Venezuela 2016: Democracy's downward spiral and humanitarian crisis

The Obama administration's Rotten Foreign Policy

Obama with Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro  (April 2009)

Nearly a year ago on August 20, 2015 Secretary of State John Kerry in an interview with journalist Andres Oppenheimer made it known that "the United States and Cuba are talking about ways to solve the Venezuelan crisis."

In a blog post at the time I made the following comparison: "Secretary John Kerry asking the Castro regime in Cuba to help in Venezuela today is like asking Jack the Ripper to help stop knife violence in London in 1888."

Nearly a year later the results of this approach can be seen and it is a failure. Not only has Venezuela descended into dictatorship but it is a failed state. The press is already asking: "What went wrong in Venezuela?" Consider for a moment the following:

Today, August 3, 2016 Judge María Lourdes Afiuni is still being subjected to a legal process that began in 2009 on the arbitrary whims of the late caudillo Hugo Chavez. She was jailed on December 10, 2009 for following both Venezuelan and international law in a case that ran afoul of then President Hugo Chavez who called for her arrest in a television program.

Seven years later Judge María Lourdes Afiuni still persecuted

The judge spent over a year in prison where she was raped, beaten, and threatened repeatedly with death. Judge Afiuni was kept under house arrest until 2013 but when she was diagnosed with cancer, it was lifted. Seven years later the harassment and continued threat of imprisonment continues. It is a message for the entire judiciary which Afiuni clearly stated in 2009:

"There is no judicial independence. I'm here as the president's prisoner. I'm an example to other judges of what happens if you step out of line."

There is no rule of law in Venezuela. The judiciary is controlled by the executive branch which is led with an iron fist by Nicolas Maduro and his Cuban advisers.

Political prisoners in Venezuela

The Penal Forum has a current list of 84 political prisoners in Venezuela with their names, profession, place of detention, and their photos. These are prisoners of conscience who are being kept in terrible conditions.

Extrajudicial killings committed by security forces are rampant in Venezuela. Fifty two members of the student movement have been killed by regime forces over the past three years with many shot in the head.

In June of 2015 Thomas Shannon, counselor to Secretary of State John Kerry met with Diosdado Cabello. Cabello, was then the head of Venezuela's National Assembly and suspected by U.S. prosecutors of being in charge of the infamous drug-trafficking organization, "Cartel de los Soles." Meeting with him may have sent a signal to the Maduro regime and not a good one. 

Cause and effect? Did State's meeting with Cabello lead to Gen. Reverol's appointment

Venezuelan strong man Nicolas Maduro named General Nestor Reverol, his new interior and justice minister one day after Gen Reverol was indicted by a US court on charges of abetting cocaine trafficking. Maduro dismissed the charges against Gen Reverol as a "US conspiracy". The fact that U.S. government officials have been willing to engage in formal diplomatic discussions with suspected drug traffickers may have played a role in the calculation to name the indicted General.

There is one independent institution remaining in Venezuela and that is the National Assembly and President Nicolas Maduro has threatened to cut off its funding.

The lack of the rule of law, the widespread infiltration of drug traffickers and corruption in the regime plays a role in the economic implosion of the country. Free markets need a regulatory environment bound by the rule of law which is non-existent in Venezuela. The slow motion imposition of a socialist economic model ruled by the military has compounded the disaster. It has gone beyond just a human rights crisis into full blown humanitarian crisis.

The most basic life saving medical supplies are unavailable in Venezuela  The Venezuelan National Assembly declared a "humanitarian health crisis" that includes the lack of 872 essential medications.  

Their are hunger riots in Venezuela and foot shortages. Venezuela is selling oil to Jamaica in exchange for food and medicine and seeking to resolve its food shortage using forced labor.

Inflation rates in Venezuela are reaching the levels of Zimbabwe with flour, pasta and milk consuming a month's pay according to a August 2, 2016 CNN report and the International Monetary Fund is predicting a 1,600% inflation rate in 2017.

Reuters in Caracas reported on August 3, 2016 that "growing numbers of young women are opting for sterilizations rather than face the hardship of pregnancy and child-rearing. Traditional contraceptives such as condoms or birth control pills have virtually vanished from store shelves in Venezuela, pushing women towards the hard-to-reverse surgery."

Where the Obama administration has had an active approach in the region the result is a mess. For example between January 2014 and February 24, 2016 U.S. Customs and Border protection documented 93,237 visa less Cubans had entered the United States and the numbers are increasing.

The  presidential state visit to Cuba earlier this year legitimizing the Castro regime assisted in the ongoing dynastic succession of the Castro family that if successful will insure another generation of dictatorial rule in Cuba.

The U.S. policy of engaging with the Castro dictatorship, has coincided with deteriorating human rights in Cuba that is leading many Cubans to flee.

This also means another thirty years of a regime seeking to undermine democracy in the region as it has done in Venezuela, and Nicaragua.

Some of the Venezuelan youth shot in the head in 2014 during protests

U.S. Cuba Policy: Pay attention to what they do not what they say

Secretary Kerry gives the Castro regime a pass on human rights violations

Secretary of State John Kerry said that human rights was at the top of the Cuba agenda, and that they would not give Cuba a pass on human rights but proceeded to not invite Cuban human rights defenders to the flag raising ceremony at the Embassy. The State Department argued that it was a government to government affair and that there was not enough space to accommodate the dissidents. In an interview with Andres Oppenheimer, the Secretary of State offered an expanded explanation:

“Rather than have people sitting in a chair, at a ceremony that is fundamentally government to government, with very limited space, I will meet with them...and exchange views.”

However, the State Department did accommodate "entrepreneurs and Cuban American activists" to fly down with Kerry and his official delegation with a planeload of them. The "activists" support the Obama administration's Cuba policy and are advocates of lifting sanctions on the dictatorship and some like former Congressman Joe Garcia had received financial contributions from supporters of the Castro regime in his previous campaigns that became a source of controversy and contributed to the one term congressman not being re-elected.

Furthermore, Secretary Kerry did not object to celebrating the embassy opening with Cuban spies who had been expelled from the United States under previous Administrations due to their espionage activities against the United States of America.  

Despite the plane load of lobbyists and businessmen and the Cuban spies CNN anchor Jake Tapper in a tweet observed that there was plenty of space to have invited Cuban dissidents. This indicates that it was not space considerations but bending over backwards to accommodate the Castro dictatorship that led to the decision not to invite human rights defenders. This combined with the shabby treatment of Rosa María Payá last month by State Department spokesman John Kirby and the message is clear and journalist Andres Oppenheimer laid it out:

Kerry’s trip to Havana didn’t break new ground on human rights even symbolically, and in effect hurt Cuba’s fledgling internal opposition by making it look irrelevant in the eyes of many Cubans.  Could it be that Obama is so eager to visit Cuba before he finishes his term — to go down in history as the U.S. president who “opened” Cuba, much as Nixon “opened” China — that he is willing to sacrifice the human rights cause? Could it be that he is so eager for a foreign policy victory that he is willing to abandon a long-standing U.S. policy of moral support to pro-democracy activists? 

 The Obama administration's Cuba policy did not begin on December 17, 2014  but first enunciated in his 2009 inaugural address when the President spoke of extending a hand to old adversaries. This went beyond rhetoric in 2009 and again in 2011 with the loosening of sanctions against the Castro regime. During the past six years of the Obama administration the Castro regime has seized the opportunity to do away with opposition leaders that could have been alternatives of national leadership to the current regime while projecting itself further into Latin America.  The dictatorship understands, as did the Chinese before, that while the United States will pay lip service to human rights concerns when it comes to concrete actions this administration holds economic engagement with the dictatorship as a higher priority then human rights.

If you doubt this then just asked yourself then why there was room to fly down a plane load of business men and lobbyists for doing business with the dictatorship but no room for human rights defenders at the flag raising ceremony?  The answer is brutally simple. Business and engagement with the dictatorship in Cuba is the priority not human rights or the freedom of the Cuban people.

The lesson is clear when dealing with the Obama administration: Pay attention to what they do and not what they say.