IACHR Issues Report on Human Rights in Venezuela

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) is an autonomous organ of the Organization of American States (OAS) which represents all of the member States of the OAS.  Each of the seven members of the IACHR are elected by the General Assembly of the OAS, which means that none represent an individual nation.  This gives the IACHR more independence than the disgraced United Nations Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR).

The IACHR recently published Democracy and Human Rights in Venezuela. This report documents the destruction of human rights under Venezuela’s leftist regime.  Among the issues documented are:

• Political intolerance
• Lack of independence of the branches of the State in dealing with the executive
• Constraints on the freedom of expression and the right to protest peaceably
• A climate hostile to the free exercise of dissenting political participation and to monitoring activities on the part of human rights organizations
• Citizen insecurity
• Violent acts perpetrated against persons deprived of their liberty, trade union members, women, and campesinos
• Prevailing impunity affecting cases of human rights violations

In a nutshell, the report explains that justice in Venezuela now depends not upon what you have done but upon who you are.  If you are a leftist, you can murder prisoners with impunity.  If you do not support the leftists, you have no right to free speech.

The Venezuelan government attempted to make this report impossible to prepare by refusing the IACHR entry into Venezuela for the purposes of conducting an observation visit.  Thankfully, the Venezuela’s leftists are not competent enough to keep all truth from escaping their borders.

Quoting from the Conclusions of the report:

Based on the information received, the Commission has identified in this report various aspects that contribute to the weakening of the rule of law and democracy in Venezuela and that have caused as a consequence serious restrictions to the full enjoyment of the human rights recognized in the American Convention.

Carlos Correa from Espacio Público, a Venezuelan human right group, praised the report for making the violations of basic human rights in Venezuela more visible.