Former UN special rapporteur Alfred de Zayas slams UN High Commissioner
Bachelets report on Venezuela as a politicized collection of baseless
accusations by advocates of regime change
By Anya Parampil
When United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet
traveled to Venezuela earlier this year, she met with an array of citizens
who lost family members to right-wing violence in the country.
Among them was Inés Esparragoza, whose 20-year-old son, Orlando Figuera, was
doused with gasoline and lit on fire by an opposition mob during violent
anti-government riots, known as guarimbas, in May 2017.
He was stabbed, beaten and cruelly burnt alive, Esparragoza declared
before Bachelet in March. Simply because of the color of his shirt, the
color of his skin, and because he said he was Chavista.
While Esparragoza poured her familys torment out before the former Chilean
president, Bachelet scribbled notes and glanced down at horrific photos
which captured the moment masked men attacked Figuera. As the young man
knelt to the ground, a gang of anti-government thugs poured petrol over his
body before lighting a match.
I call on the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to make
justice, she said. These are not peaceful protesters, they are
bloodthirsty.
Yet shockingly, when Bachelet released her long-anticipated report on the
situation in Venezuela on July 5, it was as though that meeting never took
place.
Apparently unmoved by the testimony of Figueras grieving mother, or anyone
elses story of injury and suffering, Bachelet made no mention of opposition
violence in her report. Her failure to properly detail the plight of
Venezuelans who have suffered at the hands of anti-government rioters was
just one of many glaring omissions which has one of the top international
legal experts to have served at the UN calling the high commissioners
objectivity into question.
Alfred de Zayas became the first UN rapporteur to visit Venezuela in 21
years, traveling to the country in 2017 to examine the social and economic
impact of unilateral coercive measures applied by the US. He determined
US-led sanctions were largely to blame for the countrys hardship, accusing
Washington of waging economic warfare, and comparing its harsh measures to
medieval sieges of towns.
De Zayas was no less scathing towards Bachelets report, slamming it as a
politicized document that depended heavily on unfounded claims by activists
dedicated to Maduros removal. The new Bachelet report is methodologically
flawed, as were indeed the earlier reports, relying overwhelmingly on
unverified allegations by opposition politicians and advocates of regime
change who are only interested in weaponizing human rights, the former
special rapporteur told The Grayzone.
The same occurred with the reports of [former UNHCHR] Zeid [Raad Al
Hussein], de Zayas continued, referring to Bachelets predecessor. The
lack of professionalism on the part of the UN secretariat is a disgrace and
should be exposed by civil society.
I was not a UN employee with a salary, and no one could give me
instructions, de Zayas noted, A high commissioner is not independent and
is subject to political pressures. I endured pre mission, during mission and
post mission mobbing. A rapporteur is obliged to be independent. Sure
enough, I was pressured, intimidated, insulted by non governmental
organizations and even colleagues, but I was able to proceed with my
investigation and reflect what I saw and learned on the ground. I am not an
ideologue. There are many in the U N secretariat.
Prior to serving as UN high commissioner, Bachelet was a career politician
in Chile, where she became the countrys first female president in 2006. She
was the most centrist figure among the leaders of the progressive pink
tide that momentarily washed across Latin America. This January, a
years-long corruption investigation into her sons land deals was closed.
Conveniently ignoring the impact of US sanctions
Just three short paragraphs in Bachelets 16-page document are dedicated to
the crushing sanctions the US and its allies have imposed against Venezuela
since 2015. She went on to write off the claim that due to over-compliance,
banking transactions have been delayed or rejected, and assets frozen,
[hindering] the States ability to import food and medicines as the
government merely assign[ing] blame for its difficulties.
Bachelets dismissal of the destructive impact of sanctions on the Maduro
government overlook years of sustained economic attack on the Venezuelan
economy by the most powerful nation on earth. With the Obama
administrations move to declare Venezuelas government a national security
threat in March of 2015, Venezuelas economy and its ability to restructure
its debt have been under systematic attack.
As the independent Venezuelan outlet Mision Verdad reported, Venezuela was
catalogued by the French financial company Coface as the country with the
highest risk in Latin America, similar to African countries that are
currently in situations of armed conflict
From 2015 onwards, the
country-risk variable began to increase artificially in order to hinder the
entry of international financing.
Even mainstream outlets like The Wall Street Journal have acknowledged that
the measures applied by the US have made banks more reluctant to touch
accounts that might relate to Venezuela for fear of sanctions violations..
WSJ even noted that Goldman Sachs was criticized in 2017 when it was
revealed that the company bought about $2.8 billion in Venezuelan bonds,
which were seen as a lifeline to the Maduro government.
According to the US governments own summary of Venezuela related sanctions,
unilateral measures introduced by the Trump Administration in 2017 and 2018
restrict the Venezuelan governments access to U.S. debt and equity
markets and [prohibit] transactions related to the purchase of Venezuelan
debt.
Considering these restrictions and Washingtons move to freeze what National
Security Advisor John Bolton estimated to be $7 billion worth of Venezuelas
US-based assets, its hard to understand how Bachelet so easily dismissed
the idea that sanctions have contributed to the economic crisis. As The
Grayzone reported this May, the US State Department openly bragged about its
ability to destroy Venezuelas economy in a factsheet published on its own
website, which it quickly deleted out of apparent embarrassment.
Among the key outcomes of US policy listed in the document was the fact
that oil production in the country had been drastically reduced.
If I were the State Department I wouldnt brag about causing a cut in oil
production to 763,000 barrels per day, Mark Weisbrot, Co-Director of the
Center for Economic and Policy research told The Grayzone at the time. This
means even more premature deaths than the tens of thousands that resulted
from sanctions last year.
In April, Weisbrot co-authored a report which documented 40,000 preventable
deaths that occurred between 2017 and 2018 as a direct result of US
sanctions. This groundbreaking report was also ignored by Bachelet, who had
far more resources at her disposal to investigate its disturbing conclusions
and perhaps prevent thousands more deaths.
While Bachelet did concede sanctions are exacerbating Venezuelas economic
woes, she argued that the current crisis predated those measures, thus
transferring blame onto the policies of a besieged government.
The author of this article recently participated in a panel discussion
during which Venezuelas ambassador to the United Nations, Samuel Moncada,
addressed accusations like these.
Responding to the widely repeated accusation of economic mismanagement,
Moncada asked, If we are committing [economic] suicide, what do you need
sanctions for? The problem is they are applying sanctions as never before.
So they actually think that sanctions have an aim and an end result, and
they are trying to implode the country.
Moncada also explained how the 2015 oil crash impacted Venezuelas economy,
insisting that we tried, perhaps erroneously, to keep the very same social
support policies going without the oil wealth on which the government
traditionally depended. The international oil market collapsed in 2015, just
months after Reuters reported US Secretary of State John Kerry met with
Saudi King Abdullah in order to discuss plans to increase petrol production.
Former special rapporteur de Zayas agreed with that determination, telling
The Grayzone, the initial cause of the economic crisis was, of course, the
dramatic fall in oil prices. The current crisis is made in the USA and
corresponds directly to the sanctions and financial blockade.
Bachelet claimed Venezuelas oil industry was already in crisis before any
sectoral sanctions were imposed, discounting the ebb and flow of the
international market. She also noted a drastic reduction of oil exports
between the years 2018 and 2019, but stunningly failed to connect the
decline to US sanctions unleashed in January 2019 which specifically aimed
to prevent Venezuelas oil industry from exporting products to the outside
world.
By the logic of High Commissioner Bachelet, Maduro is so incredibly
incompetent or evil that he refused to pay his countrys bills and destroyed
its entire oil industry singlehandedly in an effort to starve his own
people.
Attacking Venezuelas food distribution program with baseless claims
In 2016, the government of Maduro introduced the Local Committees for Supply
and Food Distribution program, or CLAP, to offset the impact of sanctions
and the economic crisis brought on by falling oil prices. Today, the program
provides food and sanitary supplies at almost no cost to six million
families a whopping slice of Venezuelas population.
According to Bachelet, Maduro did not initiate this program to feed the most
vulnerable among his countrys population, but in order to promote
intelligence gathering and defence tasks. She provided no supporting
evidence for her claim.
Bachelet also baselessly claimed that the food delivery program was used in
a politically prejudicial manner, asserting that some families were not
included in the distribution lists
because they were not government
supporters.
Bachelets attack on CLAP came just as the Trump administration threatened
to target the food delivery program with sanctions.
The claims made by Bachelet during an abbreviated tour of Venezuela stood at
stark odds with the findings of multiple media outlets, Venezuelan citizens
and foreigners who recently traveled to Venezuela to witness CLAP
distribution.
Terri Mattson of CODEPINK spent three months living with a family in
Venezuela earlier this year and was also on the aforementioned panel with
this author and Ambassador Moncada.
Its a fantastic program and its helping people who would not otherwise
have access to food, Mattson remarked. My neighborhood
was predominantly
opposition. Those people got food just as we in the chavista household got
food. The food was distributed through the community council, the community
council was majority opposition
everyone got food, everybody participated
in the weekly community council meetings.
Bachelets assault on CLAP will undoubtedly be used to justify the US
governments attempts to sanction the program and further contribute to the
starvation of Venezuelans. If a critical food distribution program is
undermined from the outside, what other outcome can be expected but more
hunger?
Ironically, Bachelets critique of CLAP directly contradicts the
recommendation at the end of her report, which requested that the government
take all necessary measures to ensure availability and accessibility of
food, water, essential medicines and healthcare services, to average
Venezuelans. Yet she did not demand the US government end the sanctions it
has imposed against the country, this rendering the fulfillment of her
recommendation nearly impossible.
The government of Venezuela has demonstrated that it is already doing its
utmost to ensure availability and accessibility of food and medicine,
former special rapporteur de Zayas said in response, what the high
commissioner should have demanded is the immediate lifting of US and EU
sanctions.
Bachelets recommendations amount to an all-out attack on the structure of
Bolivarian revolution. If implemented, they would not only amount to the
dismantling of the governments structure, but would likely lead to
society-wide chaos and mass starvation.
Echoing US propaganda on Venezuelas colectivos
Besides assailing the CLAP program, Bachelet called for the government to
disarm and dismantle pro-government armed civilian groups known as
colectivos, accusing them of exercising social control.
Her comments echoed sensationalist US corporate media headlines as well as
allegations by John Bolton and Florida Senator Mark Rubio, who have
attempted to brand colectivos as violent gangs personally controlled by
President Maduro.
This March, The Canarys John McEvoy spent two weeks living with a colectivo
in Caracas. The British reporter found that the groups serve an entirely
different purpose than the one relayed back to the Western public by
corporate media and centrist leadership.
After the election of Hugo Chávez in 1998, colectivos mushroomed across
Venezuela with the wide scale devolution of power to local communities,
McEvoy explained, their demonisation in the corporate media serves a
distinct purpose: to delegitimize Venezuelas grassroots democratic
movements.
As across Latin America, social organisations in Venezuela are deemed
incompatible with the oppositions US-backed neoliberal project, the
reporter continued. They are consequently dehumanised, delegitimize, and
attacked by a compliant media that categorically ignore their roots,
popularity, and social value.
With this context, Bachelets call for the colectivos to disarm appears to
equal a demand that the country surrender its last line of defense against
an ongoing regime change operation that has featured assassination attempts
and threats of a full scale military invasion.
When Bachelet met with victims of guarimba violence this March, many hoped
it meant those voices ignored by mainstream western media would finally be
heard on the international stage. Yet the high commissioner decided their
stories were unworthy, instead offering up a document which reads like a
hand out from the US State Department.
And like clockwork, the State Department seized on Bachelets report to
drive its unilateral campaign for regime change, but this time with the
stamp of UN approval and behind the guise of a respectable center-left
political leader.
Anya Parampil
Anya Parampil
