VENEZUELA Dismisses Human Rights Watch's Demand to Clarify FARC Relationship

[magbana]

The treacherous Human Rights Watch and its Jose Vivanco doing the US' dirty work again. I think Venezuela should demand that HRW clarify its relationship with the US Government and its foreign gov't. destabilization program.s


Venezuela Dismisses Human Rights Watch's Demand to Clarify FARC Relationship
June 4th 2008, by James Suggett - Venezuelanalysis.com

Human Rights Watch Americas Director José Miguel Vivanco demanded "serious answers" about Venezuela's relationship with Colombian guerrillas. (Union Radio)

Mérida, June 3, 2008 (venezuelanalysis.com)-- The United States-based non-government organization Human Rights Watch (HRW) requested Tuesday that the Venezuelan government "provide a full accounting of its relationship" with the Armed Revolutionary Forces of Colombia (FARC). Venezuela's Ambassador to the OAS responded to the request by saying that HRW is joining with forces that want to oust President Chavez.

HRW urged President Hugo Chávez to officially ban support for the FARC, and asked the Organization of American States (OAS) to investigate Venezuela's relationship with the Colombian insurgents.

Analyzing excerpts of documents released by the Colombian government last March, the HRW Americas Director José Miguel Vivanco said that if the contents of those documents "are in fact accurate, they show that the FARC was set to receive much more than rhetorical support from the Chávez government."

Colombia claims to have found the documents in laptop computers picked up from the wreckage of the FARC camp inside Ecuador that Colombia bombarded March 1st, where FARC commander Raul Reyes, the alleged owner of the laptops and chief negotiator of hostage releases, was killed.

HRW has not had direct access to the computer files, according to the organization's press release Tuesday. Requests for access to these files, even by Colombian Supreme Court, have so far gone unheeded by the Colombian and U.S. governments, in whose custody the files remain.

According to HRW, the excerpts of emails made public by Colombia indicate that the FARC met personally with top Venezuelan officials including President Hugo Chávez, Venezuelan Generals Hugo Carvajal Barrios, and Clíver Alcalá Cordones, and the Minister of Justice and the Interior Ramón Rodríguez Chacín.

Vivanco demanded that Venezuela verify if such meetings actually took place, and if so, Venezuela should reveal what was discussed in those meetings.

President Chávez should "issue clear instructions that no Venezuelan government or military official should provide any form of assistance to the FARC," and punish violators of the norm, the rights organization urged.

HRW also criticized Chávez for expressing sympathy for the FARC and advocating that the FARC be treated as a political rather than terrorist organization.

Vivanco judged that "for any government to support a guerrilla group like the FARC that routinely commits atrocities against civilians is entirely beyond the pale". He specifically referred to Chávez's pronouncements in January 2008 that the FARC have "a political and Bolivarian project that is respected here ," and Chávez's call for a moment of silence to observe the death of Raul Reyes in March.

Finally, HRW called for a "rigorous and impartial" investigation of FARC-Venezuela links by the OAS. The OAS, by request of the Ecuadorian government, has already committed to investigating Colombia's accusations that Ecuador offered refuge to the rebels.

In response, the Venezuelan Ambassador to the OAS, Roy Chaderton Matos, declared that HRW is an ally of the White House that is "uniting its voice with the people and the institutions of the international ultra-Right."

Chaderton expressed that HRW and its allies are conjuring up "concerted montages" meant to disrupt the process of participatory democracy and social justice underway in Venezuela.

HRW's report is only "pertinent within the interests that Vivanco defends," Chaderton concluded.

President Chavez has repeatedly denied that Venezuela provided any kind of material support to the FARC and that the only contacts his government has had with the FARC was to facilitate the release of hostages held by the FARC. In early 2008 Chavez managed to convince the FARC to release six out of 45 of its high profile hostages.

Two weeks ago, Interior Minister Rodriguez Chacín said he had met personally with FARC leaders during the negotiations of hostage releases which Colombia invited Venezuela to help mediate last August. Rodriguez Chacín assured that the "only contacts" President Chávez had with the FARC were at the request of the Colombian government for the sake of the peace process.

Countering accusations that Venezuela supports the FARC, the Venezuelan Foreign Relations Minsiter, Nicolás Maduro, denounced to the general assembly at the OAS summit in Medellín Tuesday that the Cuban-Venezuelan terrorist Luis Posada Carriles "finds himself free and protected by the United States government in Florida, recently he enjoyed a public dinner of homage to his heroism in the murder of innocent men and women in Central America, the Caribbean, and South America", referring to a recent gathering of 500 Cuban exiles in Miami.

Maduro said that if the United States wishes to combat terrorism, it should immediately extradite Posada Carriles to Venezuela, where he is wanted on 73 charges of homicide for his role in the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airplane, according to the Venezuelan lawyer who is handling the case, José Pertierra.

In Pertierra's opinion, "The United States does not have any moral possibility to talk about Venezuela as a terrorist country it is the principal terrorist country of the world."

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[Judi Lynn]

1. If this doesn't prove Vivanco is a tool, wouldn't know what would.

When the stench of these fascist corporatists finally dissipates, and it will, Vivanco and his ilk are going to be up the "crik" without a paddle.



Maybe he will get a job as a lobbyist for Blackwater. Might as well. A conscientious man in his position would have started raising hell over the massacres committed by fascist governments a LONG time ago.

[Zorro]

2. I'm curious

Why don't you want the Venezuelan government to respond with a definitive description of their alleged relationship with FARC?

Are you afraid the Venezuelan government might incriminate themselves as a state sponsor of a terrorist organization?

[JohnnyCougar]

3. They already have responded.

The answer is that there is no relationship.

[prolifedemq]

5. The answer is

All the links are true, they are terrorist sympathizers. The UN just wants a official statement from them. No big deal, but it would make things a lot easier if they would just admit it so the UN could being embargo operations already.

[EFerrari]

6. President Uribe, is that you?

[magbana]

4. More info on treacherous HRW

How HRW dealt with (or didn't deal with) Haiti is a travesty.


The Failure of Human Rights Watch in Venezuela and Haiti
Written by Joe Emersberger
Monday, 25 February 2008
Source: HaitiAnalysis.com

The way Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported on Haiti and Venezuela in its 2008 World Report reveals an underlying assumption that the US and its allies have the right to overthrow democratic governments.<1>

It is a matter of public record that the US funded groups who were involved in the coup of 2002 and continued to do so after the coup took place, but rather than denounce or even acknowledge US destabilization efforts in Venezuela, HRW continues to complain about the non-renewal of RCTV's public broadcasting license. <2> RCTV was one of big television networks that aided and abetted the coup. HRW objects that RCTV's involvement in the coup "was not proven in a proceeding in which RCTV had an opportunity to present a defense." It is impossible to imagine a non-farcical proceeding that would conclude otherwise, especially when the coup's perpetrators thanked the private media, of which RCTV was a major part, for its help. Before the coup was reversed Vice-Admiral Ramirez Perez told a Venezuelan reporter:

"We had a deadly weapon: the media. And now that I have the opportunity, let me congratulate you."

Judging by its reports, HRW is completely uninterested in whether the broadcaster that replaced RCTV on the public airwaves, TVes, offers viewers a wider variety of views. <3>"Freedom of the Press Barons" to perpetrate coups appears to be HRW's concern, not freedom of expression. It is worth remembering that HRW's response to the coup in Venezuela was appalling. Al Giordano summed their response up well in an exchange with an HRW intern:

"They recognized an illegitimate 'authority' as legitimate. They failed to call for the removal of that dictatorial regime. They failed to call on other nations and the OAS to refuse to recognize it. They failed to call for invoking the OAS Democratic Charter for the one event it was intended to prevent."<4>

Giordano's words could also be used to summarize how HRW responded to the US backed coup in Haiti in 2004.

HRW used the 2008 World Report to criticize, yet again, a judicial reform law that was passed by the Chavez administration in 2004. In contrast, HRW's summary about Haiti said nothing about the coup that ousted Jean Bertrand Aristide's democratic government in 2004; nothing about the subsequent murder of thousands of people who supported Aristide's Lavalas movement (the word "Lavalas" does not even appear in the summary); nothing about the fact that Haiti's police and judiciary remain stacked with appointees from the dictatorship of 2004-2006; nothing about Father Gerard Jean Juste, the most prominent political prisoner of that period, who continues to be hounded by Haiti's legal system. <5>

Even if HRW's criticism of Venezuela's judicial reform law of 2004 were reasonable (and it isn't) it cannot deserve more attention than the coup in Haiti that led to a human rights catastrophe. <6>

On a positive note, the 2008 World Report belatedly gave some attention to the disappearance of Lovinsky Pierre Antoine, a prominent Haitian human rights worker and opponent of the 2004 coup. HRW stated:

"In August 2007 a well known human rights advocate, Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine, was abducted. At this writing his whereabouts remain unknown."

Again, the absence of the word "Lavalas" is telling. Pierre-Antoine disappeared days after he had announced that he would run for the Haitian senate as a Fanmi Lavalas Party candidate. The goal of the 2004 coup and the bloodbath that followed was to eliminate the Lavalas movement - the same goal with basically the same perpetrators as during the 1991-1994 period about which HRW reported extensively. <7>

At first glance, the 2008 World Report seems to provide courageous and much needed criticism of powerful countries like the US. HRW is willing to contradict the Bush Administration on some important matters. For example, in a press conference about the 2008 World Report, HRW director Ken Roth refused to label Venezuela as a "closed country". However, Roth went on to say that human rights "trends were negative in Venezuela". That conclusion is justified only if one assumes that perpetrating coups and other acts of sabotage against a democratic government should have no legal repercussions at all. Meanwhile, in Haiti, when human rights trends really were disastrously negative thanks to a coup backed by the US and its allies, HRW displayed a chilling indifference.<8>

An important lesson to learn from the coups that took place in Haiti and Venezuela is that US imperialism cannot succeed through the efforts of Neocons alone. It needs the help of other countries, and it needs the help of NGOs like Human Rights Watch. <9>

Joe Emersberger contribtues to HaitiAnalysis.com



NOTES

<1> See Human Rights Watch. World Report. 2008. hrw.org/wr2k8/pdfs/wr2k8_web.pdf

<2> See Eva Gollinger's "The Chavez Code" for details on US funding of groups that participated in the coup.

<3> There is good reason to believe that freedom of expression on the public airwaves has been improved by replacing RCTV with TVES James Jordan notes "The new broadcasting license is being given to a public station, TVes-Venezuela Social Television, which will run shows produced mainly by independent parties. The station will be controlled not by the government, but by a foundation of community members, with one chair reserved for a government representative. " http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/2416 For more specifics about RCTV's involvement in the coup see http://www.globalexchange.org/countries/americas/venezuela/2974.html

<4> Al Giodano's exchange with the HRW intern can be read at http://narcosphere.narconews.com/story/2004/6/17/15422/6410

<5> for more about the coup and Haiti and its consequences see Kolbe and Hudson. Lancet Study. 2006, http://www.ijdh.org/pdf/Lancet%20Article%208-06.pdf http://www.haitianalysis.com/2007/7/31/interview-with-athena-kolbe-co-author-of-lancet-study-on-haiti

<6> The judicial reform law broke the stranglehold of Venezuelan elite on the judiciary. For extensive discussion of the reform law and HRW's objections see note 3

<7>For more discussion of how HRW responded to the 1991 and 2004 coups in Haiti see http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=10011

<8> See Http://www.miamiherald.com/news/breaking_dade/story/401747.html

<9> The priorities displayed in HRW reports are well aligned with those of liberal imperialists like Lloyd Axworthy, a former Canadian External Affairs Minister who sits on HRW's board. See http://www.hrw.org/about/info/board.html For more about Axworthy's liberal imperialism see http://www.killingtrain.com/node/397


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