OAS report criticizes Venezuela on human rights

[cali]

Source: Reuters


Thu Feb 25, 2010 1:20am GMT


WASHINGTON, Feb 24 (Reuters) - The human rights wing of the Organization of American States criticized the concentration of power and the curbing of civil liberties in Venezuela under the leftist government of President Hugo Chavez.

In a blistering 319-page report released on Wednesday, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights pointed to "the absence of an effective separation and independence of the public branches of power in Venezuela."

It said freedom of expression and the right to peaceful protest have been curtailed and "political intolerance" prevails in the South American country, a major supplier of oil to the United States.

The criticism from the 34-nation hemispheric forum based in Washington will be music to the ears of Chavez's opponents who say he is a dictator-in-the-making who has undermined the independence of the legislature and the judiciary, while closing down opposition media.

"The punitive power of the state is being used to intimidate or punish people on account of their political opinions," the OAS report found.

"A climate hostile to the free exercise of dissenting political participation" exists in Venezuela, the commission concluded.

Read more: http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKN2418123320100225

[ro1942]

1. Maybe Bush and Cheney and the CIA

could be sent down to help the people of Venezuela out.

[COLGATE4]

2. And this responds to the posted article how?

[ro1942]

3. Guess we are in two different universes

[seeinfweggos]

4. it's the fallback answer to everything

as long as the US can be shown to have done bad things then all other bad things anyone does are beyond criticism - at least if it is castro or his fanboy hugo.

[ro1942]

5. USA good Venezuela bad,that's it isn't it?

[Rebubula]

7. Not at all

USA can be bad AND Venezuela can be bad.

One is not tied to the others and just because the USA has (and continues) to done some crappy stuff does NOT mean that I cannot point out the problems of Chavez.

[seeinfweggos]

12. thank you, i couldn't have said it better. nt

[ro1942]

21. Let's not be hypocrites that's all

[JackRiddler]

39. You mean like, complaining about Venezuela even as our government wages war on it?

That would be very hypocritical, yes.

[proteus_lives]

25. Well said.

:thumbsup:

[seeinfweggos]

14. yeah, that exactly what i said. lol. nice reading comprehension. nt

[ronnie624]

6. Short on evidence, as usual.

the report was based on hundreds of complaints and interviews with Venezuelans done in Washington

Not worth the paper it was written on.

[Hell Hath No Fury]

10. Did they claim he --

had babies thrown out of incubators???

[ronnie624]

11. No doubt.

A truly discerning individual would have learned their lesson long ago about propaganda emanating from Washington.

[WriteDown]

13. And right-wing org's such as Amnesty Intl. nt

[ronnie624]

27. AI's reports do not receive automatic credence from me.

Often, the organization's reports seem to consist of little more than hearsay. I prefer evidence and extensive documentation from numerous sources. AI is not immune to political influences. It must ever be mindful of the political sensibilities of its donors.

[WriteDown]

35. Exactly, AI is worthless.

Unless they criticize the "right" countries of course.

[ronnie624]

38. AI is worth no more or less than any other source of information, in my opinion.

Their reports must be placed in their proper context, and balanced against information from other sources. AI is run by humans, and like all humans, they are fallible and subject to influence from political power centers. They do not have the final say on any matter.

[UTUSN]

8. K&R big #5 for, lalalalalala-LAH!1 n/t

[RaleighNCDUer]

9. Does it list all the political opponants who have been murdered or imprisoned by Chavez?

Oh. Right. There AREN'T any.

Even when those self-same opposition media participated in and encouraged the CIA backed coup against him, he did NOT arrest those media owners - his WORST reprisal was in letting their broadcast licenses not be renewed. He didn't even cancel them, but simply did not renew them a year and a half later.

How awful.

[WriteDown]

15. Not exactly...

They moved to cable to not be shut down. Then Chavez just changed the law to apply to cable to ensure they'd be shut down.

[RaleighNCDUer]

17. Not true.

Though their broadcast licenses were not renewed they had the option, and they took it, of going to cable. Once on cable they had a free hand to air whatever they wanted.

In a completely different piece of legislation, the government required that all television media, broadcast and cable, present presidential speeches. Now, some may say that is propagandizing - others call it responsible dissemination of government policies and transparency. Regardless of how you see it, if the media presented the speech in accordance with the law there was no problem. Those that refused to broadcast the presidential speeches were penalized and threatened with being shut down completely - I've not heard if any were actually shut down as of yet; they are still appealing the case, last I heard.

He was not saying they could NOT broadcast their anti-government, anti-Chavez programming - he was saying only that they had to ALSO include his speeches. Kind of 'anti-censorship'.

[WriteDown]

18. Not true (it was reclassified from an intl media source to a domestic media source by the govt)...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RCTV

End of license
On 28 December 2006, President Chávez announced that the government would not renew RCTV's broadcast license which came up for renewal on 27 May 2007, thereby forcing the channel to cease broadcast operations on that day.<40> The government says that the non-renewal is caused by RCTV's alleged support for the 2002 coup attempt against Chávez's democratically elected government.
The Venezuelan Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ)<41> ruled on 17 April 2007 that it is within the National Telecommunications Commission's power to decide on the issuing, renewal and revocation of broadcast licenses.<42> RCTV may continue broadcasting over cable or DTH systems (DirecTV Latin America) when its license expires, but the government will take over the equipment, studios and even the master control for their use in the new station it has created on 27 May 2007. On 24 May, the Supreme Court ordered RCTV to stop broadcasting as soon as its license expires and approved the government's takeover of its equipment, though it would review the station's appeal of the decision. Chávez announced plans to start broadcasting a public service channel, TVes, using this infrastructure which belonged to RCTV.<43>
The Supreme Court ruled that RCTV's broadcasting equipment must be available to TVes. The ruling also ordered the military to guard the equipment. This allows TVes to be available in the same locations where RCTV used to broadcast.<44>
The final program airing on RCTV Sunday was an all day/night retrospective tribute to the network, featuring current and ex workers, artists and staff of RCTV. Many workers and artists from other networks, including Venevision had to used the last hours of RCTV to give their opinion since they were not allowed at their own companies.
On Saturday, 26 May, RCTV shut down its live internet stream in preparation for its forced close-down on Sunday, 27 May. At 12 Midnight on 28 May, RCTV ceased broadcasting and for the following 8 seconds the signal went dark. It was then replaced by TVes's ID which was on air for 20 minutes. At 12:20AM, TVes began programming for the first time. DirecTV Venezuela has replaced RCTV with TVes on 104.<45>

2007 onwards - broadcasting via cable/satellite

RCTV lost its free-over the air broadcast licence, but it was not out of business. In an article in the 5 July 2007 edition of AM New York, the head of RCTV, Marcel Granier said that he was considering taking the network's programming to cable or satellite. This was accomplished in the Summer of 2007.
DirecTV Latin America and RCTV signed an agreement for the satellite service to transmit RCTV's programming to satellite subscribers in Venezuela and other parts of the world. The network will be broadcasting for DirectTV in the channel 103. Later came the deals with other national cable operators, Inter, formerly known as InterCable, and NetUno, both being the most important and known cable operators in Venezuela. The channel number varies by area of the country and the cable system. Broadcasting officially resumed on 16 July at 6:00am (UTC-4).
Since its return, RCTV has become the most watched channel in Venezuela (despite being on cable). Only 30% of houses have cable in Venezuela but the total amount that view RCTV is higher than all viewers of TVES, Venevision, and all other channels. In Caracas and in Valencia twice as many people view RCTV than Venevision.<89>
In the wake of the loss of its terrestrial licence, RCTV announced plans to continue broadcasting its main news program 'El Observador' on popular internet video host YouTube during 2007.<90> YouTube viewership of 'El Observador' was initially significant but within a week of the end of RCTV's television transmission had fallen to less than 5,000 viewers a day.<91> El Observador no longer promotes the YouTube site and instead directs its viewers to watch its broadcasts through a different video hosting service. Viewership numbers are not available.
Following its move to cable, RCTV relaunched itself as RCTV International, in an attempt to escape the regulation of the Venezuelan media law. In mid-2009 the Venezuelan media regulator CONATEL declared that cable broadcasters would be subject to the new media law if 70% or more of their content and operations were domestic.<92> In January 2010 CONATEL concluded that RCTV met that criterion (being more than 90% domestic according to CONATEL), and reclassified it as a domestic media source, and therefore subject to the requirements to broadcast state announcements, known as cadenas. Along with several other cable providers, RCTV refused to do so and was sanctioned with temporary closure. According to the government, in order to resume broadcasting it will need to register as a domestic media provider. Other sanctioned channels include the American Network, America TV and TV Chile. TV Chile, an international channel of Chilean state television, had failed to respond to a January 14 deadline for clarifying the nature of its content.<93> Cable network providers have been encouraged by the Venezuelan government to remove those channels that are found to be in violation of existing media regulations.<94>

[RaleighNCDUer]

19. What there disagrees with what I wrote?

They tried to call themselves 'international' when their programming was 90% domestic, well above the threshold required for being classified as domestic. The only reason they called themselves an 'international' cable station was to avoid Venezuelan law. They failed. Big time.

That is exactly what I've been saying.

It had never BEEN classified an 'international' cable station - only THEY called themselves that, even though they did not fit the classification. If they had altered their programming to keep domestic production under 70% (meaning, only 30% of their content had to be international to get that classification) they would have not been under any obligation to air Chavez's speeches.

[WriteDown]

20. Not international by whose declaration?

:shrug:

[RaleighNCDUer]

22. They had only 10% international programming. Venezuelan law

requires at least 30% international programming to call itself 'international'. And THAT is extremely lax - IMO it should be at least 50%. But that is immaterial. Venezuelan law requires 30% international content, or else it is a domestic station.

Put it this way - where I live we get WGN on cable. WGN is a Chicago station. Whenever their news is on, it has a Chicago slant, and the local news is always Chicago. Calling it a Raleigh station will never make it a Raleigh station, so long as the programming is all Chicago.

Calling this an international station will never make it an international station so long as its programming is Venezuelan. They had the opportunity to make it truly international, but never came up with more than 10% international programming. Ergo, it is a domestic station.

Why is that so fucking hard to grasp?

[WriteDown]

23. 10% WHOSE declaration?! nt

[Judi Lynn]

16. As for those right-wing coup conspirator outlets, they wold NEVER have walked away

from their crimes HERE. NEVER. Here's an article published during the first tussle with RCTV:

Media Advisory

Coup Co-Conspirators as Free-Speech Martyrs
Distorting the Venezuelan media story

5/25/07

The story is framed in U.S. news media as a simple matter of censorship: Prominent Venezuelan TV station RCTV is being silenced by the authoritarian government of President Hugo Chávez, who is punishing the station for its political criticism of his government.

According to CNN reporter T.J. Holmes (5/21/07), the issues are easy to understand: RCTV "is going to be shut down, is going to get off the air, because of President Hugo Chávez, not a big fan of it." Dubbing RCTV "a voice of free speech," Holmes explained, "Chávez, in a move that's angered a lot of free-speech groups, is refusing now to renew the license of this television station that has been critical of his government."

Though straighter, a news story by the Associated Press (5/20/07) still maintained the theme that the license denial was based simply on political differences, with reporter Elizabeth Munoz describing RCTV as "a network that has been critical of Chávez."

In a May 14 column, Washington Post deputy editorial page editor Jackson Diehl called the action an attempt to silence opponents and more "proof" that Chávez is a "dictator." Wrote Diehl, "Chávez has made clear that his problem with Granier and RCTV is political."

In keeping with the media script that has bad guy Chávez brutishly silencing good guys in the democratic opposition, all these articles skimmed lightly over RCTV's history, the Venezuelan government's explanation for the license denial and the process that led to it.

RCTV and other commercial TV stations were key players in the April 2002 coup that briefly ousted Chávez's democratically elected government. During the short-lived insurrection, coup leaders took to commercial TV airwaves to thank the networks. "I must thank Venevisión and RCTV," one grateful leader remarked in an appearance captured in the Irish film The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. The film documents the networks’ participation in the short-lived coup, in which stations put themselves to service as bulletin boards for the coup—hosting coup leaders, silencing government voices and rallying the opposition to a march on the Presidential Palace that was part of the coup plotters strategy.

On April 11, 2002, the day of the coup, when military and civilian opposition leaders held press conferences calling for Chávez's ouster, RCTV hosted top coup plotter Carlos Ortega, who rallied demonstrators to the march on the presidential palace. On the same day, after the anti-democratic overthrow appeared to have succeeded, another coup leader, Vice-Admiral Victor Ramírez Pérez, told a Venevisión reporter (4/11/02): "We had a deadly weapon: the media. And now that I have the opportunity, let me congratulate you."

That commercial TV outlets including RCTV participated in the coup is not at question; even mainstream outlets have acknowledged as much. As reporter Juan Forero, Jackson Diehl's colleague at the Washington Post, explained (1/18/07), "RCTV, like three other major private television stations, encouraged the protests," resulting in the coup, "and, once Chávez was ousted, cheered his removal." The conservative British newspaper the Financial Times reported (5/21/07), " officials argue with some justification that RCTV actively supported the 2002 coup attempt against Mr. Chávez."

As FAIR's magazine Extra! argued last November, "Were a similar event to happen in the U.S., and TV journalists and executives were caught conspiring with coup plotters, it’s doubtful they would stay out of jail, let alone be allowed to continue to run television stations, as they have in Venezuela."

More:
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=3107

[boppers]

26. Chavez went to jail once already for his political violence.

Perhaps you need to look into a wee bit more history before making blanket statements like "There AREN'T any.". Hint: February 4th, 1992.

[Flaneur]

28. And did his time and got out and was elected president for his efforts.

If you want a repressive Venezuelan state, perhaps you should go a wee bit further back, say to the Caracazo.

[boppers]

30. Better than Caracazo is not freedom.

Chavez has done a kick-ass job in some areas.

Others, not so much.

[RaleighNCDUer]

29. Maybe you need to pay attention. The discussion was about the

GOVERNMENT response to the coup attempt, which under Chavez was FAR more lenient than he and the '92 coup plotters experienced. Chavez and the Venezuelan government went to extraordinary lengths to not act injudiciously when the 2002 plot against them was thwarted. So far as i've seen there were NO executions of plotters, no suspension of civil rights. Unlike in '92.

So he led a coup. Whoopee. That coup ended years of corruption and theft from the Venezuelan people. The 2002 attempt was an attempt at restoring the corrpution and oligarchial theft of the nation's wealth.

Sure you're on the right board here?

[boppers]

31. Political Murder = Whoopee?

:eyes:

Yeah, I'm sure I'm on the right board, DU supports US Democrats, and by extension, democracies.

Being Pro-Chavez is more of a "Socialist Underground" thing. Not my cup of tea to justify theft and suppression of free speech in the name of moral rectitude.

[RaleighNCDUer]

32. The '92 coup resulted in the deaths of approximately 15 government

security forces, police and military. The government, in return, executed about 40 of the rebels without trial, imprisoned hundreds (including Chavez) and suspended civil rights for months. Which side committed the political murders?

A democracy that is controlled by 5% is a democracy in name only. What Chavez was attempting to overthrow then, and what he eventually did replace, was an oligarchy where a few very rich families controlled 95% of the nation's wealth and nobody got elected unless THEY wanted them to be elected. Kinda like what we're headed for here.

Democracy and socialism go hand in hand - both are intended to give power to the people. One is a political system, the other is an economic system. You seem convinced that they are on opposite poles, indicating that you have no idea what socialism is, and if you think the government Chavez replaced was a democracy, you are kinda fuzzy on democracy as well.

Maybe YOU need to recognize that this is not Oligarchic Underground.

EDIT: BTW, the British lost 31,000 during the American Revolution. I guess that means that George Washington committed approximately 2000x the number of political murders than Chavez did during his coup. No wonder the Brits wanted to hang him.

2nd EDIT: You know, the Carter Center declared that the democracy in Venezuela, as indicated by their elections, is better than our own - the elections there which they monitored were completely legitimate, while (though they could not officially cover our elections) if they compared our own elections and the use of unverifiable computer programs to tally votes, OURS would not pass Carter Center standards for good democratic elections.

[boppers]

37. "Which side committed the political murders?" Both.

Opposition to an evil is not automatically good. Sometimes it can be more evil. In Chavez's case, he seems to have taken a horrible system and replaced it with a dysfunctional, but less horrible, system.

[northzax]

41. 31,000? Maybe

But not from military action directly. The British reported roughly 1250 battle deaths and 4-5,000 wounded. The largest killer, by far, was disease, claiming 18-20k redcoats (a combination of smallpox and scurvy mostly) add in 1200 Hessians, and washington's army managed to kill only 3,000 people or so, you're off by a factor of ten.

But yes, traitors normally hang, unless they win of course, then they become Heroes.

[ronnie624]

33. U.S. Democrats support democracies?

Pure revisionism.

[rabs]

24. Chavez calls the report "garbage"

Santiago A. Canton
Inter-American Commission on Human Rights
Executive Secretary

or, as Chavez called him today, "Executive excrement."

He said the report was "pure garbage, we should not even respond" to it.

Chavez revealed that Canton, an Argentine bureaucrat at the OAS, recognized the dictator-for-a-day Pedro Carmona after the failed coup against Chavez on April 11, 2002.

Chavez read a letter from Canton recognizing Carmona and said the letter was signed, "Santiago Canton, executive excrement."

Chavez said Venezuela may pull out of the IACHR, that it was "not worth" belonging to the OAS body.

----------------------

Much more in Spanish from La Nacion newspaper in Buenos Aires

http://www.lanacion.com.ar/nota.asp?nota_id=1237234

[seeinfweggos]

34. and cheney denies torture, so i guess there was none. nt

[JackRiddler]

40. Everyone saying different things - please don't tell me I have to determine truth on my own!

[citizen snips]

36. Never question the great leader Hugo.

Because everything dear leader Hugo says is right.
:sarcasm:

[YankmeCrankme]

42. there is another story posted about US police quash protesting students in Berkeley

I find it ironic, take it for what it is considering the last quotes of you post.

[JackRiddler]

43. "A climate hostile to the free exercise of dissenting political participation"

Sounds like this:



(That's not Caracas, of course. Anyone forget it yet?)

Probably not like this:


What would the United States have looked like, after a much more powerful nation (I know, it would have to be from outerspace) had supported an attempt to overthrow the elected president, dissolve all constitutional institutions and begin a reign of the US-armed death squads.

What is it with you people? Would you like to see Venezuela become like Colombia? Apparently!