Special rapporteurs, human trafficking in Cuba and fake news

How the Associated Press outdid the Obama State Department in downplaying Cuba's human trafficking problem.

Maria Grazia Giammarinaro, the UN Special Rapporteur on trafficking in persons, especially in women and children is reported to be arriving in Cuba on April 10th to examine the "challenges Cuba faces in addressing trafficking for sexual and labour exploitation, as well as any other forms of trafficking." The last time that the Castro regime announced that it was going to permit a visit by the UN expert on torture was in 2009 and it got a lot of positive publicity but never followed through. However no one is reporting on this episode now, but harking back to a 2007 visit by Jean Ziegler, who was the the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food but what goes unmentioned is that Mr. Ziegler has a pattern of pandering to tyrants. He was one of the founders of the Al-Gaddafi International Prize for Human Rights that in 1998 was awarded to Fidel Castro. UN Watch, the Geneva based UN watchdog summarized Jean Ziegler's support for serial human rights violators:

In 1986, Mr. Ziegler served as advisor to Ethiopian dictator Colonel Mengistu on a constitution instituting one-party rule.  In 2002 he praised the Zimbabwean dictator, saying,  “Mugabe has history and morality with him.”  According to Le Monde, he paid visits to Saddam Hussein in Iraq, and Kim Il-Sung in North Korea.  Mr. Ziegler is also a long-time supporter of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, whose regime Mr. Ziegler hailed during an official visit in October [2007], while he refused to meet Cuban dissidents. Also this year, during an interview in Lebanon, Mr. Ziegler said, “I refuse to describe Hezbollah as a terrorist organization.

This is not the profile of a fair minded human rights expert. Let us hope that Ms. Giammarinaro does a better job in Cuba and at least meets with dissidents to get another view beyond the official line by the dictatorship. Something the last "independent expert" Mr. Ziegler refused to do.

Human trafficking in Cuba is an ongoing problem that the Obama State Department sought to downplay in its 2015 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report  reclassifying the island from Tier 3 to Tier 2 watch list and human rights experts at the State Department denounced its politicization at the time observing that there had been no improvement to justify the move. Nevertheless the Associated Press has once again gone a step further in fake news on Cuba by reporting that the United States "removed Cuba from a blacklist of countries that have failed to combat modern-day slavery after both countries formally restored diplomatic relations in July 2015." This is not true and Cuba remains on the blacklist on Tier 2.

The Obama State Department's last TIP report (2016) despite trying to minimize the Cuban governments involvement in human trafficking affirmed that "Cuba is a source and destination country for adults and children subjected to sex trafficking and forced labor. Child sex trafficking and child sex tourism occur within Cuba." Furthermore reported on how the Castro regime "uses some high school students in rural areas to harvest crops and does not pay them for their work but claims this work is not coerced."

Not mentioned in either the 2015 or 2016 TIP reports are the killings of fleeing refugees in December of 2014 and April of 2015. On December 16, 2014 the Cuban coastguard ram and sank a boat with 32 refugees, one of them, Diosbel Díaz Bioto, was killed. Yuriniesky Martínez Reina (age 28) was shot in the back and killed by state security chief Miguel Angel Río Seco Rodríguez in the Martí municipality of Matanzas, Cuba on April 9, 2015 for peacefully trying to leave Cuba. A group of young men were building a boat near Menéndez beach to flee the island, when they were spotted trying to leave and were shot at.

The 2016 report downplays the claims made by Cuban doctors that "Cuban officials force or coerce participation in the program" by giving credence to the Cuban government's claim that "the program is voluntary and well paid compared to jobs within Cuba."

Cuban doctors in Cuba make approximately $25 dollars a month in salary. In 2008 The Miami Herald reported that "more than 31,000 Cuban health workers -- most of them doctors -- who toil in 71 countries brought in $2.3 billion last year, ..., more than any other industry, including tourism. Most of them are paid $150 to $375 a month, a small percentage of the cash or trade benefits the Cuban government pockets in exchange for their work." 

 The Castro regime has exploited other Cubans in overseas work. The 2006 case of Cuban workers forced to work 112 hours a week for 3 cents an hour in Curaçao made the news. The workers had been unpaid; instead their compensation was deducted from Cuba’s debt to the Curaçao Drydock Company. Three workers sued the company accusing  "Curaçao Drydock Company of subjecting them to forced labour in a lawsuit in US federal court under the Alien Tort Claims Act and other laws.  They alleged that the company conspired with the Cuban Government to traffic them and other workers to Curaçao to work for Curaçao Drydock Company as part of a forced labour programme."

I look forward to reading Ms. Giammarinaro's report with great interest, but won't be following it in the Associated Press because too often to keep their bureau open in Cuba they get the news wrong. Reuters, The Miami Herald, and others although not perfect do a better job. Nevertheless they all failed to mention the last special rapporteur's support for dictators, the failure to follow through on the 2009 invite of the UN special rapporteur on torture and Cuba's terrible record on human trafficking. Nevertheless the Associated Press remained the worse of the worse in their reporting.

OAS Condemns Measures to Shut Down Spaces for Political Participation in Venezuela

 Venezuela descends into dictatorship

 

IACHR and Office of the Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression Condemn Measures to Shut Down Spaces for Political Participation in Venezuela and Raise Alarm at their Impact on Democracy 

October 25, 2016

Washington, D.C. - The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) and its Office of the Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression condemn the actions taken by the Venezuelan State to shut down vital space for political participation in the country and persecute those who have exercised their right to freedom of expression. The IACHR and the Office of the Special Rapporteur, raise alarm at the impact of these measures on Venezuelan democracy.

Throughout 2016, the IACHR and its Office of the Special Rapporteur have followed with great concern the different ways in which the State has imposed serious limitations on pluralism in the exercise of political rights and freedom of expression, both through the application of the law and outside the law. Most notable among these actions are the obstacles that have been imposed by the authorities to prevent Venezuelans from participating in free and trustworthy elections,  the gradual suspension of the constitutional powers of the majority opposition Congress, the arbitrary detention and incarceration of opponents and persons who publicly dissent from the government or express their opinions in the media, the repression and undue restriction of protests, the dismissal and threatened dismissal of public employees who make statements or express political opinions against the party in office, campaigns of stigmatization, surveillance, and harassment against human rights defenders and journalists, as well as the continual use of the criminal law and other government controls to punish or stifle the work of the critical press. 

The Commission and its Office of the Special Rapporteur are especially concerned over the October 20, 2016 decision of the National Electoral Board to indefinitely suspend the signature gathering process for the presidential recall referendum promoted by opposition parties and other sectors of society.  A number of Venezuelan civil society organizations have reported that five criminal courts in the States of Aragua, Bolívar, Apure, Monagas, and Carabobo invalidated—“unexpectedly” and “without any legal authority”—the act of collecting signatures from 1% of voters registered in the Venezuelan Electoral Registry in their jurisdictions. According to the information available, the judgments, which were handed down simultaneously, were almost immediately complied with by the nation’s highest electoral body. This suggests the possibility of a coordinated plan to prevent the public from being able to assess the president’s performance through the referendum mechanism. 

In the case of Rocío San Miguel et al. (Venezuela), filed with the Inter-American Court in March 2016, the Commission found that a signature in favor of convening a political participation mechanism like the presidential recall referendum not only constitutes the exercise of political rights but is also an expression of the political opinion of the signatories, protected in turn by the right to freedom of expression and the principle of nondiscrimination. As is known, this electoral process is also considered by several Member States of the OAS to be a free and democratic form of channeling the country’s social and political polarization.

All of these measures have taken place against the backdrop of a profound weakening of the separation of powers and an economic, food, and health crisis in the country that continues to affect the rights to health, life, and humane treatment of the general population, with a differentiated impact among individuals or groups in situation of high vulnerability, including children, the elderly, people with disabilities, people with serious illnesses, and people living with HIV-AIDS.
 
The Inter-American Commission has underscored that there is a “direct relationship between the exercise of political rights and the concept of democracy as a form of State organization,” and has reiterated to Venezuela the need to guarantee the rights of citizens and organized political groups to political participation and freedom of expression without fear of retaliation, permitting and fostering a plural, broad, and robust public debate.

In the Inter-American system, the relationship between human rights and democracy is enshrined in the Inter-American Democratic Charter, which states that: “Essential elements of representative democracy include, inter alia, respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, access to and the exercise of power in accordance with the rule of law, the holding of periodic, free, and fair elections based on secret balloting and universal suffrage as an expression of the sovereignty of the people, the pluralistic system of political parties and organizations, and the separation of powers and independence of the branches of government.”

The IACHR and its Office of the Special Rapporteur urgently call upon the State of Venezuela to comply with its international human rights obligations. In particular, to respect and guarantee the right to freedom of expression and the right to participation of all sectors in the country’s political life, including the duty to facilitate demonstrations and protests that have been called for as a result of this serious decision by the electoral body and to put an end to those actions that impede the exercise of the right of individuals to choose their representatives and exercise oversight over them.

A principal, autonomous body of the Organization of American States (OAS), the IACHR derives its mandate from the OAS Charter and the American Convention on Human Rights. The Inter-American Commission has a mandate to promote respect for human rights in the region and acts as a consultative body to the OAS in this area. The Commission is composed of seven independent members who are elected in an individual capacity by the OAS General Assembly and who do not represent their countries of origin or residence.

No. 154/16

 

IACHR: Freedom of Expression Deteriorating in Venezuela

 

Office of the Special Rapporteur Expresses Concern over the Situation of the Freedom of Expression in Venezuela

 

September 22, 2014

Washington, D.C. - The Office of the Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) expresses its deepest concern for the deterioration of the right to freedom of expression in Venezuela in light of the recent events that took place in that country. These events include the continued stigmatization by high-level public officials of critical media outlets and journalists, punitive lawsuits and the dismissal of journalists, and the reported blocking of the internet signal of media outlets.

According to the information received, on September 18, 2014, President of the Republic Nicolás Maduro accused CNN en Español, El Nuevo Herald, NTN24, among others media outlets, who had reported on deaths that took place in the Central Hospital of Maracay of "psychological terrorism", "media terrorism", among other expressions. The President called on the justice system to adopt new and greater national and international measures against those media outlets, and to act firmly and strictly to "punish" all those responsible and "prosecute terrorism."

On September 17, caricaturist Rayma Suprani was fired from newspaper El Universal allegedly for having published a cartoon that illustrated the situation of the country’s healthcare sector while using the signature of late President Hugo Chávez as part of the cartoon. Suprani had worked for the newspaper for nineteen years. Her dismissal is added to the more than 20 journalists or columnists who left the paper after El Universal’s owners changed in last July. The newspaper’s journalists issued a press release in which they expressed their decision to defend "the country’s informative spaces despite growing restrictions and censorship." Similar situations have occurred in other media.

On September 16, international news channel NTN24 had its website tampered with. Access from Venezuela to all the web portals of the channel, its applications and its live streaming signal is reportedly blocked. In a press release, the channel alleged that the blocking originated from inside Venezuelan telecommunications State corporation CANTV and was expanded to other providers. On February 12, channel NTN24’s signal was taken off the daypart of all the cable companies in the country by order of President Nicolás Maduro. Likewise, RCN Radio announced that its engineers managed to establish that CANTV "reportedly blocked the IP addresses, domain names and DNS records of all the portals of the news system of RCN Radio".

These events have taken place in the context of a dramatic scarcity in newsprint, reportedly caused by the process needed to request foreign currency to import it. This has led at least 12 media outlets to temporarily or permanently cease publication and at least 18 outlets to substantially reduce their size. These events are added to the administrative and criminal lawsuits brought against media outlets that are critical of the government, as is the case of newspaper TalCual’s media executives and columnist, who were sued for publishing a story that offended a public official. An interim order prohibits them from leaving the country. For their reporting, the defendants could face up to four years in prison and million-dollar fines.

The Office of the Special Rapporteur calls upon the State of Venezuela to adhere to the strictest international standards on freedom of expression in order to guarantee the full enjoyment of the rights to freedom of expression and due process by media outlets and journalists without arbitrary interventions. The Office of the Special Rapporteur further calls upon the State to investigate the cause of the blocking of the web portals and applications of media outlets and adopt the necessary measures to reestablish access, in accordance with international obligations regarding Internet, and to avoid using direct or indirect methods to prevent the publication of critical opinions or complaints against public officials.

The Office of the Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression was created by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) to encourage the defense of the right to freedom of thought and expression in the hemisphere, given the fundamental role this right plays in consolidating and developing the democratic system.

Contact Information

Office of the Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression
1889 F Street NW. Washington, D.C. 20006, USA.
Tel.: (1) 202-370-4614
E-mail: cidhexpresion@oas.org
Web: www.oas.org/es/cidh/expresion