human rights | Fausta's Blog

August 2, 2016 By Fausta

The Venezuela slave labor story is finally getting noticed

. . . or isn’t it?

The Maduro regime decreed on July 22 that

any employee in Venezuela can be effectively made to work in the country’s fields as a way to fight the current food crisis

as quoted in Amnesty International‘s July 28th press release. Caracas Chronicles discussed it on July 27th.

Vice news first reported on it on July 28th; I linked to it the following day.

Zero Hedge and HotAir also had it on July 29. PowerLine posted on it on July 30.

VN&N had it as part of a larger post on July 31st, and included an image of the decree’s text:

CNN Money reported on it yesterday. Ed Driscoll, who notices LatAm stories at Instapundit, linked to it today.

Newsbusters noticed that Over a Week Later, Forced Labor Decree in Venezuela Is Still Not News at AP, NY Times.

It still isn’t.

But never mind, we already know how those things go:

After he expressed his desire to leave Cuba, Mr. Ramirez lost his job at the rayon factory, and for the next five years, he worked in the fields outside Matanzas, chopping hemp plants used for making rope.

“Five years,” Mr. Ramirez says. “The same as Russia sends people to Siberia, they send the dissidents to the fields of Cuba to work. Seven in the morning until 7 in the afternoon.”

Nothing to see here, move right along . . .

May 22, 2015 By Fausta

Argentina: Veterans take torture case to inter-American court of human rights

Argentinian Falklands veterans take ‘torture’ case to international arena
Veterans of the 1982 conflict recount their ordeal and the anti-Semitic abuse they faced in a press conference, including instances of beatings and sexual violence

Argentinian Falklands War veterans who accuse military officers of torture during the 1982 conflict will take their case to an international appeal court after Argentina’s highest court ruled the alleged offences’ statute of limitations had expired.

Mario Volpe, the president of the CECIM Falklands veterans’ association, said his organisation had asked the inter-American court of human rights to rule on whether the Argentinian state had deprived the former soldiers of “the right of access to justice and right to the truth”.

CECIM has gathered together some 150 complaints of former servicemen against their officers during the military dictatorship’s ill-fated invasion of the Falklands, which include instances of beatings, sexual violence, cruel immobilising practices in the absence of punishment cells and the application of electric shocks.

Their case had previously been dismissed under the statute of limitations, now they are appealing to the OAS’s International Court of Human Rights.

For her part, Cristina said, ~~good luck with that~~ “I hope you go to the inter-American Court; I’m sure you will be listened to.”

I’m still reading The Real Odessa: How Peron Brought the Nazi War Criminals to Argentina and highly recommend it.

January 30, 2015 By Fausta

Venezuela: Fire at will

The Venezuelan government has authorized its military to fire upon civilians at rallies and public demonstrations:

The armed forces are now directed to use “potentially lethal force, whether with firearm or any other potentially lethal weapon”, as last resort to “avoid disorders, support legitimate authority, and reject all aggression, confronting it immediately and by the necessary means.”
( “uso de la fuerza potencialmente mortal, bien con el arma de fuego o con otra arma potencialmente mortal”, como último recurso para “evitar los desórdenes, apoyar la autoridad legítimamente constituida y rechazar toda agresión, enfrentándola de inmediato y con los medios necesarios”.)

The resolution makes no distinction between peaceful or violent demonstrations, and may most likely be unconstitutional (link in Spanish), but, as Emiliana Duarte points out,

There’s a grim kind of tradeoff at play here: the government’s relaxed brutality when it comes to Human Rights affords them the time to hesititate over the economic shitstorm that’s creating the protests they will need to repress in the first place.

And, really, who’s to argue against expediency for the sake of peace?

In other news, Key Evidence in Leopoldo López Case Allegedly Manipulated
Lawyers to File Criminal Complaint against Discrepancies in Court Documents.

January 24, 2015 By Fausta

Cuba: File this one under “No sh*t, Sherlock”

Pres. Obama gave a speech the week before Christmas, and everything was taken care of: Cuba’s outdated Cold War mentality magically transformed into an age of enlightenment and human rights.

So here we go,
After First Normalization Talks With Cuba, U.S. Says Deep Divisions Remain
Human Rights, Support for Dissidents Are Main Areas of Disagreement.

Who wouldha thunk it!

Back in the olden days enlightened despots

did not propose reforms that would undermine their sovereignty or disrupt the social order.

Nowadays there’s the Viet Nam outcome,

The Vietnam outcome is what the Castros are counting on: a flood of U.S. tourists and business investment that will allow the regime to maintain its totalitarian system indefinitely.

Same old, same old.

UPDATE,
Linked to by Pirate’s Cove. Thank you!

December 30, 2014 By Fausta

Venezuela: Kidnappings and extorsion prior to jailings

El Nuevo Herald has a report on how Venezuelan intelligence agents are running kidnapping and extortion gangs:
Agentes de inteligencia venezolanos operan bandas de secuestro y extorsión (my translation)

“This is a very common modus operandi”, explained Anthony Daquín, former advisor to the Venezuelan Ministry of Interior and Justice. “Agents of the Military Counterintelligence Agency and the Sebin [Servicio Bolivariano de Inteligencia Nacional – Bolivarian National Intelligence Service] are running these kidnapping and extortion gangs”.

Their victims are people accused of crimes by chavista courts, and the kidnappings are carried by the same agents of these agencies, usually a day or two prior to the victims being delivered to the prosecutors for trial.

The purpose is to get as much money and assets as possible from the victims, often under torture, prior to being turned in to chavista justice.

The article is available only in Spanish, not yet in the Miami Herald.

Just the other day the NYTimes had Diosdado Cabello writing that “Our government responded with restraint” to the riots. Let’s see if they respond at all to these accusations.

Their men in Caracas: the Cuban expats shoring up Maduro’s government
From military advisers to aid workers, thousands of Cubans form an information network across Venezuela’s economy

November 20, 2014 By Fausta

Cuba: The wall

Maria Werlau of Cuba Archive writes about how Cuba refuses to tear down its wall (h/t Asher):

Barbed wire, high fences, mine fields, watch towers, ferocious dogs, and sharpshooters firing at unarmed civilians…the tropical version of the Berlin Wall prevents escapees from reaching the U.S. naval base in Guantánamo. Cuba’s distinctive version of the barrier extends into Guantánamo Bay, where border guards fire from patrol boats or throw grenades at anyone trying to swim to the base.

In the mid-1990s, Cuba built a sea wall, visible on Google Earth. Its movable net allows authorized maritime traffic but is manned by guards trained to trap swimmers trying to get to the base.

While the NYT pushes for the end of the so-called embargo,

Cuba’s Penal Code (Article 215) continues to forbid citizens from leaving the island without prior government authorization. Attempting to do so is punishable with years of prison. Stealing or hijacking a vessel to flee can lead to capital punishment.

The Cuba Archive has documented 80 people killed or missing in attempts to reach the base.

August 7, 2014 By Fausta

Venezuela: What a show trial looks like

Venezuelan Court Bars Defense for Opposition Leader
As Leopoldo López’s trial got under way Wednesday for allegedly inciting violence in a bid to topple the government, his defense faced a problem: They were banned from calling witnesses and evidence on his behalf.

In addition to not being able to call 63 witnesses the defense had proposed, the court barred Mr. López’s defense team from presenting 18 videos taken by journalists at the protest. Hearing from those witnesses would provide clarity over what happened, said Mr. Gutiérrez, because the prosecution is accusing protesters of throwing Molotov cocktails at the Attorney General’s Office. He said no images have emerged depicting that kind of violence.

Meanwhile, the court ruled that the prosecution is permitted to call more than 100 witnesses, mostly government employees.

May 2, 2014 By Fausta

Mexico: Impunity for attacks on the press

Freedom House’s Freedom of the Press 2014 report on the conditions journalists face in Mexico,

Impunity for attacks on the press can be attributed in large part to a combination of state and local authorities’ ineptitude and their involvement with or fear of organized crime groups. Federal authorities are not fully trusted by journalists either, though federal prosecutors can claim more professionalism and distance from the corruption and threats that impede subnational officials. Statutes that took effect in May implemented a 2012 constitutional reform empowering
the Office of the Federal Special Prosecutor for Crimes against Free Expression. Prior to the implementing regulations, the office had lacked the authority to assert jurisdiction over cases and had achieved just one conviction in six years. Despite the changes, Special Prosecutor Laura Borbolla was initially hesitant to claim jurisdiction without state officials’ approval. By August
her office had taken on only one homicide case, the 2008 murder of El Diario de Juárez police reporter Armando Rodríguez Carreón.

According to Human Rights Watch, another federal program, the Protection Mechanism for Journalists and Human Rights Defenders, was “seriously undermined by a lack of funds and political support at all levels of government.” Journalists and human rights defenders who sought risk assessment and protection measures faced long delays and inadequate safeguards. Some journalists do benefit from the program, such as Emilio Lugo, editor of the Agoraguerrero news website, who was relocated from Guerrero after his investigations and criticisms of state
authorities resulted in threats. Although there is no confirmed count of Mexican journalists in exile, tenuous security conditions have prompted several to leave the country. Verónica Basurto, an investigative television reporter in Mexico City, criticized the federal protection process as inadequate and fled to Europe after receiving multiple threats. Miguel Ángel López, whose
journalist father and brother were murdered in Veracruz in 2011, received asylum in the United States in June.

In our hemisphere, Mexico, Honduras, Cuba, Venezuela and Ecuador do not have a free press.