United States unveils plan to resolve Venezuela human rights crisis at UN

Among the Spanish speaking countries, only Bolivia, Cuba and Nicaragua supported the Venezuelan government in their speeches. Over the past weekend, arrests of civil society activists continued. Unilateral coercive measures continue to be controversial.

The UN Human Rights Council stands on the ground to promote negotiation between government of Nicolas Maduro and countries that support bloodless development in Venezuela. In fact, The United States presents itself at the head of an alliance mechanism that has just been launched in Geneva, after report by High Commissioner Michelle Bachelet published a few days ago, on persistent human rights violations in the Bolivarian Republic.

Calcada de la ecuación that brought about reflotar Joe Biden para impedir that Irán irreversibly equips himself with nuclear armament, elucubrada por Barack Obama sin embargo aparcada por Donald Trump, los Estados Unidos proponen a Venezuela algo similar: levantar sanciones a cambio de elecciones Libres y respeto de human rights. In both cases, the figure of Antony Blinken, Obama’s foreign policy adviser, now head of the State Department to Biden, prevails, who has just set up in Geneva a network of wills, gestures and of coincident speeches which leaves no alternative to the majority of Latin American countries and the European Union, which advocate a peaceful transition in Venezuela.

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Voluntarily absent after resigning from the OAS inter-American human rights system, If Nicolás Maduro’s diplomacy wishes to break its international isolation, it does not seem to have a better choice than to seek a solution in the only international body which still integrates it: the UN Human Rights Council.. The conditions are favorable: the United States was absent in 2018, planning a return in 2022, in which the 4 other permanent members of the UN Security Council are already present, namely Russia, China, France and the United Kingdom, among the 47 states that compose it. For Latin America and the Caribbean, Venezuela is currently included, as has been said, in addition to the Bahamas, Brazil, Bolivia, Cuba, Uruguay, Mexico and Argentina.

In the present session of the aforementioned Council which will end on July 15, the penultimate in 2021, although still being an observer country until the end of the year, The United States succeeded in standardizing the critical discourse towards Venezuela, by softening its language and weaving complicities that absorbed the countries of the Lima Group., the majority in Latin America, to those in the European Union, plus Japan, Israel, New Zealand, Australia, the Republic of Korea and Switzerland, 57 in total. In a joint speech, co-signed by Washington, there is no allusion to unilateral coercive measures against Caracas.

Note that during its individual intervention as a country, the United States subtly slipped its commitment “work with partners and allies to…. apply appropriate sanctions, including against corrupt regime officials who undermine democracy or violate human rights”. Thus, he made the unilateral coercive measures compatible with the positions of Michelle Bachelet and with several Venezuelan NGOs, which They condemn such measures when they affect the population, since they support them if they are representatives of the Maduro government.

Michelle Bachelet asked Nicolás Maduro to account for the crackdown

In this regard, Venezuela denounced that “the financial headquarters blocked the payment of several million dollars to the COVAX system for the acquisition of vaccines against the pandemic” … and “it was not possible to receive the spare parts already paid for for the Electron Microscopes of the Central University of Venezuela and the Venezuelan Institute for Scientific Research, which must continue to operate “. Added that “While this is happening, Venezuela is heading (sic) again towards an electoral party, with the celebration of regional elections scheduled for November 2021.”

Argentina and Uruguay, which retain their independence in the debate, did not come up against this context, although they agreed that Caracas must produce substantial transformations in the field of human rights. “In accordance with what has been declared by a group of States”, in an alleged allusion to the joint pronouncement of 57 of them mentioned above, Montevideo expressed concern for “The persistent and serious restrictions on civic and democratic space” confirmed “the urgent need to guarantee the holding of free and independent elections”, and asked to authorize the opening of an office of Bachelet in Venezuela and the visit of UN experts.

Argentina criticized “increased economic and financial sanctions”, and in turn demanded “free, fair, peaceful and independent elections that include dissenting voices”. AND urged “the Maduro government to” carry out prompt, thorough and independent investigations, “in particular into” complaints about extrajudicial killings in the context of security operations and demonstrations, bring the perpetrators to justice and ensure adequate redress for the victims, as well as put an end to attacks against members of the opposition, the media and human rights defenders ”.

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Consulted with several Venezuelan civil society organizations, which are not worth identifying, likely to provoke reprisals against them, which followed the deliberations in Geneva of the direct and public audiovisual system of the United Nations, they have realized that the health crisis is worsening. They criticized the government’s rhetoric, which shies away from responsibility, and accuse international sanctions of failing to comply with their obvious and implicit obligations. They called on the High Commissioner to continue his efforts to remedy the lack of official statistics and the lack of public information in the country. They said Venezuelans were unaware of the impact of the pandemic in the country. And they ignore the timelines and criteria for the current Covid-19 vaccination campaign.

These civil society organizations support the opinion of the High Commissioner Michelle Bachelet on the worsening of the humanitarian emergency following the unilateral coercive measures against the country, stressing that the crisis is pre-existing to the sanctions. They stressed, as they have expressed since 2019, before the unilateral coercive measures, that there were already serious violations by the Venezuelan state of the right to an adequate standard of living, due to the misappropriation of resources, corruption, lack of maintenance of infrastructure and deterioration of basic services.

They reaffirmed that restrictions on civic space are maintained through criminalization and smear campaigns against human rights activists. They warned that currently two regulations are being promoted that increase restrictions: Administrative Decision 002 and the International Cooperation Bill. And they talked about what happened in the last few hours with the arrests of civilian leaders of “Fundaredes”, Javier Tarazona, who suffers from heart disease, Rafael Tarazona, and Omar de Dios García, initially missing, subsequently held incommunicado, before being charged with “treason, terrorism and incitement to hatred”.

Without contact with relatives and lawyers, a public defense was imposed on these three new victims of the repression, a ruse already known to NGOs. They explained that it consists in putting pressure on the defendants and those deprived of their liberty, when the date of the judgment approaches, so that they plead guilty with the promise to reduce their sentence. Certified Venezuelan NGOs regretted that Michelle Bachelet, knowing the case, was limited to asking yesterday only “urgent access to defense lawyers of her choice”., and did not demand the immediate release of these alleged innocent people from civilian activism.