comprise the Trump
administration’s “Troika of Tyranny,” insisting that sanctions are “the
only language they understand.”</p>
<p>Vivanco has spilled oceans of ink lobbying the US Congress to drop
the economic hammer on the few remaining socialist governments in Latin
America. His behavior is part and parcel of HRW’s historic mission to
destabilize virtually any government the US State Department deems to be
insufficiently democratic, and to do so behind the veil of performative
concern for the oppressed.</p>
<h3>HRW, a coup-supporting ‘human rights’ group funded by a billionaire cold warrior</h3>
<p>Since its founding days, Human Rights Watch has functioned as a <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/views/2014/06/09/human-rights-watchs-revolving-door">revolving door between the NGO sector and the US government</a>. It has repeatedly refused to oppose American wars and military interventions, and <a href="https://thegrayzone.com/2017/12/11/human-rights-watch-honduras-venezuela-kenneth-roth/">displayed clear double standards</a>
toward Washington’s allies, while fixating obsessively on the supposed
misdeeds of independent nations targeted by the US for regime change.</p>
<p>HRW was founded during the height of the Cold War as Helsinki Watch,
an anti-Soviet lobby group closely linked to the US government and
funded by the Ford Foundation, which served as <a href="https://thenewpress.com/books/cultural-cold-war">CIA passthrough</a>.</p>
<p>Ken Roth has directed HRW for 27 years – far longer than most leaders
he derides as dictators. Having begun his career as a federal
prosecutor in the US Attorney Southern District of New York Office, Roth
has not deviated much from Washington’s foreign-policy agency.</p>
<p><a href="https://thegrayzone.com/2019/11/20/human-rights-watch-bolivia-coup-massacre/">Roth supported the far-right military coup in Bolivia</a>
in November 2019, and subsequently downplayed the junta’s massacre of
indigenous protesters. Back in 2011, the HRW director wrote an op-ed
glorifying the “responsibility to protect” doctrine, which holds that
the US and its allies must dispatch their military to destroy
governments that supposedly threaten civilian populations. He deployed
the thin cover for imperial conquest to justify the <a href="http://www.responsibilitytoprotect.org/index.php/crises/190-crisis-in-libya/3284-the-security-council-has-at-last-lived-up-to-its-duty">NATO military intervention in Libya</a>, which transformed the previously prosperous country into a failed state that was home to open-air slave markets.</p>
<p>This January, Roth <a href="https://twitter.com/KenRoth/status/1213167856474640385">helped justify</a>
the Trump administration’s extrajudicial execution of top Iranian
general Qassem Soleimani, a brazen act of war that nearly plunged the
region into a catastrophic conflict. In recent months, he has taken his
longstanding resentment of China’s government to unhinged levels, <a href="https://twitter.com/KenRoth/status/1212183746755080192">likening Beijing to Nazi Germany</a> and spreading a fake video of a special effects training which he implied depicted <a href="https://twitter.com/KenRoth/status/1190672847926157314">Chinese “killer robots.”</a></p>
<p>All the while, Roth’s organization has marketed itself as a noble and
absolutely impartial defender of human rights. Its disingenuous global
branding campaign has been possible thanks to a <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2010/09/07/george-soros-give-100-million-human-rights-watch">$100 million grant</a> from anti-communist billionaire <a href="https://thegrayzone.com/tag/george-soros/">George Soros.</a>
Soros is a key financier of the regime-change industry and a zealous
cold warrior who worked closely with the United States and Western
Europe to help overthrow socialist-oriented governments in Eastern
Europe through a series of “color revolutions,” privatize their
economies, and integrate the newly capitalist states into the European
Union and NATO.</p>
<p>The Washington Post’s David Ignatius <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1991/09/22/innocence-abroad-the-new-world-of-spyless-coups/92bb989a-de6e-4bb8-99b9-462c76b59a16/">named Soros</a>
in 1991 as a key figure among a coterie of “overt operatives” who “have
been doing in public what the CIA used to do in private – providing
money and moral support for pro-democracy groups, training resistance
fighters, working to subvert communist rule.”</p>
<p>While Soros has become something of a bogeyman for the right-wing,
targeted with inane conspiracy theories and anti-Semitic vitriol, the
oligarch has been granted broad cover from center-left forces across the
West to finance pro-neoliberal regime change operations.</p>
<p>One of the two co-founders of HRW, Aryeh Neier, went on to become the
president of Soros’ Open Society Foundations. The other co-founder, <a href="https://books.google.com.ni/books?id=ZxXfCgAAQBAJ&pg=PT184&lpg=PT184&dq=human+rights+office+empire+state+building+soros&source=bl&ots=_QsFcnyJeQ&sig=ACfU3U31KJuUkA7SHBjKAIYlXaiHMqslUw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwizmMP6_croAhUKhOAKHa13AMUQ6AEwAHoECAwQJw#v=onepage&q=%22it%20would%20be%20hard%20to%20overstate%20the%20role%20that%20aryeh%20neier%20had%20in%20the%20development%20of%20HRW%22&f=false">Robert L. Bernstein</a>,
gave Neier most of the credit for the organization’s genesis, writing
in his memoir, “It would be hard to overstate the role that Aryeh Neier
had in the development of HRW.”</p>
<p>Like Roth, HRW’s billionaire sponsor has taken a hardline position
against China, calling it a “mortal danger” to neoliberal capitalist
democracies, pouring money into groups to try to weaken and destabilize
Beijing and remove the Communist Party from power.</p>
<h3>Wall Street’s favorite human rights group speaks for its billionaire patrons</h3>
<p>Thanks to the generous patronage of billionaire oligarchs like Soros,
HRW operatives hobnob with fellow elites in the organization’s opulent
office space in New York City’s Empire State Building. From these lavish
headquarters, HRW operatives look down from their <a href="https://digitalcommons.nyls.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=1001&context=rooftops_project">three entire floors</a> as they plot ways to turn up the heat on foreign governments they consider “authoritarian.”</p>
<p>The Empire State Building in fact honored these tenants in 2013 by turning “a <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2013/12/10/empire-state-building-honors-human-rights-watch">bright blue to honor Human Rights Watch</a>.” Four years earlier, HRW officials sent an indignant <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2009/09/30/letter-empire-state-building-management">open letter</a>
to the building’s management condemning its decision to commemorate the
60th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China.</p>
<p>HRW’s neoliberal political orientation reflects the ideology of its
billionaire sponsors. The group has a very limited understanding of
human rights that excludes the right of colonized peoples to resist
their occupiers with force or the right of workers to organize and form a
union.</p>
<p>HRW is muted in its concern for inhabitants of the Global North,
saying far less about Black Americans brutalized and murdered by US
police than it does about the repression of participants in NATO-backed
color revolutions in Eastern Europe.</p>
<p>While it actively undermines socialist governments and their
worker-based constituencies, HRW has collaborated closely with corporate
America. In fact, it celebrated its <span>40th anniversary on Wall Street in March 2018, ringing the bell that opens the NASDAQ stock exchange.</span></p>
<p>“At Human Rights Watch we know business prospers where human rights
& the rule of law are protected,” tweeted Minky Worden, its director
of global initiatives, without a hint of irony.</p>
<p>Soros is not the only billionaire signing checks for HRW. The group has also come under fire for taking <a href="https://theintercept.com/2020/03/02/human-rights-watch-took-money-from-saudi-businessman-after-documenting-his-coercive-labor-practices/"> huge sums from a Saudi oligarch</a>
as apparent hush-money after documenting the abuse of his employees.
Ken Roth personally oversaw the $470,000 grant from the Saudi
billionaire, and accepted responsibility for the highly questionable
decision only after it was publicly exposed.</p>
<p>While conservatives have on occasion attacked Human Rights Watch
because of its links to liberal organizations and its criticisms of
Israel’s atrocities in the illegally occupied Palestinian territories,
HRW has paid tribute to one of the most militaristic senators to serve
in Congress.</p>
<p>When Sen. <a href="https://thegrayzone.com/2018/08/31/human-rights-watch-hrw-praises-extreme-war-hawk-john-mccain/">John McCain</a>
died in 2018, HRW lionized the Republican politician, a stalwart
champion of American wars of aggression, as a “compassionate voice”
whose legacy was defined by his supposed “defense of human rights.”</p>
<p>In the same vein, HRW refused to oppose the US invasion of Iraq,
which was blatantly illegal under international law. (Only after the
start of the Iraq War did the NGO finally <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2004/01/25/war-iraq-not-humanitarian-intervention">speak out</a>, when it was safe — and guaranteed to not have a tangible impact.)</p>
<p>Similarly, HRW has repeatedly <a href="http://inthesetimes.com/article/20970/Yemen-War-Saudi-Arabia-Amnesty-International-Human-Rights-Watch-military">declined to call for an end</a>
to the US-backed Saudi war on Yemen, even while it has documented the
Washington-backed Saudi forces’ horrendous atrocities in the country.</p>
<p>As it shrinks from vocal opposition to Washington’s regime-change
wars, HRW actively lobbies the US and other Western governments to
impose sanctions on nations it claims are rights violators.</p>
<p>HRW insists the sanctions it lobbies for do not hurt civilians
because they are “targeted” against government officials and
institutions. The best evidence debunking this claim is the reality for
inhabitants of Venezuela and Iran, where US sanctions have made lives
hell for much of the population, particularly the poor, by locking these
countries out of the international financial system, depriving them of
the assets they need to import food, medicine, and medical equipment.</p>
<p>And even when HRW has, in very rare cases, acknowledged the destructive impact on US sanctions, as it did in a one-time <a href="https://www.hrw.org/report/2019/10/29/maximum-pressure/us-economic-sanctions-harm-iranians-right-health">report on Iran</a>,
it has expressly refrained from calling for an end to them. Instead of
opposing sanctions on principle, it has simply criticized the way they
are implemented, calling for “clarifications” on the measures that
already exist.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, as Human Rights Watch lobbies for even more aggressive
sanctions on Washington’s Official Enemies, it has not demonstrated a
fraction of the same concern for repressive right-wing regimes backed by
the US. HRW does sporadically report on these countries’ abuses, but
not nearly as consistently.</p>
<img src="https://i2.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/HRW-Jose-Miguel-Vivanco-Luis-Almagro-OAS.jpg?resize=845%2C566&ssl=1" alt="HRW Jose Miguel Vivanco Luis Almagro OAS" width="845" height="566">Neoconservative
Human Rights Watch Americas director José Miguel Vivanco with
Organization of American States Secretary General Luis Almagro, another
regime-change lobbyist (Photo credit: OAS)
<h3>HRW praises Trump admin for imposing Nicaragua sanctions it lobbied for</h3>
<p>The Trump administration has dedicated itself to the overthrow of
Nicaragua’s democratically elected Sandinista government, backing a
violent coup attempt in 2018, dubbing the small country a supposed
“threat to national security,” and imposing several rounds of sanctions,
which have crippled the economy and disproportionately impacted the
poor and working class.</p>
<p>On March 5, the <a href="https://thegrayzone.com/2020/03/12/us-house-sanctions-nicaragua/">US government hit Nicaragua with a new round of sanctions</a>, this time targeting the country’s police forces.</p>
<p>Numerous Human Rights Watch operatives responded by publicly
lavishing praise on the Trump administration. One HRW employee who
previously worked for the US government placed an op-ed in a right-wing
Nicaraguan media outlet applauding the sanctions.</p>
<p>The Grayzone has previously reported on how HRW joined the US government and Organization of American States to vigorously <a href="https://thegrayzone.com/2020/02/28/us-oas-nicaragua-political-prisoners-murder/">lobby for the release of violent criminals who participated in the coup attempt</a>,
using lists of Washington-funded right-wing opposition groups that
falsely characterized them as “political prisoners.” After the
Sandinista government ceded to the international pressure campaign and
agreed to an amnesty, one man who was released went on to stab his own
pregnant girlfriend to death, murdering her in cold blood.</p>
<p>HRW has not commented on this scandal, and has shown no regret for
its actions. Instead, the “rights” group doubled down on its call for
more aggressive international action against Nicaragua’s elected
government.</p>
<p>On March 17, in the middle of the <a href="https://thegrayzone.com/2020/04/01/us-conspiracy-theory-on-china-coronavirus-trump/">deadly coronavirus pandemic</a>, an associate in HRW’s Americas division named <a href="https://www.hrw.org/about/people/megan-monteleone">Megan Monteleone</a> published an article praising the Trump administration for the new sanctions on Nicaragua’s police force.</p>
<p>Monteleone notes in her official bio on the HRW website: “Prior to
joining Human Rights Watch, she worked as an International Affairs
Specialist at the U.S. Department of Justice” — yet another example of
the revolving door between Washington and this so-called
non-governmental organization.</p>
<p>Monteleone’s op-ed was printed in the website Confidencial, a
mouthpiece for Nicaragua’s right-wing opposition — which is heavily
funded by the US government and closely collaborates with Washington.</p>
<p>Confidencial does not even feign partiality; it is aggressively
partisan, routinely referring to Nicaragua’s elected government as a “<a href="https://confidencial.com.ni/regimen-separa-al-jefe-policial-de-control-del-sistema-de-pensiones/">regime</a>” and a “dictatorship.”</p>
<p>Confidencial is owned by Carlos Fernando Chamorro, an oligarch from
the Chamorro clan, the most powerful family in Nicaragua, which has
produced one rightist opposition leader after another. He is the son of
Nicaragua’s former President Violeta Chamorro, a conservative who took
power after a decade-long US terror war and economic blockade.</p>
<p>Confidencial strongly supported the violent 2018 coup attempt in
Nicaragua, acting as a de facto public relations vehicle for the
US-backed coup-mongers as they killed and terrorized state security
forces, leftist activists, Sandinista supporters, and their family
members.</p>
<p>Human Rights Watch firmly took the side of the violent US-backed
opposition in the 2018 putsch. The supposed rights organization blamed
the government entirely for the violence, whitewashing and erasing the
heinous crimes carried out by the Washington-allied coup-mongers.</p>
<p>Monteleone’s article in Confidencial was a continuation of HRW’s
exercise in naked bias: She did not once mention the wave of opposition
violence, while declaring, “New US sanctions offer hope for victims who
are waiting for justice.”</p>
<p>In fact, HRW took credit for the new Trump administration sanctions.
Monteleone pointed out in her article that, “In 2019, Human Rights Watch
recommended sanctions against two of the three named officials.”</p>
<p>Monteleone even quoted the US government (her former employer) in the
op-ed, treating the highly politicized accusations of the US Treasury
as unquestionable fact.</p>
<p>“The new sanctions are a positive step, not only to hold those
responsible to account, but also to help curb ongoing abuses,” the HRW
associate wrote.</p>
<p>She concluded her op-ed in the Nicaraguan opposition mouthpiece by
calling for more countries to impose more sanctions: “It is critical for
governments in the region and Europe to reinforce this message and
continue pressuring the Ortega government by adopting more targeted
sanctions directed at top officials responsible for past and ongoing
abuses.”</p>
<p>Confidencial translated Monteleone’s article into Spanish and
published it alongside a political cartoon demonizing the Nicaraguan
police force. Her op-ed was also promoted on Twitter by HRW’s right-wing
Americas director José Miguel Vivanco, who works closely with
conservative opposition forces in Latin America and advances their
agenda on the international stage.</p>
<p><img src="https://i1.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Megan-Monteleone-Nicaragua-Confidencial-HRW.png?resize=392%2C527&ssl=1" alt="Megan Monteleone Nicaragua Confidencial HRW" width="392" height="527"></p>
<p>On March 19 — after thousands of Americans had died from the Covid-19 pandemic, and the federal US government was <a href="https://thegrayzone.com/2020/03/30/coronavirus-privatization-pandemic-national-security/">doing virtually nothing</a>
to help them — HRW executive director Kenneth Roth praised the Trump
administration for “imposing a modicum of accountability” with its new
sanctions. (This came just a week after Roth condemned the World Health
Organization for supposedly being “<a href="https://twitter.com/KenRoth/status/1237865316278882306">overly sycophantic to China</a>.”)</p>
<p>The only other article Megan Monteleone has listed in her bio at HRW
is another anti-Sandinista screed published in Infobae, a staunchly
right-wing website based in Argentina and owned by a rightist oligarch.
Like the opposition media outlets in Nicaragua, Infobae describes
Nicaragua’s elected government a “<a href="https://www.infobae.com/america/america-latina/2019/12/15/el-regimen-de-nicaragua-nacionalizo-la-empresa-de-uno-de-los-hijos-de-ortega-sancionada-por-eeuu/">regime</a>” and “dictatorship” in its reports.</p>
<p>Monteleone’s obsessive hatred of Nicaragua’s leftist government is apparent on her <a href="https://twitter.com/MegMonteleone">Twitter account</a>, where almost all of her tweets are <a href="http://archive.vn/sqYfa">anti-Nicaragua posts</a>. Apparently other countries in Latin America, let alone the rest of the world, are not violating human rights.</p>
<p>HRW colleagues joined Monteleone in praising the new Trump administration sanctions on Nicaragua, including <a href="https://twitter.com/EmmaDaly/status/1239976107623006208">Emma Daly</a>, the acting deputy executive director for media at Human Rights Watch, and <a href="https://twitter.com/KooyJan/status/1240246168187265025">Jan Kooy</a>, HRW’s deputy European media director.</p>
<h3>HRW lobbies for more civilian-killing sanctions on Nicaragua (and Venezuela)</h3>
<p>This was far from the first time Human Rights Watch clamored for
sanctions on Nicaragua. In fact, the “rights” group has actively lobbied
on behalf of the country’s tiny right-wing opposition.</p>
<p>HRW Americas division director José Miguel Vivanco has shown a
blatant bias against left-wing countries in the region, along with an
obsession with undercutting Nicaragua’s Sandinista government.</p>
<p>In June 2019, Vivanco testified before the US Congress, lobbying the
legislative body “to impose targeted sanctions —including asset freezes—
against senior Nicaraguan officials.”</p>
<p>In its official <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/06/11/nicaragua-us-should-impose-targeted-sanctions">press release</a>
on the congressional testimony, HRW stated clearly, “The United States
Congress should press the executive branch to impose targeted sanctions,
including travel bans and asset freezes, against senior Nicaraguan
government officials.”</p>
<p>HRW made no mention whatsoever of the extreme violence carried out by
the Nicaraguan right-wing opposition in its coup attempt, blaming all
of the deaths and injuries on the government instead.</p>
<p>The so-called rights organization also praised the Trump
administration’s previous imposition of sanctions on Nicaragua,
declaring in its press release, “Human Rights Watch supports the
successful application of the Global Magnitsky Act in July and December
2018, when the US Treasury Department imposed sanctions on five
Nicaraguans implicated in human rights abuses and corruption.”</p>
<p>HRW went a step further and urged US members of Congress to meet with
their leaders of Nicaragua’s US-backed opposition: “Human Rights Watch
also recommended that the US Congress: … Meet regularly with human
rights defenders, activists, journalists, and the opposition from
Nicaragua who come to Washington to maintain balance in its
understanding of the situation in Nicaragua,” the group stated.</p>
<p>Just a week after the congressional testimony, Human Rights Watch and
Vivanco revived their calls for the Trump administration to impose
sanctions on Nicaragua in a report titled “Crackdown in Nicaragua:
Torture, Ill-Treatment, and Prosecutions of Protesters and Opponents.”
The paper completely whitewashed the coup attempt, uncritically echoing
the dubious and rumors narratives of the right-wing opposition.</p>
<p>In a new press release accompanying this report, <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/06/19/nicaragua-targeted-sanctions-justice-key-curb-abuses">HRW expanded its call for sanctions</a> not just from the US government, but also from other governments in Europe and Latin America.</p>
<p>“Governments in the Americas and Europe should impose targeted sanctions against top Nicaraguan authorities,” HRW wrote.</p>
<p>This “rights” organization provided a list of Nicaraguan government
officials who “should be subjected to targeted sanctions, such as travel
bans and assets freezes,” including President Daniel Ortega and
numerous top police and security officials. Most of these Nicaraguan
officials had or have subsequently been sanctioned by the US government.</p>
<p>In both English and <a href="https://twitter.com/JMVivancoHRW/status/1141337935117193216">Spanish</a>, Vivanco amplified this demand for more economic war.</p>
<h3>Vivanco: ‘You can’t negotiate… You have to double down on the sanctions’</h3>
<p>José Miguel Vivanco, the director of Human Rights Watch’s Americas
division, has adopted some of the most maximalist positions of Latin
America’s right-wing as his own. He publicly opposes negotiations with
Nicaragua’s government, insisting that economic warfare is the only
possible action.</p>
<p>In English, Vivanco’s language is careful to appear reasonable. In
Spanish, however, the gloves come off, displaying the hyperbolic
rhetoric familiar to radical right-wing Latin American activists.
Vivanco regularly refers to the Nicaragua’s democratically elected
government in <a href="https://twitter.com/JMVivancoHRW/status/1140989244154028032">Spanish</a> as a “<a href="https://twitter.com/JMVivancoHRW/status/1106664872333463552">regime</a>” and “dictatorship,” for example.</p>
<p>“You can’t negotiate with the blood-soaked dictatorship of Ortega and
Murillo,” Vivanco tweeted in March 2019. “On the contrary, you have to
double down on the sanctions.”</p>
<p>A few days later, in a softball interview with the corporate media
monolith Univision, Vivanco insisted, “The only language that Daniel
Ortega understands is sanctions and international pressure.” (He has
repeated this hardline position numerous times.)</p>
<p>Like his boss in New York, Ken Roth, Vivanco occasionally offers
tepid criticism of the US and its allies. But his focus on leftist
governments under siege by the US is clearly disproportionate. A survey
of the HRW Americas director’s Twitter feed shows he says comparatively
little about Brazil, Colombia, Honduras, and Bolivia — all authoritarian
right-wing governments that oversee horrific human rights abuses on a
regular basis. Yet Vivanco launches hysterical broadsides against the
left-wing leaders of Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba, and even Mexico on a
daily basis.</p>
<p>Vivanco has again and again, on dozens of occasions, <a href="http://archive.fo/fklHZ">called for sanctions</a> on Nicaragua and Venezuela, while praising existing US government sanctions, in both English and <a href="http://archive.fo/9vAvO">Spanish</a>.</p>
<p>Vivanco frequently shares hardline op-eds from Nicaragua’s right-wing
media outlets. He even amplifies press releases from the country’s
opposition groups, like the <a href="https://thegrayzone.com/2020/02/28/us-oas-nicaragua-political-prisoners-murder/">US government-backed Civic Alliance</a>, tweeting their call for sanctions — giving the HRW stamp of approval to these extreme right-wing political forces.</p>
<h3>HRW and Vivanco lobby for more sanctions on Venezuela</h3>
<p>Nicaragua is not the only country where Human Rights Watch has lobbied for economic warfare.</p>
<p>HRW also has a long history of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/mar/11/state-department-human-rights">extreme bias against Venezuela</a> and its leftist Chavista government.</p>
<p>Executive director Kenneth Roth frequently condemns President Nicolás Maduro as “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwyMq4GboDo">autocratic</a>,” while Americas director José Miguel Vivanco calls routinely for expanding sanctions on Venezuela and its officials.</p>
<p>When the Trump administration expanded its already suffocating
sanctions on Venezuela in September 2018, Vivanco cheered. “Today’s
sanctions against the Maduro regime are very revealing of the political
isolation of the government and its lack of legitimacy,” he wrote.</p>
<p>In June 2019, two months after a report by leading economists found that at least <a href="https://cepr.net/report/economic-sanctions-as-collective-punishment-the-case-of-venezuela/">40,000 Venezuelan civilians had already died</a> due to the US sanctions, Vivanco turned up the heat.</p>
<p>Repeating much of the same neoconservative rhetoric he employed
against Nicaragua, the HRW Americas director called for European
governments to follow Trump’s lead.</p>
<p>“Targeted sanctions is the only language Maduro seems to understand. Time for European nations to impose them,” Vivanco tweeted.</p>
<p>Back in July 2017, the Trump administration cracked down aggressively on Venezuela, hitting it with severe sanctions.</p>
<p>Vivanco welcomed the economic assault, demonizing Venezuela’s democratically elected President Nicolás Maduro as a “dictator.”</p>
<p>Vivanco has even used Venezuela to attack prominent left-wing
intellectuals, such as Noam Chomsky. Taking a hardline neoconservative
position, Vivanco tweeted, “Ideology has made Chomsky and friends say
some nonsense about Venezuela.”</p>
<p>“There’s no democracy in [Venezuela],” Vivanco declared. “The problem
in [Venezuela] is not ‘polarization’ (it’s that the regime oppresses
dissent).”</p>
<p>The leading “human rights” official also doubled down on his staunch
support for sanctions, declaring, “US/Canada sanctions do not harm the
poor (but are targeted to specific officials).”</p>
<p>This demonstrably false claim has been debunked by credible
international human rights experts, who have warned that the
international sanctions on Venezuela prevent the country from importing
medicine and medical equipment, because the government is locked out of
the financial system and cannot do business with companies that fear
being hit with secondary sanctions by Washington.</p>
<p>But Vivanco’s thirst for the destruction of Venezuela’s government is
so extreme he has attacked United Nations human rights experts for
refusing to toe the line on sanctions.</p>
<p>When the Trump administration hit Venezuela with suffocating
sanctions in July 2017, the action was so severe that it led to a
response from the <a href="https://thegrayzone.com/2019/04/07/un-rapporteur-says-us-sanctions-against-venezuela-are-the-bluntest-way-to-engineer-regime-change-and-are-causing-blanket-starvation/">UN special rapporteur on on the negative impact of unilateral coercive measures</a>, Idriss Jazairy.</p>
<p>Jazairy released an official statement in his capacity as the UN’s
top experts on sanctions, stating, “Sanctions would worsen the situation
of the people in Venezuela, who are already suffering from crippling
inflation and a lack of access to adequate food and medicine.”</p>
<p>These sanctions “can have a particularly devastating impact” of civilians, Jazairy warned.</p>
<p>HRW’s Americas director threw a tantrum in response, attacking the UN special rapporteur and defending the US sanctions.</p>
<p>“Nonsense,” Vivanco tweeted. He claimed the UN expert “fails to distinguish [between] targeted and general sanctions.”</p>
<p>This concern for Venezuelan civilians is “helping Maduro,” the right-wing HRW official declared.</p>
<p>In the process, Vivanco revealed his blatant double standards.</p>
<p>Back in 2017, the Venezuelan government arrested the right-wing
opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez, who had presided directly over a wave
of violence and numerous US-backed coup attempts against the elected
Chavista administration.</p>
<p>Referring to Venezuela’s attorney general, Tarek William Saab, as
“just another bureaucrat,” Vivanco harshly condemned the arrest.</p>
<p>For HRW’s Americas director, Venezuela’s sovereign government does
not have the right to crack down on coup-plotters inside its own
territory — but the US government and European nations have every right
to hit Venezuela with all forms of economic warfare.</p>
<h3>Lionizing Ecuador’s repressive right-wing leader Moreno, while demonizing leftist Correa</h3>
<p>José Miguel Vivanco’s hypocrisy was also apparent when he held a
friendly meeting with the repressive, US-backed leader of Ecuador, Lenín
Moreno, in July 2019.</p>
<p>“It was an honor to meet today with President Lenín,” Vivanco said, heaping praise on the US-backed leader.</p>
<p>HRW and Vivanco had little criticism to offer towards the Moreno
administration, even as it has systematically rounded up, arrested,
purged, and exiled members of the progressive Citizens’ Revolution
movement, which was founded by former leftist President Rafael Correa,
now Moreno’s implacable enemy and favorite bogeyman.</p>
<p>Moreno has imprisoned numerous democratically elected politicians,
including mayors and other senior officials from the Citizens’
Revolution party, liquidating his political opposition. All along,
Moreno has enjoyed the staunch backing of the US government, which
successfully encouraged him to end the asylum protections afforded to
journalist Julian Assange and hand him over to British authorities,
violating national and international law.</p>
<p>Moreno’s security forces also killed, wounded, and detained thousands of <a href="https://thegrayzone.com/2019/10/07/ecuador-revolt-lenin-morenos-neoliberal-drone-zangano/">Ecuadorians protesting neoliberal economic reforms</a> he tried to push through in October.</p>
<p>Instead of criticizing the overtly repressive Moreno government in
Ecuador, Vivanco has praised it. And at the same moment, Vivanco has
even referred to Ecuador’s former democratically elected President
Correa as “<a href="https://twitter.com/JMVivancoHRW/status/1166800334238470144">authoritarian</a>,” with no explanation whatsoever as to how he violated democratic norms.</p>
<p>As with Nicaragua and Venezuela, Vivanco has adopted the most extreme
position of Ecuador’s right-wing. “Lenín and Correa are like water and
oil,” he asserted. “One [Correa] is an autocrat; the other [Lenín], a
democrat. One is a messianic narcissist; the other, a leader who
listens.”</p>
<p>For any other so-called human rights organization on the planet, such
transparent double standards would cause a fatal crisis of credibility.</p>
<p>But for Human Rights Watch, a billionaire-backed
regime-change-lobbying organization that supports coups against elected
governments, hypocrisy is the inevitable outgrowth of constantly
catering to Washington.</p>
<div><p><br></p><div><p>Ben Norton is a journalist, writer, and filmmaker. He is the assistant editor of The Grayzone, and the producer of the <a href="http://moderaterebelsradio.com/">Moderate Rebels</a> podcast, which he co-hosts with editor Max Blumenthal. His website is <a href="http://bennorton.com/">BenNorton.com</a> and he tweets at @<a href="https://twitter.com/BenjaminNorton">BenjaminNorton</a>.</p></div></div>
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