ISHR Press Release
Venezuela
President Chavez moves toward total control
Offense against the media intensified
Miami - 14 February 2003.
The President of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez has taken two decisive steps away from democracy by imposing exchange controls and intensifying his offense against the media after surviving a strike that paralyzed the country for eight weeks.
ISHR PAC strongly believes that President Chavez will use the new controls to censorship and blackmail the Venezuelan Media and Union Workers. It is widely expected that one or more privately-owned television networks will be shut down for their role in voicing the views of the opposition.
Chavez has announced a major offensive against organized labor and is once again, determined to obliterate the legitimate organization of labor unions and federations and replace it with a state-sponsored labor movement.
Under the autocratic rule of President Hugo Chavez, Venezuela is fast becoming a country where a minority is imposing upon a majority, a social and economic system fashioned along the lines of Cuba's.
Dictator Fidel Castro is coaching Hugo Chavez every step of the way and using him for the purpose of spreading his Socialist Revolution throughout Latin America.
Hugo Chavez has no clearly defined ideology other than power for the sake of power. His role models and closest allies are Fidel Castro, Muammar Gaddafi, Abdelaziz Boutefilka, Mohammad Khatami and Saddam Hussein, whom he calls his "Brothers". He is sympathetic to their regimes and maintains close ties with international drug trafficking and guerrilla terrorist organizations; rather than condemning terrorism, he promotes it.
The lack of a credible judicial system and legal environment, and the enactment of investment-unfriendly laws, has discouraged Venezuelans and foreigners from investing in Venezuela and promoted an exodus of capital and companies.
Social tensions have reached unprecedented heights and the risk of physical confrontation and bloodshed are real.
President Hugo Chavez and his government are actively involved in promoting and exercising state-sponsored terrorism. To this end, the Chavez regime has orchestrated the creation of civilian "Bolivarian Circles".
Organized and led by high level government officials, it is widely believed that many of these "Circles of Terror" are heavily armed and that their members are being trained in paramilitary and terrorist activities, by military personnel and Cuban advisors. President Chavez has often publicly incited them to commit crimes when he has ordered them to defend his revolution with weapons or whatever means are available to them and to carry out acts of intimidation and violence against the opposition and the media.
These terrorist circles, in a skillfully coordinated effort which involved several hundred people, attacked 21 newspaper printing shops, television and radio stations, in Caracas and Venezuela's other major cities, under the complacent look of the authorities who are loyal to Chavez. People were wounded, property was destroyed and the damages are worth several million dollars. While all this has been taking place, organized roving bands of Chavez sympathizers have sought out and engaged peaceful members of the opposition, in violent confrontations. These clashes have resulted in several dead and wounded members of the opposition.
ISHR PAC urges to support the people of Venezuela during this time of political and economic crisis, when their basic freedoms, human rights and the very essence of democracy are being compromised by the Venezuelan government, an unprecedented number of Venezuelans have lost their jobs, and a vast majority of the population lives in poverty.
The influence of , the group of nations known as the "Friends of Venezuela" that has been trying to mediate between the government and the opposition, is of essential importance if the most enduring democracy in South America is to be saved from Hugo Chavez' stated intention to follow the Cuban regime in Venezuela.
Haydee Marin
Executive Director
Pan American Committee
International Society for Human Rights
International Society for Human Rights
International Secretariat
Borsigalle 9
D-60388 Frankfurt/M., Germany
phone: ++49 (0)69 420 108 36, fax: ++49(0)69 420 108 29
e-mail:
is@ishr.org
