Petras REALLY Sets the Record Straight on HRW and Agent Vivanco

http://karmalised.com/?p=4352

Human Rights Watch in Venezuela:
Lies, Crimes and Cover-ups
by James Petras

September 27, 2008

Human Rights Watch, a US-based group claiming to be a non-governmental
organization, but which is in fact funded by government-linked quasi-private
foundations and a Congressional funded political propaganda organization,
the National Endowment for Democracy, has issued a report "A Decade Under
Chavez: Political Intolerance and Lost Opportunities for Advancing Human
Rights in Venezuela" (9/21/2008 hrw.org). The publication of the "Report"
directed by Jose Miguel Vivanco and sub-director Daniel Walkinson led to
their expulsion from Venezuela for repeated political-partisan intervention
in the internal affairs of the country.

A close reading of the "Report" reveals an astonishing number of blatant
falsifications and outright fabrications, glaring deletions of essential
facts, deliberate omissions of key contextual and comparative considerations
and especially a cover-up of systematic long-term, large-scale security
threats to Venezuelan democracy posed by Washington.

We will proceed by providing some key background facts about HRW and Vivanco
in order to highlight their role and relations to US imperial power. We
will then comment on their methods, data collection and exposition. We will
analyze each of HRW charges and finally proceed to evaluate their truth and
propaganda value.

Background on Vivanco and HRW

Jose Miguel Vivanco served as a diplomatic functionary under the bloody
Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet between 1986-1989, serving no less as the
butcher's rabid apologist before the Inter-American Commission on Human
Rights. His behavior was particularly egregious during the regime's brutal
repression of a mass popular uprising in the squatter settlements of
Santiago in 1986-1987. With the return of electoral politics (democracy) in
Chile, Vivanco took off to Washington where he set up his own NGO, the
Center for Justice and International Law, disguising his right-wing
affinities and passing himself off as a 'human rights' advocate. In 1994 he
was recruited by former US federal prosecutor, Kenneth Roth, to head up the
'Americas Division' of Human Rights Watch. HRW demonstrated a real capacity
to provide a 'human rights' gloss to President Clinton's policy of
'humanitarian imperialism'. Roth promoted and supported Clinton's two-month
bombing, destruction and dismemberment of Yugoslavia. HRW covered up the
ethnic cleansing of Serbs in Kosovo by the notorious Albanian terrorists and
gangsters of the Kosovo Liberation Army and the unprecedented brutal
transfer of over 200,000 ethnic Serbs from the Krajina region of Croatia.
HRW backed Clinton's sanctions against Iraq leading to the deaths of over
500,000 Iraqi children. Nowhere did the word 'genocide' ever appear in
reference to the US Administrations massive destruction of Iraq causing
hundreds of thousands of premature deaths.

HRW supported the US invasion and occupation of Afghanistan where Kenneth
Roth advised the US generals on how to secure the colonial occupation by
avoiding massive civilian deaths. In words and deeds, HRW has played an
insidious role as backer and adviser of US imperial intervention, providing
the humanitarian ideological cover while issuing harmless and
inconsequential reports criticizing 'ineffective' excesses, which
'undermine' imperial dominance.

HRW most notorious intervention was its claim that Israel's murderous
destruction of the Palestinian city of Jenin was 'not genocidal' and thus
provided the key argument for the US and Israeli blocking of a UN
humanitarian mission and investigative report. As in all of its 'research'
their report was deeply colored by selective interviews and observations
which understated the brutality and killings of Palestinian civilians by the
Israeli state - even while the fanatics who run the major pro-Israel
organizations accused HRW of bias for even mentioning a single murdered
Palestinian.

Method

HRW currently makes a big play of its widespread interviews of a broad cross
section of Venezuelan political and civic society government and opposition
groups, as well as its consultation of most available documents. Yet the
Report on Venezuela does not reflect anything of the sort. There is no
careful, straightforward presentation of the government's elaboration and
justification for its actions, no academic critiques of the anti-democratic
actions of anti-Chavez mass media; no discussion of the numerous
journalists' accounts which expose systematic US intervention. The Report
simply records and reproduces uncritically the claims, arguments and charges
of the principle publicists of the opposition while dismissing out of hand
any documented counter-claims. In other words, Vivanco and company act as
lawyers for the opposition rather than as serious and objective
investigators pursuing a balanced and convincing evaluation of the status of
democracy in Venezuela.

The political propaganda intent of Vivanco-HRW is evident in the timing of
their 'investigations' and the publication of their propaganda screeds.
Each and every previous HRW hostile 'report' has been publicized just prior
to major conflicts threatening Venezuelan democratic institutions. In
February 2002, barely two months before the US backed military coup against
Chavez, HRW joined the chorus of coup planners in condemning the Chavez
regimes for undermining the 'separation of powers' and calling for the
intervention of the Organization of American States. After the coup was
defeated through the actions of millions of Venezuelan citizens and
loyalists military officers, HRW moved quickly to cover its tracks by
denouncing the coup - but subsequently defended the media moguls, trade
union bureaucrats and business elites who promoted the coup from
prosecution, claiming the coup promoters were merely exercising their 'human
rights'. HRW provides a novel meaning to 'human rights' when it includes
the right to violently overthrow a democratic government by a military coup
d'etat.

Following the military coup in 2002 and the bosses' lockout of 2003, HRW
published a report condemning efforts to impose constitutional constraints
on the mass media's direct involvement in promoting violent actions by
opposition groups or terrorists. President Chavez' "Law for Social
Responsibility in Radio and Television" provided greater constitutional
guarantee for freedom of speech than most Western European capitalist
democracies and was far less restrictive than the measures approved and
implemented in Bush's US Patriot Act, which HRW has never challenged, let
alone mounted any campaign against.

Just prior to the political referenda in 2004 and 2007, HRW issued further
propaganda broadsides which were almost identical in wording to the
opposition (in fact HRW 'Reports' were widely published and circulated by
all the leading opposition mass media). HRW defended the 'right' of the US
National Endowment for Democracy to pour millions of dollars to fund
opposition 'NGO's', such as SUMATE, accusing the Chavez government of
undermining 'civil society' organizations. Needless to say, similar
activity in the US by an NGO on behalf of any foreign government (with the
unique exception of Israel) would require the NGO to register as a foreign
agent under very strict US Federal laws; failure to do so would lead to
federal prosecution and a jail term of up to 5 years. Apparently, HRW's
self-promoted 'credibility' as an international 'humanitarian' organization
protects it from being invidiously compared to an agent of imperialist
propaganda.

HRW: Five Dimensional Propaganda

The HRW Report on Venezuela focuses on five areas of politics and society to
make its case that democracy in Venezuela is being undermined by the
Presidency of Hugo Chavez: political discrimination, the courts, the media,
organized labor and civil society.

1.Political Discrimination

The Report charges that the government has fired and blacklisted political
opponents from some state agencies and from the national oil company.

Citizen access to social programs is denied based on their political
opinions.

There is discrimination against media outlets, labor unions and civil
society in response to legitimate criticism or political activity.

Between December 2002 and 2003, following the failure of the military coup
of the previous April, the major business organizations, senior executives
of the state oil company and sectors of the trade union bureaucracy
organized a political lockout shutting down the oil industry, paralyzing
production through sabotage of its computer-run operations and distribution
outlets in a publicly stated effort to deny government revenues (80% of
which come from oil exports) and overthrow the democratically elected
government. After 3 months and over $20 billion dollars in lost revenues
and hundreds of millions of dollars in damage to machinery, with the aid of
the majority of production workers and technicians, the bosses 'lockout' was
defeated. Those officials and employees engaged in the political lockout
and destruction of equipment and computers were fired. The government
followed normal procedures backed by the majority of oil workers, who
opposed the lockout, and dismissed the executives and their supporters in
order to defend the national patrimony and social and investment programs
from the self-declared enemies of an elected government. No sane,
competent, constitutional lawyer, international human rights lawyer, UN
commissioner or the International Court official considered the action of
the Venezuelan government in this matter to constitute 'political
discrimination'. Even the US State Department, at that time, did not object
to the firing of their allies engaged in economic sabotage. HRW, on the
other hand, is more Pope than the Pope.

Nothing captures the ludicrous extremism of the HRW than its charge that
citizens are denied access to social programs. Every international
organization involved in assessing and developing large social programs,
including UNESCO, the World Health Organization and the UN Food and
Agricultural Organization, have praised the extent and quality of the
coverage of the social programs instituted by the Chavez government covering
60% of the population and almost 100% of the poor. Since approximately
between 20-30% of the poor still vote for the opposition, it is clear that
needy citizens critical of the government have equal access to social
programs, including food subsidies, free health care and education. This
social safety net is more inclusive than ever before in the history of
Venezuela. In fact some of the poor suburbs of Caracas, like Catia, which
voted down the 2007 referendum, are major recipients of large-scale,
long-term social assistance programs.

Only scoundrels or the ill informed could be convinced of the HRW charge of
discrimination against mass media outlets, labor unions and civil society
groups. The opposition controls 95% of the newspapers, a majority of the
television and radio outlets and frequencies, with the widest national
circulation. The government has 'broken' the ruling class monopoly on
information by funding two major TV stations and a growing number of
community based radio stations.

There are more trade union members and greater trade union participation in
enterprises, internal debates and free elections than ever before under
previous regimes. Rival lists and intense competition for office between
pro and anti-government lists are common in the trade unions confederation
(UNT). The entire HRW 'Report' is based on complaints from the
authoritarian CTV(Confederation of Venezuelan Workers/Confederacion de
Trabajadores de Venezuela) bureaucrats who have lost most of their
supporters and are discredited because of their role in supporting the
bloody April 2002 coup. They are universally disdained; militant workers
have not forgotten their corruption and gangster tactics when they
collaborated with previous rightwing regimes and employers.

2. The Courts

HWR claims that President Chavez has "effectively neutralized the judiciary
as an independent branch of government". The claim that the judiciary was
'independent' is a new argument for HRW - because a decade earlier when
Chavez' 1999 constitution was approved by referendum, HRW decried the
'venality, corruption and bias of the entire judicial system'. After years
of releasing the leaders of the 2002 coup, postponing rulings and
undermining positive legislation by elected legislative bodies and after
revelations of high and lower court bribe taking, the Government finally
implemented a series of democratically approved reforms, expanding and
renewing the judicial system. The fact that the new court appointees do not
follow the past practices of the opposition-appointed judges has evoked
hysterical cries by HRW that the new reformed courts 'threaten fundamental
rights'. The most bizarre claim by HRM is that the Supreme Court did not
'counter' a 2007 constitutional reform package. In fact the Supreme Court
approved the placing of constitutional reforms to a popular referendum in
which the Chavez government was narrowly defeated. The Venezuelan Supreme
Court subsequently respected the popular verdict - unlike US Supreme Court,
which overturned the popular vote in the 2000 and 2004 Presidential
elections, a constitutional crime against the popular will, which Kenneth
Roth, Vivanco and the rest of HRW have yet to condemn.

3. The Media

Every outside media specialist has been highly critical of the advocacy of
violent action (leading up to the coup) and gross falsifications and
libelous 'reports' (including racist epithets against Hugo Chavez)
propagated by the ruling class-dominated mass media. A single opposition
television network just had one of its many outlets suspended for openly
backing the opposition military seizure of power, an action that any Western
capitalist democracy would have taken in the wake of a violent uprising.
HRW did not, has not and will not condemn the arrest of dozens of US and
international journalists, some brutally beaten, covering the Republican and
Democratic Presidential Conventions. Nothing even remotely resembling the
extraordinary powers of 'preventive detention' of journalists by the US
Homeland Security/local and state police forces exists in Venezuela. The
wanton destruction of journalists' cameras and tape recorders by the police
at the US Republican Party Convention would be un-imaginable in Venezuela
today. In contrast the only offense prosecuted in Venezuela against the
media is the act of supporting and advocating violence aimed at overthrowing
democratic institutions. Like all countries, Venezuela has laws dealing
with libel and slander; these are far weaker than any comparable statutes in
the countries upholding the tradition of the Magna Carta. HRW blatantly
falsifies reality by claiming state control of the print media: All one
needs to do is peruse any newsstand in Venezuela to see a multiplicity of
lurid anti-government headlines, or tune into the radio or television
stations and view news accounts that compete for the worst anti-Chavez
propaganda found in the US Fox News or CNN.

4. Organized Labor

HRW claims that the Venezuelan government has violated 'basic principles of
freedom of association' because it requires state oversight and
certification of union elections and that by denying the right to bargain
collectively to non-certified unions, it undermines workers' rights to
freely join the union of their choosing and to strike. Practically every
government in the West has rules and regulations regarding oversight and
certification of union elections, none more onerous than the US starting
with the Taft-Hartley Act of the 1940's and the 'Right to Work' Laws current
in many states, which have reduced the percentage of unionized workers in
the private sector to less than 3%. In contrast, during the Chavez
Presidency, the number of unionized workers has more than doubled, in large
part because new labor legislation and labor officials have reduced employer
prerogatives to arbitrarily fire unionized workers. The only union
officials who have been 'decertified' are those who were involved in the
violent coup of April 2002 and the employers lockout intended to overthrow
the government, suspend the constitution and undermine the very existence of
free unions. Former Pinochet official Jose Miguel Vivanco delicately
overlooks the gangsterism, thuggery and fraudulent election procedures,
which ran rampant under the previous rightwing Venezuelan labor
confederation, CTV. It was precisely to democratize voting procedures and
to break the stranglehold of the old-guard trade union bosses that the
government monitors oversaw union elections, many of which had
multi-tendency candidates, unfettered debates and free voting for the first
time.

I attended union meetings and interviewed high level CTV trade unions
officials in 1970, 1976 and 1978 and found high levels of open vote buying,
government and employer interference and co-optation, collaboration with the
CIA-funded American Institute of Free Labor Development and large-scale
pilfering of union pension funds, none of which was denounced by HRW. I
attended the founding of the new Venezuelan union confederation, Union
Nacional de Trabajadores (UNT) in 2003 and a subsequent national congress.
I have witness a totally different unionism, a shift from government-run
'corporate' business unionism to independent social movement unionism with a
decidedly class oriented approach. The UNT is a multi-tendency
confederation in which diverse currents compete, with varying degrees of
support and opposition to the Chavez Government. There are few impediments
to strikes and there is a high degree of independent political action with
no inhibition to workers resorting to strikes in order to demand the ouster
of pro-employer labor officials.

For example, this year, steel workers in the Argentine-owned firm SIDOR,
went on strike several times protesting private sector firings (HRW, of
course never discussed private sector violations of workers rights).
Because the Venezuelan Labor Minister tended to take the side of the
employers, the steelworkers marched into a meeting where Chavez was speaking
and demanded the dismissal of his Minister. After conferring with the
workers' leaders, Chavez fired the Labor Minister, expropriated the steel
plant and accepted workers demands for trade union co-management. Never in
Venezuelan labor history have workers exercised this degree of labor
influence in nationalized plants. There is no doubt that there are
government officials who would like to 'integrate' labor unions closer to
the state; the new unionists do spend too much time in internal debates and
internecine struggles instead of organizing the informal and temporary
worker sectors. But one fact stands out: Unionized and non-unionized
Venezuelan workers have experienced greater social welfare payments, rising
living standards, greater job protection and greater free choice in union
affiliation than any previous period in their history. It is ironic that
Vivanco, who never raised a word against Pinochet's anti-labor policies, an
uncritical apologist of the AFL-CIO (the declining and least effective labor
confederation in the industrialized West), should launch a full-scale attack
on the fastest growing, independent and militant trade union movement in the
Western hemisphere. Needless to say, Vivanco avoids any comparative
analysis, least of all between Venezuelan and US labor over the spread of
union organizing, internal democracy and labor representation in industry,
social benefits and influence over government policy. Nor does HRW refer to
the positive assessment by independent international labor organizations
regarding union and labor advances under the Chavez Presidency.

5. Civil Society and HRW: The Mother of All Perversities

Jose Miguel Vivanco, who kept quiet during his years as a state functionary
serving the Chilean dictator Pinochet, while thousands of protestors were
beaten, jailed and even tortured and killed and courageous human rights
groups were routinely assaulted, shamelessly claims that President Chavez
has adopted "an aggressively adversarial approach to local rights advocates
and civil society organization."

President Chavez has actively promoted a multitude of independent,
democratically elected community councils with over 3 million affiliated
members, mostly from the poorest half of the population. He has devolved
decision-making power to the councils, bypassing the party-dominated
municipal and state officials, unlike previous regimes and US AID programs,
which channeled funds through loyal local bosses and clients. Never has
Venezuela witnessed more intense sustained organization, mobilization and
activity of civil society movements. This cuts across the political
spectrum, from pro-Chavez to pro-oligarch neighborhood, civic, working class
and upper class groups. Nowhere in the world are US-funded groups, engaged
in overt extra-parliamentary and even violent confrontations with elected
officials, tolerated to the degree that they enjoy freedom of action as in
Venezuela. In the US, foreign-funded organizations (with the exception of
Israeli-funded groups) are required to register and refrain from engaging in
electoral campaigning, let alone in efforts to destabilize legitimately
constitutional government agencies. In contrast, Venezuela asked the
minimum of foreign government-funded self-styled NGOs in requiring them to
register their source of funding and comply with the rules of their
constitution, that is, to stay out of virulent partisan political action.
Today, as yesterday, all the 'civil society' organizations, including these
funded by the US, which routinely attack the Chavez government, can operate
freely, publish, assemble and demonstrate unimpeded. Their fundamental
complaint, echoed by HRW, is that the Chavez government and its supporters
criticize them: According to the new HRW definition of civil society
freedom,the opposition has the right to attack the government - but not the
other way around; some countries can register foreign-funded organizations -
but not Venezuela; and some government can jail terrorists and coup-makers
and identify and criticize their accomplices - but not Venezuela. The
grotesque double-standard, practiced by Human Rights Watch, reveals their
political allegiances: Blind to the vices of the US as it descends into a
police state and equally blind to the virtues of a growing participatory
democracy in Venezuela.

The 'Report' contains egregious omissions. It fails to mention that
Venezuela, under President Chavez, has experienced twelve internationally
supervised and approved elections, including several presidential,
congressional and municipal elections, referenda and recall elections.
These have been the cleanest elections in Venezuelan history and certainly
with more honest vote counting than one would find in the US presidential
contests.

The 'Report' fails to report on the serious security threats including the
recording of phone conversations of active and retired high military
officials planning to violently seize power and assassinate President
Chavez. Under the extraordinary degree of tolerance in Venezuela, not a
single constitutional right has been suspended. In the US, similar
terrorist actions and plans would have led to a state of emergency and the
probable pre-emptive mass incarceration of thousands of government critics
and activists. HRW ignores and downplays security threats to Venezuelan
democracy - whether it involves armed incursions from Colombian paramilitary
groups allied with the pro-US Venezuelan opposition, the assassination of
the chief federal prosecutor Danilo Anderson who was investigating the role
of the opposition in the bloody coup of April 2002, the US-backed
secessionist movement in the state of Zulia, the collusion of the mass media
with violent student mobs in assaulting Chavez supporters on campus or the
economic sabotage and panic caused by the private sector's hoarding of
essential food and other commodities in the lead-up to the 2007 referendum.

One of Vivanco's most glaring omissions is the contrast between Venezuela's
open society approach to the hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrant
workers from Colombia and the US authoritarian practice of criminalizing its
undocumented laborers. While the US Homeland Security and Immigration
police have implemented arbitrary mass arrests, assaults and deportation of
working heads of immigrant families - leaving their wives and children
vulnerable to destitution, Chavez has awarded over a million undocumented
Colombian immigrant workers and family members with residency papers and the
opportunity for citizenship.

HRW has yet to protest Washington's brutal denial of human rights to its
Latin American and Asian immigrant workers in recent months. HRW did not
issue a single protest when US-backed local oligarch politicians, local
government officials and racist gangs in Bolivia went on a rampage and
slaughtered three dozen unarmed Indian peasant workers. Vivanco's squalid
selective slandering of Venezuela is only exceeded by his systematic silence
when there are abuses involving US collaboraters!

Conclusion

The Human Rights Watch Report on Venezuela is a crude propaganda document
that, even in its own terms, lacks the minimum veneer of 'balance', which
the more sophisticated 'humanitarian' imperialists have put out in the past.
The omissions are monumental: No mention of President Chavez' programs which
have reduced poverty over the past decade from more than 60% to less than
30%; no recognition of the universal health system which has provided health
care to 16 million Venezuelan citizens and residents who were previously
denied even minimal access; and no acknowledgment of the subsidized
state-run grocery stores which supply the needs of 60% of the population who
can now purchase food at 40% of the private retail price.

HRW's systematic failure to mention the advances experienced by the majority
of Venezuelan citizens, while peddling outright lies about civic repression
, is characteristic of this mouthpiece of Empire. Its gross distortion
about labor rights makes this report a model for any high school or college
class on political propaganda.

The widespread coverage and uncritical promotion and citation of the
'Report' (and the expulsion of its US-based authors for gross intervention
on behalf of the opposition) by all the major newspapers from the New York
Times, to Le Monde in France, the London Times, La Stampa in Italy and El
Pais in Spain gives substance to the charge that the Report was meant to
bolster the US effort to isolate Venezuela rather than pursue legitimate
humanitarian goals in Venezuela.

The major purpose of the HRW 'Report' was to intervene in the forthcoming
November municipal and state elections on the side of the far-right
opposition. The 'Report' echoes verbatim the unfounded charges and
hysterical claims of the candidates supported by the far right and the Bush
Administration. HRW always manages to pick the right time to issue their
propaganda bromides. Their reports mysteriously coincide with US
intervention in electoral processes and destabilization campaigns.
In Venezuela today the Report has become one of the most widely promoted
propaganda documents of the leading rightist anti-Chavez candidates.

For the partisans of democracy, human rights and self-determination,
every effort should be made to expose the insidious role of HRW and its
Pinochetista propagandist, Vivanco, for what they are - publicists and
promoters of US-backed clients who have given 'human rights' a dirty name.

The small consuelo, though, is that DU gets it right again:

Their reports mysteriously coincide with US intervention in electoral processes and destabilization campaigns.

Clearly, you saw Petras' conclusion on the timing element. It's simply unpardonable scheming against the truth.

:hi:

about the Chavez government and Venezuelan democracy, to Venezuelan elections and to particular Bushwhack rotten stinking goals and and psyops campaigns.

http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/3830

I just caught this, SFexpat! GREAT ANALYSIS! This sums it all up beautifully.

---------

U.S.-NED funding! We should have known!

because then it became a matter of working it out for myself. Damn teachers, anyway. :)

I have just finished reading the whole Petras analysis, and I don't think I have ever read an analysis that pins fascist liars to a wall, the way this one does, in what feels like a white heat of passionate anger, but reads like clarity itself, from sentence to sentence and section to section.

A white heat of passionate anger in the service of TRUTH.

"For the partisans of democracy, human rights and self-determination, every effort should be made to expose the insidious role of HRW and its Pinochetista propagandist, Vivanco, for what they are - publicists and promoters of US-backed clients who have given 'human rights' a dirty name."

So, how do we take up this challenge, and expose HRW and Vivanco to our DU members, and get this out of the "backyard" of U.S. politics, and onto the main page?

It looks like it might be too late for "Latest Breaking News" but perhaps it should be posted in GD: Politics, to challenge the Corpo/Democratic position on Chavez, and to explain, a) why Bushwhack/Corpo policy on Venezuela is so counter-productive, and b) how important it is that we get accurate information about the democracy revolution in South America.

This is just horrifying that our tax dollars are going to a Pinochet hiree, to propagandize us and the world about a democracy movement that we, as a party and a country, should be supporting.

Look how hard the right-wing has worked to keep even a word of doubt, criticism, after all he has done to thwart the truth, keeping people from knowing what's going on in their world.

Have to leave immediately, but can't wait to read it later on.

THIS is something we can really, REALLY use. Thanks, magbana.

to make goddamned sure I have a way to find it again quickly in the future.

It's a long article, and every word is necessary, and every word needs to be read, regardless of the time involved.

Anyone who doesn't have the time to read it all at once should read it in increments.

What a relief to have finally seen the larger picture all in one place, a statement which covers so many areas we've all discussed before now.

Thanks, and so many more thanks.