Mérida, February 26th 2009 (Venezuelanalysis.com) - In a
statement released Thursday, Venezuela's Foreign Relations Ministry
said the global human rights report released Wednesday by the U.S.
State Department was "false, interventionist, and
of malicious intent," and said the report lacks legitimacy because
the U.S. government itself has a dismal human rights
record.
"The government of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, in defense
of the sovereignty of the Venezuelan people, rejects in the most
firm and categorical manner the U.S. State Department's report,"
stated the ministry.
The lengthy report evaluates civil, political, and worker rights in
more than 200 countries. It includes allegations against Venezuela
that "are baseless and constitute an expression of anti-Venezuelan
opinions of those who... refuse to accept that Venezuela is in
charge of its own destiny," according to the ministry.
The ministry also
questioned the legitimacy of the report, from which the U.S.'s own
human rights record was omitted. "The Venezuelan
government finds this recurrent practice of the U.S. bureaucracy to
be inadmissible," stated the ministry. "The state with the darkest
record of violations and assaults on human dignity in contemporary
history pretends to set itself up as the judge of other states,
without any legitimacy or mandate."
Such practices "injure the relationship between our states, which
should be based on respect, equality, and non-intervention in
internal affairs," the ministry's statement concluded.
Speaking before the National Assembly Thursday, Venezuelan Foreign
Relations Minister Nicolás Maduro called on the U.S. to cease its
attacks on Venezuela, and emphasized the need for a
"pluri-polar" world in which "no government of the world attempts
to impose itself upon other states."
Starting in the weeks before the election of U.S. President Barack
Obama, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez has repeatedly expressed
his desire to renew and improve diplomatic relations with the
United States. Relations soured after the
U.S. supported a coup against Chávez in April 2002, and froze last
September after the governments of Venezuela and Bolivia denounced
the involvement of U.S. officials in plots to overthrow their
democratically elected governments.
Several National Assembly deputies also responded to the report.
Deputy Ángel Rodríguez, president of the Energy and Mining
Commission, said the report's attacks against Venezuela "are part
of the ongoing effort of that country [the U.S.] to displace the
Bolivarian Government, which from the beginning has adopted a
policy of full sovereignty over its oil."
The president of the foreign affairs commission, Deputy Roy Daza,
deemed the report "a very bad start for the administration of [U.S.
President Barack] Obama, because it is a continuation of the
policies of George W. Bush, which resulted in a political iceberg
in world affairs."
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived late to the press
conference in which she presented the human rights report.
The report says that during the previous year, "the [Venezuelan]
NGO community noted an erosion of both democratic and human rights,
with potentially severe consequences."
Specifically, the report says pro-government media in Venezuela
have promoted anti-Semitism. It also denounces inhumane prison
conditions and extra-judicial executions by police officers in some
cities, and alleges that a series of laws passed by the National
Assembly last year "reduc[ed] the scope of authority of elected
officials and promoted centralization of power."
Further, the report alleges a lack of press freedom due to a
"climate of self-censorship" caused by the Venezuelan government's
Law on Social Responsibility in Radio and Television, and says the
government curbed freedom of expression in the run-up to this
year's referendum on whether to abolish term limits on elected
offices.
Deputy Daza pointed out that the report contradicts statements made
by U.S. State Department Spokesperson Gordon Duguid, who commented
two days following the February 15th referendum that "it's my
understanding that the referendum took place in a fully democratic
process."
The governments of Bolivia also harshly criticized the U.S.'s
report. Sacha Llorenti, a spokesperson for the Bolivian government,
said the report is "politically motivated" and called the report a
"crude simplification of the national reality."
Llorentil also demanded that the U.S. government stop harboring
former Bolivian president Sánchez de Lozada, who is charged with
having ordered the massacre of political demonstrators in
2003.
http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/news/4251