Cuba, Russia, and China Shut Down UN Human Rights Discussion About Venezuela

Human Rights Foundation:

On July 28, 2012, Human Rights Foundation (HRF) joined the campaign organized by the Geneva-based human rights group, U.N. Watch, to stop Venezuela from obtaining a seat on the UN Human Rights Council. In this video, HRF president Thor Halvorssen addresses the UNHRC and the opponents of human rights revealed their intolerance and their fear of being exposed.

"My name is Thor Halvorssen and I am from Venezuela. In 2004, my mother was shot by the security forces of the Venezuelan government of Hugo Chavez.

Through the Human Rights Foundation, which I founded and direct, I have carefully monitored the Venezuelan state and have established that its current government is among Latin America's worst human rights violators.

In Venezuela, exercising free speech is fraught with risks. Political dissent is criminalized. Property is capriciously and unlawfully seized. Opposition politicians are disqualified from elections thanks to false accusations. Journalists are harassed and media critical of the government is simply shut down. Judges are fired and even sent to prison when the president dislikes their rulings. More than 150,000 people have been killed in Venezuela since Lieutenant Colonel Chávez was elected president in 1999. Add to this the more than 5,000 who have died in the country's disgraceful prisons, many of them awaiting trial and therefore possibly innocent of the charges that put them behind bars in the first place. No such murder rate had ever existed in Venezuela, or anywhere else in the world for that matter. The government has proven that it is incapable of protecting the most basic human right--the right to life.

While all of this has taken place this council has remained silent.

Madam President, despite all of this, Venezuela is now seeking election to this council. When it was founded in 2006 the council promised that only those countries that "uphold the highest standards in the promotion and protection of human rights" would be the only ones elected. To elect Venezuela would shame and embarrass this council and would allow Venezuela to shield its horrendous record of abuse and equally problematically, to validate other authoritarian governments such as Syria, Iran and one that sits shamefully on this council: Cuba. Electing Venezuela would deny this council the chance to shine a light into the darkness that envelops Venezuela and it will blunt actions to protect 29 millions Venezuelans who are at the mercy [of a malicious and incompetent government]."

Watch the video.

Comments

[Abiteinthechunk.blogspot.com]

No doubt Venezuela is a very contradictory "human rights" problem ! Some do not have any problem, and some even prefer leaving Venezuela ! IF THEY CAN ! At least they have not been trapped in like in CUBA or China !
IN CANADA THERE IS NO FORCEFUL "EXPROPRIATION" of properties or basic home, other than ignorant "fore-closures", or 'forceful' over time when no family is left, or health issues or loss of work and government forces them finally out to "landlord" rents: it does happen, but covered up !