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Last Updated: Oct 15, 2008 - 12:05:23 PM |
That night, we returned to our hotel and found around twenty
Venezuelan security agents, some armed and in military uniform,
awaiting us outside our rooms. They were accompanied by a man who
announced—with no apparent sense of irony—that he was a government
"human rights" official and that we were being expelled from the
country.
With government cameramen filming over his shoulder, the official did
his best to act as if he were merely upholding the law. When we said we
needed to gather our belongings, he calmly told us not to worry, his
men had already entered our rooms and "packed" our bags.
But when we tried to use our cell phones to get word to our families,
our colleagues, and the press, the veneer of protocol quickly gave way.
Security agents surrounded us, pried the phones from our hands, and
removed and pocketed the batteries. When we then insisted on contacting
our embassies, they shoved us into a service elevator, took us to the
basement, and forced us into the back seat of an SUV with tinted
windows. When we asked where we were headed, they told us only that we
were going to the airport.
Three security agents sat behind us, at least two with weapons drawn.
One used a cell phone to receive and relay orders as we raced through
the streets of Caracas and out onto a highway. At one point an order
came to turn on the SUV's radio so we could listen as the state news
agency announced our expulsion. The announcers told their captive
audience—which also included every other Venezuelan listening to the
radio, since all stations are required to broadcast such messages—that
our organization was funded by the US government and that we were part
of a campaign of aggression against Venezuela.
Human Rights Watch does not and has never accepted funding from the US
or any government, directly or indirectly. But we are accustomed to
such false accusations, especially coming from authoritarian
governments. Venezuelan officials have repeatedly denounced us as CIA
stooges, right-wing partisans, and, more commonly, "mercenaries of the
empire." (By contrast, in neighboring Colombia, officials have
repeatedly sought to discredit us with labels like Communist, guerrilla
sympathizer, and even terrorist.) Once, after releasing another report
in Caracas, one of us was publicly and falsely accused by Chávez's
vice-president of having collaborated with former Chilean dictator
Augusto Pinochet. This time, a close Chávez ally in the legislature
suggested on national TV that the two of us had been sharing a single
hotel room where we were indulging our "weaknesses."
The official reason we were given for our expulsion was that we had
violated the constitution by criticizing the government while on
tourist visas. It was a curious allegation since our immigration cards
included a "business" box, which we had dutifully checked off. In any
case, Venezuela's foreign minister, Nicolás Maduro, made clear the next
day that the government's decision had nothing to do with our visa
status. "Any foreigner who comes to criticize our country will be
immediately expelled," he declared. Of course, had the Chávez
government actually been interested in upholding its laws, it would
have respected our rights—enshrined in the Venezuelan constitution—to
immediately contact our embassies, obtain legal counsel, and receive a
fair hearing. Instead, as we discovered only after we were finally
ushered onto a plane at the airport, it bought us a one-way trip to
Brazil.
The ease with which the government disregarded these rights only
reaffirmed the central finding of our report: the Chávez government is
more than willing to violate the country's constitution in pursuit of
its own political agenda. Ironically it was Chávez himself who first
championed that constitution a decade ago, after he was swept into
office promising to overhaul the country's largely discredited
political system. Enacted in 1999, the "Bolivarian" Constitution
offered a unique opportunity for the country to shore up the rule of
law and strengthen human rights protections. But that opportunity has
since been largely squandered. The most dramatic setback came in April
2002, when opponents of Chávez temporarily ousted him in a coup d'état.
Fortunately, the coup lasted less than two days. Unfortunately, the
government has exploited it ever since to help justify policies that
have degraded the country's democracy.
Today Venezuela is hardly the brutal dictatorship that some critics of
Chávez paint it to be. Yet the country's democratic institutions have
suffered considerably since the coup. Chávez and his allies have
effectively neutralized the judiciary. While some newspapers and
broadcasters are still independent and some are outspoken in their
opposition to Chávez, the President and his legislative supporters have
strengthened the state's capacity to limit free speech and created
powerful incentives for self-censorship. They have, for example,
expanded laws making "contempt" for government officials a criminal
offense, increased prison sentences for criminal defamation, and abused
the state's control of broadcasting frequencies to intimidate and
discriminate against stations with overtly critical programming. While
there are independent labor unions, the government has systematically
violated workers' rights and fostered pro-government unions. There are
dedicated human rights advocates. But they have been subjected to a
virulent barrage of verbal assaults and even harassment by prosecutors.
A central goal of the "Bolivarian" Constitution is the promotion of a
more inclusive democracy in Venezuela. In view of the history of
exclusion and the glaring inequalities that plague Venezuela and
countries throughout Latin America, it is a goal that deserves to be
taken seriously. Yet Chávez's own professed commitment to this vital
and ambitious aim is contradicted by his government's willful disregard
for the institutional guarantees and fundamental rights that make
democratic participation possible.
In the more than twenty years that Human Rights Watch has worked in
Latin America, no government has ever expelled our representatives for
our work, not even the right-wing dictatorships guilty of far more
egregious abuses than those committed by Chávez. Presumably they knew
better. After all, Chávez's decision to expel us merely served to
confirm the central message of our report and ensure that it received
extensive coverage around the globe.
Why did Chávez do it? One Brazilian on the plane on which we were
forced to leave Venezuela offered a view that is increasingly
widespread throughout Latin America: "Chávez is crazy." But the human
rights defenders we work with in Venezuela have drawn a far more
sobering conclusion. Chávez, in their view, was sending a deliberate
message to his fellow countrymen: he will not allow human rights
guarantees to get in his way, no matter what the rest of the world may
think.
If their interpretation is right, it does not bode well for the future
of Venezuelan democracy.
Source:Ocnus.net 2008
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