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Mr. Chair, ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon to all of the committee members.
[English]
Thank you very much for the opportunity to address this committee on international human rights.
In the summer of 1999, Venezuela approved a new constitution that contains one of the most comprehensive catalogues on human rights, but at the same time it has a rather weak institutional framework to ensure respect and realization of those rights. This design has been skilfully used by the government to progressively control almost all institutions. The lack of independence of the legislative, judicial, electoral, and so-called citizens' power from the executive branch does not only come from the appointment of members clearly associated with the ruling party, but also from direct interference with their functions.
Probably one of the most shocking examples was a statement made by the President of the Supreme Court in December 2009, when she expressed, “We cannot continue thinking of a revision of powers because that is a principle that weakens the state.”
Although human rights might be, and are, violated everywhere, a key element to redress victims in a democratic society is the presence of checks and balances. The division of powers does not exist in Venezuela, and that puts victims in a helpless position.
On the right to freedom of expression, the Venezuelan government would feel even more comfortable if it could control all our informal powers, such as the media. That explains the government's continuous attempts to reduce the influence of independent journalism. Some of the patterns in this area are: closure of media critical of the government; confiscation of equipment; withdrawal of broadcasting permissions to radio stations; short-term detention of journalism photographers with confiscation and destruction of materials.
There has also been penal prosecution of at least one journalist, who spent eight and a half months in prison and was sentenced to three and a half years in jail for alleged corruption charges in a case condemned by the inter-American system, as well as international NGOs.
Official pressure has been put on advertising companies to withdraw publicity from media critical to the government. In this case it is worth noting that the only case we have registered with proven evidence written on paper is a Canadian company. There have been disciplinary, administrative, and criminal procedures against media, media owners, and journalists. There have been attacks with fire weapons and explosives on the headquarters of media and the houses of journalists by civilian groups close to the government.
The right to freedom of expression also includes the right to seek information. However, journalists and media critical of the government are often not invited, or are prohibited access, to press briefings by public entities. Government spokespeople refuse to give statements to the media, and it is difficult to have access to information and statistics on public issues such as health, education, employment, and housing.
On the right to property, according to 0bservatorio de la Propiedad, there have been 762 expropriations between 2005 and 2009. This includes a wide range of areas such as farms/land, urban land, buildings/housing, universities, cultural centres, industry/factories, media, telecommunications, commerce, shopping centres, hotels, tourism, warehouses, wholesalers, and banks.
According to the law, expropriations can only be declared by courts, and compensation should be determined. However, in a large number of cases, expropriations have been declared by an administrative act, and compensation is unilaterally decided, and paid with extreme delay, if ever. Only expropriations involving multinational corporations have received compensation. There are no cases of expropriation against national owners. A recent trend shows that expropriation has been used as a sanction against alleged violations to administrative or economic regulations, in some cases based on political motivations.
On peaceful protest, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has noted that articles 357 and 360 of the penal code limit peaceful demonstration and constrain the right to strike in connection with labour demands.
Likewise, article 56 of the Organic Law on National Security provides for a prison sentence of 5 to 10 years for those deemed to promote conflict in the workplace of basic state industries.
According to information received by the commission, this article was invoked a minimum of 70 times during 2008. According to Provea and Espacio Publico, peaceful protest has almost doubled between 2006 and 2009 and so has repression. As of November 2009, Provea registered 2,240 persons who face criminal charges for participating in demonstrations. The majority are workers, trade union leaders, students, and social leaders. Emblematic cases include: 1,507 peasants under presentation to courts; steel workers from SIDOR under presentation to courts since 2006, even when the maximum length of time they have to be there is only two years; and workers of the metropolitan mayor's office.
It's also interesting to note that half of the workers and trade union leaders facing criminal charges for demonstrations are “Chavistas”, that is, sympathizers or supporters of President Chávez. Six persons have been killed in demonstrations in one year. Workers' rights, social services, and rights to education are the most common demands of demonstrators.
With regard to political persecution, some 40 people remain in prison on political grounds, and many others are facing trial or have been sentenced. Although government spokespersons state there are no political prisoners, but politicians in prison, almost all cases present similar patterns: the length of trials is extremely long; most appeals and other recourses are systematically rejected; criminal charges are inflated as a way to keep the prosecuted in prison; corruption charges are often manipulated for political purposes; and evidence favouring defendants is frequently disregarded. In sum, the right to a fair trial is seriously threatened.
In addition, there is a mechanism used in recent years to limit the opportunities of opposition candidates to run for public office, which is the restriction through administrative resolutions. According to the law, such restrictions, inhabilitaciones, as they are called, can only be applied as an accessory penalty in criminal trials after final sentence has been decided.
Some 400 people had their political rights restricted by administrative measures prior to regional elections in November 2008. In the last two weeks, at least eight--it was seven when I sent this paper, but it was eight last night--candidates to the national assembly were subject to such restrictions for congressional elections due to take place in September 2010.
With regard to human rights defenders, they are frequently subject to harassment, disqualification, threats, and criminalization, either in public statements by governmental spokespersons or through direct action. At least five defenders or groups of defenders have been granted protection measures by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights or the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.
In an attempt to restrict international support to local NGOs, including human rights organizations, a draft law has been introduced in the national assembly to regulate international cooperation. The language of the draft is extremely vague, opening the door for discretionary interpretation. Although the law has not been passed yet, some of its provisions have already been applied to human rights organizations.
As part of investigations around the coup attempt of April 2002, a document issued by the national assembly mentioned a number of entities allegedly cooperating “with the objectives of the Empire”. These include the Inter-American Press Association, Human Rights Watch, right-wing parties in the European Parliament and the Mercosur Parliament, the U.S. Treasury Department, the Christian Democrat International and Christian Democratic Organization of America, the so-called anti-drug czar of the United States, the FBI, the CIA, Mossad and their agents in various intelligence organizations around the world, the Rendon Group, the television networks CNN, ABC News, Televisa, Univision, FOX, CBS, TV Azteca, TV Globo, the PRISA Group, and print media controlled by the elite in countries subordinate to United States interests, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, and the International Republican Institute.
Human rights, as described above, face serious obstacles due to the lack of independence among powers. The stability of judges has always been an issue in Venezuela, as noted in Provea's first annual report in 1989. For some years, there was a trend toward increasing the number of career judges. This trend reverted seriously after 1999 when the constitutional assembly decided to declare a judicial emergency. Since then, the number of career judges has dropped to 10%. Lack of stability, together with discretionary hirings of lawyers to become part of the judicial system, has become a key factor in understanding the problems affecting the administration of justice.
A recent study shows that the jurisdiction in charge of ruling on cases against the administration—the Contencioso administrativo—avoids making decisions on the substance of the matter. Its rulings tend to be limited to formalities. It is worth mentioning that in October 2003, three of the five magistrates of the First Court of Administrative Disputes were dismissed for alleged inexcusable miscarriage of justice in a case against the central administration.
It is easy to understand why incoming magistrates avoid dealing with the substantive aspects of controversies against the administration, because these three magistrates were dismissed without any administrative or disciplinary procedure. The case was presented by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights before the Inter-American Court, which ruled in favour of the magistrates. However, the Supreme Court decided that the Inter-American Court ruling was unenforceable. This was the first case where the Supreme Court openly disregarded an Inter-American sentence.
Mr. Chairman, I cannot end this presentation without special mention of the case of Maria Lourdes Afiuni, a tenured judge since 2006. On December 10, 2009, after several judges and prosecutors passed on hearing the following case, she conducted a hearing in the case against Eligio Cedeño, who had been in preventive detention without trial for more than two years. During the hearing, the defence reiterated the petition and Judge Afiuni decided to substitute in place of preventive detention of Cedeño a conditional release pending trial, and imposed on him other restrictions.
The judge based her decision on the Venezuelan criminal code and the recommendations made in a report issued by the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention with regard to Cedeño. Less than an hour after Judge Afiuni took her decision, a group of policemen from the Department of Intelligence and Prevention Services arrested Judge Afiuni in her court headquarters without a warrant, as well as two officers of justice.
On December 11, President Chávez accused Judge Afiuni of being a bandit who deserved 30 years in prison. This took place during a simultaneous national TV and radio broadcast. The general prosecutor attended the event. On the same day, the general prosecutor's office presented Judge Afiuni before a criminal tribunal on charges of corruption, abuse of authority, and for evasion and racketeering, and set the place of detention for Judge Afiuni as the National Institute of Feminine Orientation, INOF.
In the INOF prison there are 24 women inmates whom Judge Afiuni has sentenced to prison during her work, including the inmate next door. Since entering the INOF, Afiuni has been subjected to several death threats and attempts to kill her by highly dangerous prisoners, some of whom are condemned for multiple homicides and drug trafficking. Judge Afiuni will complete six months in that prison next June 10. International human rights bodies have made different appeals on her behalf, without success.
The administration of justice has passed from ignoring decisions of international human rights bodies to declaring them unenforceable and finally to putting in jail a judge who dared to enforce a UN decision.
Merci beaucoup.
I want to thank the witness for her presentation.
Your presentation is quite different from that of some of the witnesses we've heard here before, but I would like to carry on a little bit with a line that Mr. Dorion was talking about. Both the United States, via the CIA, and Cuba have a reputation for activities within that whole region. It goes back very many years.
In the area of difference in your testimony as opposed to others—and I'm not calling into question in any way the testimony you've given; it's just a comparator. In the area of the Constitution, we had witnesses at this committee talk about how the average citizen was so proud of their Constitution that many of them carried it with them, and that there was a dialogue on the streets, within the community; there was a sense of engagement in the population that in fact we would even envy in this country.
You mentioned health care. They also testified that for the poor people there was a substantial betterment in the area of education.
Again, I want to discuss a little bit what Mr. Dorion started with the TV stations. Evidence was given here that one particular TV station actually led the coup. The other evidence matched yours, though, in regard to the administration's closure of the other stations, which is precisely the evidence that you've given.
Commentary was given that one of the worst problems in the country wasn't the army and it wasn't the government, but it was the police themselves. They saw in the government that they weren't being active enough in controlling and perhaps educating the police, and that there were a lot of abuses there.
I, for one, am not overly surprised that in a country where a coup is attempted against the government, following that coup perhaps there's a hardening. Testimony does match that there's been a hardening of the resolve in the approach of the government.
You mentioned appointments, and I'm not so sure whether you were talking exclusively of the Supreme Court judges, but here in Canada we've had successive governments appoint to our Senate people who are aligned with them politically, including the current government. That's not seen as particularly bad, because if you have a philosophy of how you want to move your country forward to support it in that fashion.... But again, the separation of the court system is something that needs to be protected.
If you'd like to respond to any or all of that, feel free. Then perhaps we can go further.
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I think that was one of the positive side effects of the current Constitution, which we've had since 1999. It's precisely that it opened a wide discussion within the country, and human rights was one of the key issues during that discussion. So that is a very positive action and effect of that discussion back in 1999.
In my view, the problem the government has is that they were the majority--not the government, but people sympathizing with Chávez probably were the majority in the national constitutional assembly. In my view, they signed a Constitution as if they were in the opposition, but one day they realized they were in power and they had to fulfill the Constitution, respect it, and apply it, and that is the problem they're facing now.
The issue of human rights, as I was saying at the beginning of the presentation, was a key one. I think that's why people feel proud of the Constitution, and that's why people are demanding the rights that the Constitution recognizes. That's why the level of demonstrations has increased seriously during the past few years. At the beginning it was very easy to say, “We're a new government and all the problems we have come from the ancien régime”, if you want to put it that way, La Cuarta República de Venezuela , as they call it.
People trusted the government, and said, “Well, let's wait for a while. It's not your fault. We have to trust you, and you'll do your best.” But after 11, or 10, or 9 years, people started to feel very uncomfortable and unhappy with the lack of results. That's why people now have the Constitution in their hands, and they still feel proud about it, but they're using it in a way the government doesn't like.
With regard to television channels leading the coup, there was a blackout, that is true; there was a blackout of information from the private media. All of them shared that responsibility. The four major television channels shared that responsibility. They don't recognize it, of course, but they're responsible for a blackout of information during those days.
I was personally a victim of that. I was trying to approach one radio station when a Chávez member of Parliament was arrested. I went to visit him, and I was not allowed to visit him in the political prison. I couldn't have my voice heard in that television station until 11 p.m., when a journalist who was a personal friend of mine said, “Okay, I will open the microphone”, but it was 11 p.m.
So there was a blackout. We cannot say that the private media are innocent. What I'm saying is that they are guilty. They have to go to trial. There's no way that you can solve this problem using administrative measures that have nothing to do with the grounds of the accusations.
With regard to the police, probably there is one point where we have some good news. The national police was created a couple of years ago. The person who has been appointed as executive secretary to design and monitor all the implementation of the process is a person who came from the human rights NGO movement. Her name is Soraya El Achkar. She's a very prominent human rights defender in Venezuela with high credibility, and I'm sure she's doing her best to make this happen with a lot of resistance from her boss, who is the Minister of the Interior.
Members of my team, Provea, members of all of the human rights organizations, are doing our best to make this happen. We're contributing every Wednesday to the education of these new policemen on human rights. That is the only window of direct and positive contact with the government we have, but it's a good one.
Sorry, it's the national police. That doesn't exclude the other police, so the problem remains.
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With regard to the first question, as you probably know, President Chávez has created these so-called
misiones, or missions, in many areas--education, health, literacy, food, you name it. In those missions, the low ranks of the military play a very key role. It's a way of in fact making them closer to the population, making them closer to the social problems. That's something that's been on the table for a long time, how to close the gap between the military and society, and I think probably President Chávez thought it was a good and positive way to do it.
I have no objections whatsoever to that close link between civil society and the military, because I think that's in favour of democracy. However, there's another side to it that is risky--namely, when you start giving weapons to civilians who are not controlled, who are not part of the organization of the state. Our Constitution is very clear. We have four branches. And now we have a fifth branch that is not part of the Constitution and that is only accountable to President Chávez directly.
In the last military parade that took place, on April 19, a civilian celebration of our 200 years of independence, the main official celebration was a military parade in which 30,000 civilians were in the parade and wearing weapons. That was very shocking for the population. In fact, the former director of public security for catástrofes--I never know how to say it, sorry—made a statement of criticism right after that parade, because it was very shocking for many military to see their colleagues, or their former colleagues, marching and shouting slogans in favour of the revolution, in favour of socialism, and behind them also seeing these 30,000 civilians marching with weapons that belong to the state and therefore to us; they were not a particular group identified with a political project.
With regard to the issue of Colombia, it is, as you probably know, almost the last resort of many governments who are losing popularity to invent a foreign enemy. Fujimori did it. The military junta in Argentina did it. There are many examples of people trying to use fictitious foreign enemies to try to pull the country together. Fortunately for Venezuela--fortunately for our peace--Chávez has been unable to put in motion that resort. People are not willing to go to war with Colombia. We all have people and family in Colombia; my grandmother was from Colombia.
A few days after he started that last year, when he ordered the minister of defence to move I don't know how many people to the border.... They never arrived, by the way, thank goodness. All the comments you heard on the radio were the same: we don't want a confrontation with Colombia, we're brothers, we're sisters, we don't need this.
It was very different from the reaction in Venezuela during the Malvinas/Falklands crisis, when everybody was against the United States, everybody was against the United Kingdom. It was very different from the Caldas crisis we had many years ago, when the vessel Caldas from Colombia entered into what we considered to be our national sea. That created a big confrontation and had people shouting in the streets and making very aggressive statements on radio and television. That didn't happen this time.