The Latest Howlers From Human Rights Watch on Venezuela
Predictably, election season in Venezuela has come with yet another voluminous report by Human Rights Watch (HRW) that mostly rehashes the debunked claims of its 2008 report. Over a hundred scholars, including Noam Chomsky, signed a letter to HRW protesting the shoddiness of that 2008 report.
http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/4051
HRW’s response to that letter was underwhelming:
http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/4105
HRW bowed out of the debate after the devastating reply to its response
http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/4106
One need not even wade through that debate (though everyone should) to know that HRW is ridiculously biased against the Chavez government. Ken Roth, HRW’s executive director, very recently used his Twitter account to call Venezuela and a few other ALBA bloc countries (specifically Bolivia and Ecuador) “the most abusive” in Latin America.[1]
If Ken Roth is familiar with his own organization’s reports about Colombia then he should know that his remark borders on ludicrous. US officials privately estimated 257,089 people murdered by right wing death squads in Colombia and that 34 indigenous groups have been pushed to near extinction (i.e. genocide) [2]
I sent an email to HRW asking them if they now rank countries by "abuse" levels and if they could explain Roth's criteria. I don't expect a reply. It takes petitions signed by scholars with stature to get any response from HRW about its work on Venezuela. Nevertheless, HRW has padded its Venezuela reports with complaints that the Chavez government doesn’t respond to criticism:
http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/3867%26quot;
I picked out three things from the 2012 report that are indicative of its quality.
Dismissing Venezuela’s Print Media
The report includes a very dumb attempt to dismiss the importance of print media in Venezuela. Apparently realizing that its claims of "censorship" and "intimidation" are especially feeble in the case of the print media, HRW resorts to stating that
"...,only a limited number of Venezuela’s more than 27 million people read them. In 2009, the most recent year for which we were able to obtain data, Últimas Noticias, the newspaper with greatest circulation, printed 260,000 copies per day. The circulation of the most critical papers was even smaller: El Nacional printed 120,000 copies per day; El Universal, 110,000; and Tal Cual, 40,000"
The circulation of the four newspapers mentioned divided by Venezuela's population indeed works out to a mere 2%. However, the circulation of the four top newspapers in the USA divided by the total US population works out to even less - 1.7%. Does 1.7% represent the impact of the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, USA Today, and the LA Times on the US reading public as HRW's logic suggests? According to a recent study by Pew Research, 30% of US citizens read print newspapers - vastly more than 1.7%. That's partly because the circulation of all newspapers, other than the top four, adds up significantly, but another obvious reason is that people in households typically share the same copy of a newspaper. Does that not happen in the households of HRW officials? [3]
Hundreds of Peasant Murders Ignored
HRW's 2012 report goes back as far as 1998 to cite cases of political violence and impunity. It insinuates that the Chavez government is responsible for the impunity the perpetrators have enjoyed. However, the worst political violence in the country since 2001 has victimized hundreds of peasant activists murdered by hired gunmen. The crimes strongly implicate wealthy landowners who vehemently oppose land reform. The impunity enjoyed by the gunmen and their wealthy bosses contradicts HRW’s relentless depiction of the judiciary and police as being under the thumb of Chavez. It is disgraceful that these crimes and their implications would be ignored. [4]
Imaginary Purity of Venezuela’s Foreign Funded NGOs
HRW makes the laughable claim that, despite receiving US funding, there is “no credible evidence that the independence and integrity” of any Venezuelan human rights NGOs has been compromised. The head of Sumate, one of HRW’s favorite Venezuelan NGOs (and also the US government’s) signed the infamous Carmona Decree which abolished all democratic institutions in Venezuela after a short lived coup in 2002.That fact alone makes a bad joke of HRW's words.
http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/1160
While HRW can’t see signing off on dictatorship as evidence of compromised integrity that comes with foreign funds, it regards Chavez government funding of community media as dangerous:
“Today the majority of community radio stations relies on the Chávez government for funding and has an editorial line that is favorable to the government”
It appears, from the abject quality of HRW’s latest report, that it was written by people anticipating that it will be accepted at face value by the corporate media. Hopefully more people will start taking into account HRW’s proven bias when reading or citing its work.
NOTES
[1]http://www.zcommunications.org/ken-roth-says-alba-bloc-the-most-abusive-...
[2] http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/02/23/slaughter-in-colombia/
[3] List of US newspaper by circulation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_newspapers_in_the_United_States_by_...
Pew research found 25% read only print newspapers. Another 5% read newspapers both in print and online.
http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1133/decline-print-newspapers-increased-onli...
[4] Impunity for Venezuela's big landowners
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2011/11/201111810548458225.html
ZNet Articles
Blog Posts
How Chavez Has Crushed Venezuela's Private Media
By Tatsuo, Miyachi at Aug 05, 2012 10:38 AM
FRANCISCO TORO-How Chavez Has Crushed Venezuela's Private Media - NYTimes.com
MONTREAL - Sometimes on road trips in Venezuela, I like to play a little game I call "find a sane radio station." The rules are simple: I keep pressing the "seek" button on the tuner until I land on a station that broadcasts even a smidgeon of criticism of the government.
As the years wear on, it takes longer and longer to win. With enough patience, in Caracas and other large cities, you eventually do. But drive to the smaller towns and cities where most Venezuelans live, and you find yourself playing for hours on end. It's not, to tell the truth, a very fun game.
This is the world of President Hugo Chávez's "communication hegemony." Starting in 2007 the Venezuelan government decided to do something about the country's raucous private media, which for years had put up a robust challenge against what many of us saw as the government's rising authoritarianism.
To some extent, you could almost sympathize with Chávez. Particularly during the hyper-confrontational, coup-strewn years of 2001-04, Venezuela's private media often went over the top. For a two-month stretch in December 2002 and January 2003, private television stations joined a general strike, and the opposition media ran hardcore anti-Chávez propaganda around the clock, forfeiting their journalistic obligations almost completely. For those of us who were concerned about the integrity of journalism in Venezuela, it was painful to watch.
The government's solution to the problem was not to nurture a non-partisan media that might elevate the level of discussion in Venezuela's fledgling public sphere. It was to supplant unhinged antigovernment propaganda with extremist propaganda of its own and use the power of the state to keep dissenting voices off the air for good.
Over the last five years, the government has expanded its media footprint from a single national TV channel and a single radio network to a vast broadcast operation, including six nationwide TV networks, an international news channel, a news agency, three newspapers, four radio networks, 36 "community" TV channels and 244 "community" radio stations - "community" being a euphemism for local but government-financed and -controlled.
The government has also gone to extraordinary lengths to ensure that alternative voices can't be heard. In 2007, it took the unprecedented step of refusing a broadcast license to the country's most popular TV station after the station's management refused to muzzle itself. In July 2009, it shut down 34 radio stations that had dared question the government's propaganda line.
New laws with nebulous definitions now ban entire categories of speech - like messages that "could sow panic" in the population - but are used only to sanction news outlets that are too critical of the government.
As recently as 2008, Human Rights Watch was saying that Venezuela enjoyed "vibrant public debate in which anti-government and pro-government media are equally vocal in their criticism and defense of Chávez." But in a new report, the organization details just how far the government has gone toward freezing dissent.
The results are depressing. After one broadcaster was fined over $2 million for reporting live from the site of a bloody prison riot, there seems to have been no further live reporting on the country's chronic prison crisis. And what about investigations into corruption by high-ranking officials? No sane editor would even think of it. These days, if a private station wants to have any staying power, it sticks to music, relationship advice or sports.
Venezuela's broadcast media today is a wall of breathless pro-government propaganda, punctuated now and again by a baseball game or salsa tunes. No wonder my little road-trip game lasts longer and longer.
http://latitude.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/19/how-chavez-has-crushed-venezuelas-private-media/?pagewanted=print
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Venezuela's Opposition Wants
By Tatsuo, Miyachi at Aug 05, 2012 10:37 AM
Venezuela's Opposition Wants to Scrap Preferential Oil Deals
By REUTERS
PUERTO LA CRUZ, Venezuela (Reuters) - Venezuelan opposition leader Henrique Capriles said on Wednesday he would scrap preferential oil deals with foreign allies if he defeats socialist President Hugo Chavez in an October election to lead the South American OPEC member.
Chavez has sought to boost his influence abroad by offering crude deals to nations in Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean -- Venezuela's state oil company PDVSA was not paid directly for almost half the crude it pumped last year.
In Capriles' first major speech on his future oil policy, the 40-year-old said stopping Chavez's deals for crude on credit or in exchange for other goods would save $6.7 billion annually, which would be invested in new social programs.
"To have a friend, you don't need to buy him," Capriles said during a campaign stop a few kilometers from the Puerto La Cruz refinery. "From ... 2013, not a single free barrel of oil will leave to other countries."
The youthful former state governor named Belarus, Cuba, Jamaica, Dominican Republic, Uruguay and Argentina as countries that would stop receiving oil on preferential terms.
In 2011, PDVSA -- the fiscal motor of Chavez's socialist policies -- was not paid directly for 43 percent of its barrels of crude and oil products, rising from 36.5 percent in 2010 and 32 percent in 2009.
Many of the agreements are criticized by his opponents, especially those signed over the last decade with China, Cuba, Argentina, Uruguay, and the more than a dozen countries that are members of Venezuela's Petrocaribe supply program.
Chavez -- who underwent three operations for cancer over the last year -- is seeking re-election for a third term on October 7 to extend his self-styled socialist "revolution" and is spending heavily to beat Capriles.
Most opinion polls give him a double-digit lead.
'NO LEGAL CHANGES PLANNED'
Capriles is seeking to tap into pent-up frustration among many voters weary of high crime, inefficient public services and high prices. He has been on a months-long "house-by-house tour" through Venezuela meant to win over Chavez supporters and draw a comparison with the recovering president.
Capriles -- who frequently cites Norway as an example of a nation that has used its oil wealth properly to diversify the economy -- said he planned no legal changes to the oil industry, although there would be more supervision of the activities of public and private companies that are partners of PDVSA.
Chavez ordered the nationalization of dozens of crude projects in 2006 and 2007, but Venezuela has still managed to attract partners from Russia, Vietnam, Belarus and Malaysia to join PDVSA-led projects.
Companies including U.S. major Chevron, Spain's Repsol and Italy's ENI have also been drawn by the world's biggest crude reserves, which are mostly located in the Andean country's Orinoco Belt.
Oil accounts for more than 90 percent of Venezuela's exports.
Capriles promised to use the extra resources from stopping preferential deals, plus money from a planned doubling of production between 2013 and 2020, to fund programs such as raising benefits for pensioners, scholarships for mothers of handicapped children, and education.
"Where will all these resources go? Not to tanks, not to a hospital in Nicaragua, not as donations," Capriles said.
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2012/08/01/world/americas/01reuters-venezuela-election-opposition-oil.html?ref=americas&pagewanted=print
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