U.N.’s top human-rights official gets it right on Venezuela’s abuses — except for one thing | Opinion
Two new United Nations reports on human-rights atrocities by Venezuela’s dictatorship have gone almost unnoticed amid the news of the COVID-19 pandemic. But they deserve attention, because — except for one major flaw — they are among the most damning indictments of the Venezuelan tyranny I’ve seen lately.
The July 2 and July 15 reports by U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet came after an inquiry last year in which her office documented at least 6,856 suspicious deaths and extra-judicial executions by government security forces between January 2018 and May 2019.
That figure would make Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro responsible for the largest number of state-sponsored mass killings in the region in a 17-month span since the days of South America’s rightist military dictatorships in the 1970s.
The July 2 report says there have been at least 1,324 additional violent deaths carried out by Maduro’s hit squads during “security operations” between Jan. 1 and May 31, 2020.
The July 15 report cites documented cases of executions, torture and forced disappearances. Among the atrocities cited is the execution of 38 young men by Maduro’s hit squads, and there are at least 16 documented cases of torture, although it warns that, “The actual number of cases could be significantly higher.”
It says that documented cases of torture “included severe beatings with boards, suffocation with plastic bags and chemicals, submerging the head of the victim under water, electric shocks to the eyelids, and sexual violence in the form of electric shocks to genitalia.”
“Detainees were also exposed to cold temperatures and/or constant electric light, handcuffed and/or blindfolded for long periods of time, and subjected to death threats against themselves and their relatives,” the report says. In many cases, “Doctors issued false or inaccurate medical certificates not disclosing the signs of torture.”
The report refers to the case of retired Capt. Rafael Acosta Arévalo, who died in custody on June 29, 2019: “Reports of his autopsy revealed that he had suffered multiple blows. He had bruises, wounds and burns on various parts of his body as well as 15 broken ribs and fractures to his nose and right foot.”
Bachelet, a former president of Chile and long-time member of Chile’s Socialist party, deserves applause for her well-documented U.N. reports on Venezuela. A I discovered in several interviews with her during her second presidency from 2014 to 2018, she has previously been reluctant to publicly criticize the Venezuelan dictatorship,.
But she makes a big mistake in recommending in her latest report that the United States and other countries, “Revise, suspend or lift targeted sanctions” on Venezuela’s top officials and the government-run oil industry. She claims that such economic sanctions “hinder the government’s efforts to face the combined effects of the humanitarian situation and the COVID-19 pandemic.”
No, she’s got that one wrong. What Venezuela needs is more economic sanctions imposed by the international community to put even more pressure on the Maduro dictatorship to allow free elections, which would start to reverse the country’s humanitarian crisis.
Contrary to what Maduro claims, Venezuela’s humanitarian crisis has not been caused by U.S. or European sanctions, but by the disastrous “Chavista” revolution, which has turned Latin America’s richest country into the poorest one, along with Haiti.
As Bachelet’s office itself said in a July 5, 2019 report, “the economy of Venezuela, particularly its oil industry and food production systems, were already in crisis before any sectoral sanctions were imposed.”
Furthermore, as a May report by the Human Rights Watch advocacy group noted, there is no guarantee that if the sanctions on Venezuela’s top government figures and the government-run oil industry were lifted, the Venezuelan regime would use the money to provide humanitarian assistance to the Venezuelan people.
On the contrary, the evidence shows that Maduro and his generals would steal it for themselves, as they have been doing for the past two decades.
Economic sanctions against Venezuela’s government — not against the Venezuelan people —should be strengthened.The alternative of sanctions to press Maduro to allow free elections, would be a greater humanitarian crisis, millions more of refugees, or a foreign military invasion. What Venezuela’s dictatorship needs is much stronger sanctions by many more countries!
Don’t miss the “Oppenheimer Presenta” TV show at 8 p.m. E.T. Sunday on CNN en Español. Twitter: @oppenheimera
