HRW Report Accuses Chavez of Abusing Rights to Tighten Hold on Venezuela (updated II)

 By SIMON ROMERO  Published: September 18, 2008. María Eugenia Díaz contributed reporting As it settles into its 10th year, President Hugo Chávez’s government has consolidated power by eliminating the independence of the judiciary, punishing critical news organizations and engaging in wide-ranging acts of political discrimination against opponents, a human rights group said in a report released on Thursday in Caracas.  The report, by Human Rights Watch, which is widely known in Latin America for condemning human rights abuses in Colombia, a top Latin American ally of the United States and an ideological rival of Venezuela, was made public at a delicate time for Mr. Chávez, who expelled the American ambassador last week in an angry speech laced with expletives. Before the release of the report, Mr. Chávez was already facing a backlash from his opponents in Venezuela after supporting a blacklist to prevent opposition candidates from running for office in regional elections this year and using his decree powers last month to enact 26 laws further concentrating authority in his hands. The detailed report by Human Rights Watch, which is based in New York, described political discrimination as a defining feature of Mr. Chávez’s presidency, a policy at times carried out with explicit endorsements from the president. Purges of opposition personnel in the national oil company and state agencies have been particularly thorough in recent years.  José Miguel Vivanco, the Americas director at Human Rights Watch who released the report in Caracas, the capital, acknowledged that Venezuela was a relatively open society in which public debate still flourished. But he said that Mr. Chávez, through his repeated demonization of opponents as “putschists,” had instilled what he described as an “environment of fear.”

“Democracy needs the existence of institutions that are not cowed, which are capable of exercising their constitutional mandate,” Mr. Vivanco said.  He cited the Supreme Court as an institution that had been reconfigured by legislation drafted in 2004 by the National Assembly and signed by Mr. Chávez that allowed the president to purge the court of his opponents and pack it with subservient justices. Since then, the report said, the court had upheld Mr. Chávez’s positions and had not protected basic rights in cases involving organized labor and the media.  Mr. Vivanco also singled out the court’s upholding of a measure that disqualifies candidates from running for public office because of legal claims against them. Leopoldo López, the mayor of Chacao, a municipality in Caracas, had challenged this measure in a recent public campaign only to have his position rejected by the court.  “The disqualification of candidates is a yet another example of political discrimination supported by the court,” Mr. Vivanco said. “One cannot hope for an independent point of view.”

Mr. Chávez’s government proclaims that it is advancing toward socialism partly through the nationalization of foreign-owned companies. But the report said public authorities had sought to remake Venezuela’s labor movement with methods that violated basic organizing freedoms.  The government has done this by using state agencies to interfere with unions and by retaliating against workers for legitimate strike activity, the report said. In addition, the government has intimidated unions through the creation of cooperatives expected to be loyal to Mr. Chávez.  In one example, the report said Caracas street cleaners had been forced to dissolve their union and fragment their members into small cooperatives.  María Eugenia Díaz contributed reporting.