Readers may remember that two days after HRW published a report on the systematic human rights violations in Cuba, an enraged mob of state-sponsored thugs attacked journalist Reinaldo Escobar in Havana, confirming the accuracy of HRW’s findings. Allowing political prisoners on hunger strike to die certainly does nothing to improve Cuba’s dreadful human rights record. The kangaroo courts of Hugo Chávez, matching the other dictatorships in the region, annulled an anti-Chavista mayoral election yesterday, the same day the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) released a scathing report criticizing the lack of judicial independence in Venezuela and the ongoing usurpation of civil and political rights. It is worth noting, as detailed in the IACHR report on “Modifications of the Powers of Elected Authorities,” that this is yet another case — as highlighted by Antonio Ledezma — where a democratically elected official is stripped of their powers and positions by the Chavista regime. Meanwhile, Venezuelan diplomats are exposed by the IACHR as nothing more than liars.
In an apparent attempt to acknowledge Venezuela’s social agenda, the report reiterated, in point 993, that UNESCO had declared Venezuela a “literacy-free land,” according to the Venezuelan state. As my readers know, this claim is just another lie from the Chávez regime. However, if IACHR officials had been allowed to enter the country, as requested unsuccessfully since 2003, they would have undoubtedly recognized how false such a statement is.