"The Peoples Defender" admits and justifies torture of students in Venezuela

"Torture means the intentional infliction of severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, upon a person in the custody or under the control of the accused; except that torture shall not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to, lawful sanctions;" - Crimes Against Humanity Article 7 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

Gabriela Ramírez, the "Defender of the People"of the Nicolas Maduro Regime in Venezuela on March 8, 2014 made the following argument in favor of torture in the above press conference:

"If 15 youths are arrested and one person is beaten or mistreated, if the torture makes sense. It is used to obtain a confession, inflicting physical suffering to obtain a confession and we have to differentiate it from excessive treatment or disproportionate use of force." 

According to Article 7 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court torture is a crime against humanity. Venezuela on October 14, 1998 signed and on June 7, 2000  ratified the Rome Statute.

The Case for Non-Violent Resistance in Venezuela

 "Nonviolent action (also sometimes referred to as people power, political defiance, and nonviolent struggle) is a technique of action for applying power in a conflict by using symbolic protests, noncooperation, and defiance, but not physical violence. Nonviolent action may involve: 1. Acts of omission—that is, people may refuse to perform acts that they usually perform, are expected by custom to perform, or are required by law or regulation to perform; 2. Acts of commission—that is, people may perform acts that they do not usually perform, are not expected by custom to perform, or are forbidden to perform; or 3. A combination of the two. As a technique, therefore, nonviolent action is not passive. It is not inaction. It is action that is nonviolent." - Albert Einstein Institution

Acts of solidarity such as this one in Miami by SOS Venezuela fall within nonviolent action

 What began as a protest over violent crime, insecurity and scarcity of basic food stuffs on February 12, 2014 has exploded into a nonviolent democratic resistance to the emerging totalitarian dictatorship of Nicolas Maduro and his Cuban handlers. Questions have been raised about what is going on in Venezuela there are those who still look at it through the prism of party competition but that is a diminishing number.

The best and most succinct way to describe Mohandas Gandhi's vision of nonviolent resistance is the title of a book written by Krishnalal Shridharani, one of his followers: War without violence. Over the past few weeks the debate over nonviolence in the face of the Maduro regime's violent repression in Venezuela has waged over social media.

This is a small contribution to that debate. The video below offers an overview of what is taking place in Venezuela today. The criminal and violent acts by the Maduro regime and its Cuban handlers and the courage of millions of Venezuelans who have taken to the street nonviolently to exercise and rescue their rights and freedoms.



The main points raised by those who either a) despair that nonviolence cannot work against violence or b) that nonviolent actors should have the right to defend themselves using violence when attacked violently make the following arguments/assumptions:

Assertion #1: Nonviolent resisters are unarmed and helpless. All the protesters have is their courage and their faith.

Response: Non-violent resistance is an armed struggle but its weapons are not deployed to do violence or kill. These arms are  psychological, social, economic and political weapons. Gene Sharp argues with much evidence "that this is ultimately more powerful against oppression, injustice and tyranny then violence."

On International Women's Day Venezuelan women marched across the country

Assertion #2: That this is a civil war and the opposition needs to arm itself and fight claiming that pacifism is weakness.

Response: First, a common error especially in Spanish, is to confuse nonviolence with pacifism. Pacifism means to remain passive before an injustice neither cooperate with it or attack it. Non-violent resistance is "war without violence."  It is true that the Maduro regime is committing criminal and violent acts against nonviolent activists. However, because the Venezuelans freedom movement has maintained a nonviolent stance the violence of the government is de-legitimizing Maduro both domestically and internationally.

To engage in an armed struggle with the Maduro+Castro regime would be a strategic mistake of the first order. First, they are experts in violence and warfare. Secondly, and most importantly the Democratic Resistance has an asymmetric advantage over the dictatorship because of its nonviolence.  It is precisely for that reason that the Venezuelan dictatorship wants to push the resistance into a violent posture because then it would be able to rationalize and escalate its violence. In Syria the Assad regime was losing badly until elements of the military joined the nonviolent opposition and turned it violent. The response was a huge escalation in violence and Assad firmly in control.

University Academics Maria J. Stephan and Erica Chenoweth in their 2008 study "Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic on Nonviolent Conflict" compared the outcomes of 323 nonviolent and violent resistance campaigns from 1900 to 2006. They found that major nonviolent campaigns have achieved success 53 percent of the time, compared with just under half that at 26 percent for violent resistance campaigns. Finally there study also suggests “that nonviolent campaigns are more likely than violent campaigns to succeed in the face of brutal repression.”

Finally the nonviolent democratic resistance is a popular movement and not controlled or financed by any foreign government.  Nonviolent resistance movements can dismantle dictatorships without outside aide. The same cannot be said of violent movements. Violent movements confronting a government need foreign assistance in order to have a chance of being successful.

Women for Life have made specific demands for the end of Regime violence

Assertion 3:  Legitimate self-defense is a moral and legitimate response.

Response: Morally and legally there is a right to self-defense, even when it is violent, but in a nonviolent struggle  the resort to violence has been taken off the table, even in the case of self-defense. This requires greater creativity on the part of the nonviolent resisters on how to defend themselves nonviolently.  There are options and they need to be explored and applied. Gene Sharp outlined 198. The democratic opposition parties have maintained their nonviolent posture as have the main student movements while at the same time maintaining their commitment to remain in the streets protesting and pursuing justice against those engaged in and ordering the killing, torture, and arbitrary detention of nonviolent activists. 

Concrete efforts have been mounted to see that oppressors are denied visas and their bank accounts in foreign countries frozen. This is one example of non-violent self-defense.  

Another is to document the atrocities and share it with the rest of Venezuela and the world to expose the perpetrators of such acts to national and international public opinion. Below is a brief and effective video that explains what is going on in under two minutes. Please share it with others. This is another method of self defense.



Conclusion: Nonviolent action has a strategic advantage that dramatically increases the chances for success but like in any war what determines victory is having a grand strategy with realizable objectives, sound tactics, and the people to carry it out. Nonviolent action has a proven track record of dismantling dictatorships. I hope and pray that the democratic resistance in Venezuela has thought it out and is on its way to victory over Maduro+Castro.

Women's Movement launches campaign "Iván Fernández Depestre is innocent, free him now."

On March 7, 2014 over twitter the the "Rosa Parks Women's Movement for Civil Rights" launched an effort to obtain the freedom of a Cuban activist imprisoned on July 30, 2013 and recognized by Amnesty International as a prisoner of conscience. His name is Iván Fernández Depestre.

 First heard of Iván Fernández Depestre in August of 2013 when I learned that he was on hunger strike protesting his unjust imprisonment.  Iván Fernández Depestre is a Cuban national of 42 years of age born on October 28, 1971 with identity card number: 71102805363 who lives in the interior of Cuba in  Placetas, Villa Clara province. 

On the afternoon of July 30, 2013 Iván together with other nonviolent opposition activists Loreto Hernández García, Yuniel Santana Hernández, along with Yaite Diasnelli Cruz Sosa, Xiomara Martin Jiménez and Donaida Pérez Paseiros carried out a march in memory of the Cuban martyr Frank País, who was killed in the struggle against Fulgencio Batista (the prior dictator to the Castro brothers).    

He was tried on August 2, 2013 in a secret, closed door and summary trial in Placetas, Villa Clara and condemned to 2 years in prison for "pre-crime social dangerousness."  Prior to his arrest, he appeared in a video stating: I want change. I cooperate with the resistance. Cuban changes if you want it to."

On September 11, 2013 Amnesty International recognized  Iván Fernández Depestre as a prisoner of conscience.

He remains unjustly imprisoned today and he is not the only one.  Help spread the word about his plight and help to obtain his freedom.

Statement From the Venezuelan Student Movement

“Rodriguez Torres the students do not negotiate our rights. You know the statement drop the machinations.” – Juan Requesens, over twitter March 7, 2014

STUDENT
MOVEMENT

Before the recent events it is our duty to solicit to the Government that it follow the law and honor its commitment with the Venezuelan people. For this we demand the following:

1. Freedom for all the youths detained. In a system where there is justice nonviolent protests are not condemned, due process is guaranteed and the law is applied with transparency.
2. End immediately the violations of human rights and torture. We demand that those who ordered and carried out torture be brought before the law to answer for it.
3. End the criminalization of protest and the intimidation. We deplore the use of the Armed Forces as a repressive arm.
4. The disarming of violent groups that pass for communitarian collectives and cause terror in Venezuelan society.
5. The renovation and re-legitimization of public powers. That the institutions of the State respond to the necessities of the Venezuelans, meet their legal obligations and be faithful to their public mandate.
6. End of censorship of the mass media. We defend the rights of Venezuelans to be informed and of journalists to communicate with freedom in plural media, which reflect the entire country.

We call on all of civil society, its unions, its guilds, its businesses and especially the Venezuelan family, to join with us to defend the respect of the National Constitution.

Desecrating the Cuban Flag Castro Style

"The flag represents a living country and is itself considered a living thing." Section 8j, Flag Code

Cuban flag fell today in Venezuela, an omen?

In the past few weeks in Venezuela, Cuban flags have been burned in protest of the Castro dictatorship's presence in Venezuela that amounts to a colonial power. One can understand that seeing ones flag disrespected would outrage any patriot. Today we saw the Cuban flag hit the ground when it was being raised as part of an honor guard for Raul Castro. A number of questions arise. What was the greater insult to the flag? Having it hit the ground or having it involved in an action honoring a dictator?

Nevertheless, there are flag desecrations that can leave longer lasting stains.  Samuel Clemens known better by his pen name "Mark Twain" had a lot to say about this over a century ago when the United States embarked on the conquest of the Philippines in one of the darker chapter's of the republic's history. Twain explained his reasoning in 1901:

... I was not properly reared, and had the illusion that a flag was a thing which must be sacredly guarded against shameful uses and unclean contacts, lest it suffer pollution; and so when it was sent out to the Philippines to float over a wanton war and a robbing expedition I supposed it was polluted, and in an ignorant moment I said so. But I stand corrected. I concede and acknowledge that it was only the government that sent it on such an errand that was polluted. ..

Over the past 55 years the Castro brothers have identified the Cuban flag with a totalitarian dictatorship that has murdered thousands of Cubans at home for wanting to be free. Over seas the regime that claims the Cuban flag as its own has presided over mass slaughters, defended genocidal tyrants, and wherever human rights have been violated have sided with the violator - with the one exception of South Africa - that fit into its Cold War aims to oppose the Apartheid regime. However in Ethiopia they aided a war criminal who was later convicted of crimes against humanity.

Venezuelans understand that the hand of Cuban intelligence trained and is guiding the snipers who have shot student demonstrators in the head and that the Castro regime is building a totalitarian edifice to enslave the people of Venezuela as it has done so with the people of Cuba.

Unfortunately, the Cuban flag predates the Castro regime and it represents the Cuban people and like the Cuban people the flag has been taken hostage and used to serve the shameful and unclean agendas of the totalitarian dictatorship in Cuba personified by the Castro brothers.

Mark Twain offered a modest proposal which could easily be applied by the Castro brothers for both Cuba and their Venezuela colony, the white stripes replaced with black and the star replaced with a death head.

Castro dictatorship flag

This flag represents the Castro dictatorship. After 55 years in power the regime deserves to have a flag that represents its legacy and the impact it has had on Cuba both domestically and internationally. The three blue stripes, no longer represent the original three provinces. They now represent the bodies of water that surround Cuba where there are estimates that as many as 100,000 Cubans have died fleeing the dictatorship: the Gulf of Mexico, Atlantic, and Caribbean. The red color is the innocent blood shed to keep the dictatorship in power. The skull and cross bones have a triple meaning. The obvious is that it signifies death which has been a driving force of the Castro regime for the past 55 years but also a warning that this country has been occupied by a poisonous ideology and lastly the pirate nature of the regime looking for plunder in other lands (like Venezuela). The black stripes signify the totalitarian pollution visited on Cubans by the dictatorship. Dividing families, forcing children to spy on their parents. Finally the red triangle is a warning sign that combined with the skull also signifies that this is a dangerous area. Under the Castro regime cholera has become a persistent problem that the dictatorship under reports.

The Cuban flag represents the Cuban people who have suffered under a brutal dictatorship for 55 years. It is important for friends of freedom around the world to understand that it is not the Cuban people who are engaged in these evil acts, but the Castroites led by Fidel and Raul Castro who terrorized and enslaved Cubans in a totalitarian regime.

Castro Incorporated will most likely not adopt this flag but nevertheless it does represent their legacy. Please share it with others when discussing the dictatorship and use the Cuban flag when discussing its embattled democrats.