Big Lies by Human Rights Watch on Venezuela
by Stephen Lendman stephenlendman.org – Home – Stephen Lendman
In cahoots with its corporate donors and Washington, HRW is part of the anti-Bolivarian propaganda campaign, supporting regime change – based on a litany of bald-faced Big Lies.
HRW: Last “May, President Nicolas Maduro won presidential elections against an opposition badly weakened by years of government repression, and amid widespread allegations that the polls had not met international standards of freedom and fairness.”
Fact: Alleged Venezuelan repression is a cooked up media supported US Big Lie. Whenever Venezuelan elections are held, around 25 in the Bolivarian Republic, international observers always call them open, free and fair – polar opposite the US money-controlled process. HRW lied claiming otherwise.
HRW: “No independent government institutions remain today in Venezuela to act as a check on executive power.”
“A series of measures by the Maduro and Chavez governments stacked the courts with judges who make no pretense of independence.”
“The government has been repressing dissent through often-violent crackdowns on street protests, jailing opponents, and prosecuting civilians in military courts. It has also stripped power from the opposition-led legislature.”
Fact: Venezuela is the hemisphere’s leading democracy, polar opposite growing US-led Western tyranny – at war on humanity at home and abroad, including by police state toughness.
Fact: The above claims turned truth on its head, reading like lines scripted in Washington. Reality is polar opposite HRW’s Big Lies.
Venezuela’s judicial system shares equal importance to the law of the land, supporting international, constitutional, and the country’s statute laws, operating independently of other branches of government under the nation’s Supreme Court.
The Bolivarian spirit is stated straightaway in the Constitution’s Preamble, saying:
The law of the land “establish(ed) a democratic, participatory and self-reliant, multiethnic and multicultural society in a just, federal and decentralized State that embodies the values of freedom, independence, peace, solidarity, the common good, the nation’s territorial integrity, comity and the rule of law for this and future generations.”
It “guarantees the right to life, work, learning, education, social justice and equality, without discrimination or subordination of any kind; promotes peaceful cooperation among nations and further strengthens Latin American integration in accordance with the principle of nonintervention and national self-determination of the people, the universal and indivisible guarantee of human rights, the democratization of imitational society, nuclear disarmament, ecological balance and environmental resources as the common and inalienable heritage of humanity…”
The above language is unimaginable in the US Constitution or statute laws – a self-serving government largely of men, not laws, a democracy in name only. Venezuelans have the real thing.
HRW: “Severe shortages of medicines, medical supplies, and food leave many Venezuelans unable to feed their families adequately or access essential healthcare.”
“The massive exodus of Venezuelans fleeing repression and shortages represents the largest migration crisis of its kind in recent Latin American history.”
Fact: No mass exodus of millions occurred, no repression. Numbers cited grossly distorted reality. Many who left returned home because of intolerable conditions in Colombia, Brazil and elsewhere.
HRW: “Other persistent concerns include poor prison conditions, impunity for human rights violations, and harassment by government officials of human rights defenders and independent media outlets” – more bald-faced Big Lies.
Like Western establishment media, HRW ignored the ongoing attempt by Trump regime hardliners to crush Bolivarian social democracy – waging war by other means, harming the country economically and financially, bearing most responsibility for hardships affecting millions of Venezuelans, exacerbated by low oil prices.
What’s most important to explain, HRW suppressed, operating as an imperial agent, supporting what demands denunciation – the US attempt to illegally topple a sitting government.
No “persecution of political opponents” exists. HRW lied claiming otherwise, no political prisoners, no arbitrary arrests and crackdowns, no “extrajudicial killings.”
There are no “serious abuses against detainees that in some cases amount to torture, including severe beatings, electric shocks, asphyxiation, and sexual abuse” — what goes on in US torture prisons worldwide, not in Venezuela.
A separate article discussed humanitarian conditions in the country, far short of what international law considers a humanitarian disaster – what’s going on in all US war theaters, HRW failed to explain.
Maduro’s government and the courts strictly abide by international and Venezuelan laws. HRW lied claiming otherwise – including no suppression of speech, media and academic freedoms, no civil and human rights abuses.
Actions are taken against lawbreakers, elements involved in violence, chaos, and vandalism – in cahoots with US efforts to replace democratically elected Maduro with puppet rule controlled by Washington and corporate predators.
HRW is an imperial tool, opposing principles it falsely claims to support.
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