The link between human rights abuses in Venezuela and international instability Or Why the international community must act now and adopt a more proactive role in the question of Venezuela
What are human rights? The answer can be long and convoluted or simple and intuitive. For the long answer, visit the UN website and look at the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR)1. For the short answer, I understand human rights to be the right to live our life in peace, with dignity and without interference. As Rousseau said, we renounce some rights and freedoms and adopt some obligations for the benefit of wider society. But we have an immutable right to expect our governments to treat us in a humane and equitable way, even when we fail to keep our side of the bargain. These rights are not a “privilege to be earned, nor a gift that governments can give or take away”2. Therefore, when our governments treat us unfairly and inhumanely, when they injure our dignity, disturb our peace and interfere in our lives without justification and for self-interested reasons… they are abusing our human rights. As I have explored in previous notes, the Bolivarian Revolution (embodied in the PSUV party) has taken Venezuela to the edge of a precipice. Or to put it another way, it has «taken Venezuelans to the cleaners». The fall in oil prices has simply fast-tracked a collapse that was always on the cards. The economy is devastated and the economic foundations of the country are in ruins, as a direct result of government incompetence, misguidedness and corruption. Many people have been brainwashed into believing in false societal wounds that now seem impossible to heal, and fabricated schisms that seem impossible to breach, as part of a «divide and rule» policy that keeps the country ferociously divided. The Venezuelan society is losing its moral compass, as values and conventional rules of civilised conduct vanish, as a direct result of a strategy for making «the people» ignorant and submissive and therefore, easier to manipulate and control… but which now also threatens to tear the country apart. Simon Bolivar, the most famous son of Venezuela, and icon of the Bolivarian Revolution, famously said «an ignorant people is a blind instrument of its own destruction»3 How true he was! Eighteen years of Chavismo have robbed Venezuelans of their human rights and this is why so many folk have abandoned their country… leaving their homes, possessions, careers, friends and relatives, to look for a better life elsewhere. It is estimated that the Venezuelan diaspora has grown a staggering seven-fold in just fifteen years4.
1
http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/ UDHR Preamble 3 Angostura Congress Speech, Simon Bolivar, 15 February 1819 4 According to a 2014 study (La Voz de la Diaspora Venezolana, Tomas Paez), close to 1.5 million Venezuelans left their country between 1999 and 2014 (4% to 6% of the population at the time, and 88% of all Venezuelans living 2
Although it has taken some time, the bulk of the Venezuelan people (including folk within the government’s natural constituency) have finally begun to recognize that the PSUV has not been acting in their interests, that the Bolivarian Revolution has failed the country. Mr Noam Chomsky (leading thinker of the international left and originally, one of the most renowned and staunch international supporters of the Bolivarian Revolution) put it succinctly recently, when he said that “In Latin America, I believe that the Chavez model has been destructive”5. To paraphrase John Locke, when a government acts against the interests of the people, it dissolves the social compact between them and the people have a right, if not an obligation, to resist its authority. In line with this «revolutionary» maxim, the people of Venezuela have finally begun to resist the government’s authority, in a democratic way (for example, see last December’s parliamentary election). The trouble is that, eighteen years of unbridled corruption, nepotism and other questionable vices, coupled with their contempt for democracy… makes it virtually impossible for the government to even entertain the idea of regime change (peaceful or otherwise)… They have too much to lose! Therefore, as resistance grows… so does the list of government actions which go against the grain of human rights. The dubious trials and subsequent incarcerations of judge Maria Lourdes Afiuni and opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez, or the way the government dealt with the 2014 street protests… are perfect illustrations of what a government is willing to do, when it is indifferent to human rights. These headline-grabbing examples are three of many… all of which are well documented. So I will not explore them here. On another note, I will perhaps explore some of the less high-profile (but no less oppressive) ways in which the peace and the dignity of the Venezuelan people are trampled by its government… each and every day. To make it closer to home, I will focus on personally observed (lived) and quotidian examples. For now, suffice to say that a cursory glance at the UDHR articles and a little onthe-ground knowledge will be enough to show that the PSUV oversteps the human rights mark by a long shot. The «ides of March» seem to be coming. The international community is finally beginning to address the question of Venezuela. They might still be doing it a bit too gingerly… perhaps too infrequently and certainly not in enough numbers (maybe this is the way high diplomacy is meant to work). But at last one begins to perceive a tiny wave of international opinion voiced against the government of Venezuela (beyond the United States). As expected, the Venezuelan government is responding according to the old manual: i.e. with cries of intrusion in the internal affairs of the sovereign state by the predatory capitoimperialists forces (and their lackeys) hell bent on destroying the legacy of the late Hugo abroad). It is worth noting that the devastation of the country has accelerated since the study was conducted and published. 5 http://www.perfil.com/internacional/Noam-Chomsky-La-corrupcion-fue-tan-grande-en-Sudamerica-que-sedesacreditaron-a-si-mismos-y-desperdiciaron-grandes-oportunidades-20151025-0008.html
Chavez and his glorious Bolivarian Revolution… and in order to slave once again the proud Venezuelan people and plunder the country. The regime’s «clients» and sponsors are also responding in kind… Some advocates of the Bolivarian Revolution may be speaking from an honest (albeit misguided) socialist conviction. For example, at a recent interview, former Uruguay President Jose Mujica said that “Venezuela has problems and they should be solved by Venezuelans”. Mr Mujica is a venerable man of impeccable socialist credentials, who seems to practice what he preaches. So I have no reason to believe that his motives are anything but sincere. And Mr Mujica is right of course: Venezuela’s problems should be solved by Venezuelans. However, he forgets to mention that Venezuelans are trying to solve their problems, and the ones preventing them from doing so are the same government he defends. Until last December, whenever advocates of the Bolivarian Revolution wanted to show their support for it, they used to pull the democracy card and remind us that Chavismo had won… each and every time it had gone to the polls. The People were giving Chavez his mandate for change, through the exercise of their democratic rights. It was difficult to argue with that… The problem for Mr Mujica and other defenders of the Bolivarian Revolution is that… The People are again giving a mandate for change, through the exercise of their democratic rights… but this time they are giving it to the opposition! In the parliamentary election last December, an election with the highest turnout (for parliamentary elections) since Chavismo appeared on the scene (73.8%)… The People gave the opposition a mandate for change: 58% of the popular vote gave the opposition over 67% of the National Assembly. This is a solid mandate for change, when we compare it to the 58% of the popular vote which gave the late Hugo Chavez his first Presidential election win (with 63.5% turnout)… Or to the 2009 presidential election, at which Mr Mujica became President of Uruguay with 54.6% of the popular vote (having first received, in the first round… only 48% of the popular vote). From the day the Venezuelan opposition won the parliamentary election, the PSUV has done everything it can to stop The People solving their problems (through their elected deputies). Through its control of all the other branches of government and the army, and despite the popular clamour for change, they have essentially turned the National Assembly into a «zombie parliament» unable to pass any laws. This is no trivial matter, because parliaments perform vital legislative, representative and oversight functions that help ensure citizens’ voices are heard and their rights are protected, including their human rights. The PSUV has shown its contempt for democracy in such an audacious and arrogant fashion… that even The Socialist International denounced the latest Supreme Court ruling banning another Law passed by the National Assembly6.
6
http://www.socialistinternational.org/viewArticle.cfm?ArticleID=2434
Ever since human rights begun to appear in the common lexicon (mostly from World War II onwards) it was widely recognised that democracy offers the best system of government for protecting human rights, because democracy serves as a partial check on power (albeit that democracy alone is not enough). The advocates of democracy (whether on the left or the right) ought to remember this and therefore, should do all they can to protect and promote democracy and her democratic institutions in Venezuela. What will Mr Mujica and other honest advocates of the Bolivarian Revolution say next December, when the PSUV also loses control of most state governorships at the forthcoming elections… forcing the regime to «hasten the revolution» by perhaps granting all powers and resources for regional administration to the Communes (and their unelected lackeys)… or some other desperate measure tailored to prevent Venezuelans from exercising their democratic rights? The 2015 British Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) Human Rights Report said that “states which do not respect the rights of their citizens are often dangerous and lawless places to live” and this is certainly true in Venezuela. A collapsing economy, pervasive corruption, increasing fraternal mistrust and hostility, fading values, disrespect for the law and a violent society… all go hand in hand with the government’s antipathy to human rights. The crucial point is that another essential element of this toxic mix… is the deliberate (and unplanned) dissemination of instability and values abroad, and the exportation of «the revolution». If oil and other natural resources are the oxygen that feed the revolution at home, instability overseas generates the ecosystems that (if cultivated) foster the development of the advocates and clients that are absolutely necessary for its long term survival. I say accidental, because often the «vices» of the «revolution» are also exported without a deliberate design. For example, a flock of dishonest Chavistas fleeing to the United States or some other country (once they have «filled their boots») would take with them, not only their ill-gotten fortunes but also their lack of values and corrupt morals… thus contaminating the ecosystem of the host country. How does causality between all the above elements flow? To my mind the question is irrelevant. What matters is that they are all part of the same toxic mix which the PSUV has concocted in Venezuela to achieve its goals, whatever they are. To those that look at Venezuela’s human rights abuses with less urgency (after all, there are many more conspicuous offenders) I would say this: watch this space! As I said earlier, as resistance grows, so will the list of government actions which go against the grain of human rights. Furthermore, the above-mentioned link between human rights indifference and the dissemination of instability and the «revolution» should also worry those less inclined to intervene; and to those that believe that this is a Latin American problem, I would invite them to follow the course of the Venezuelan Parliament’s recently launched investigation into alleged funding of the Spanish political party Podemos… and to consider this: (putting aside for now the fact that we may find the old US embargo on Cuba abhorrent) if you are
puzzled by how Cuba (the Bolivarian Revolution’s mentor) was able to survive and export its «revolution» across the world (particularly throughout Latin-American) for 50 years, with hardly any resources and despite the US embargo… well a «Castroist» Venezuela will be like Cuba on steroids! The country has the largest proven reserves of oil on the planet, with nearly as much oil as the United States, Russia and Canada combined. On a per capita basis, its oil reserves are 63 times those of the United States. Or to put it another way, at current export levels (and excluding the fact that it also has the world’s 7th largest proven reserves of natural gas, and many other natural resources) the Bolivarian Revolution has access to enough oil to continue funding the dissemination of instability and its «revolution» overseas for another 500 years! The international community needs to take a more proactive role in the question of Venezuela now… before an oil price rebound gives the regime the time to completely dismantle the country and eradicate the last few vestiges of democracy and human rights.
Virgilio Mendoza