Cuba, Russia, and China Shut Down UN Human Rights Discussion About Venezuela

Thor Halvorssen - Founder, Human Rights Foundation

Cuba, Russia, and China Shut Down UN Human Rights Discussion About Venezuela
Posted: 07/01/2012 6:22 pm

GENEVA -- Last Thursday, I was on the schedule to deliver testimony at
the United Nations Human Rights Council. I was invited to be part of UN
Watch's campaign to stop Hugo Chavez's bid to elect Venezuela to a seat
on the council this November.

NGOs are allotted several minutes to say their peace and contribute to
the debate about rights. I sat down to deliver my speech and no sooner
had I mentioned the word "Cuba" in the context of human rights
violations than the Cuban delegation began to create a scene, complete
with banging their fists on the table and kicking over a chair, to force
the council president to interrupt my speech on a point of order.

Watch the heated 12-minute exchange from June 28th at the United Nations
Human Rights Council in Geneva.

Here is what I was able to say:

My name is Thor Halvorssen and I am from Venezuela. In 2004, my
mother was shot by the security forces of the Venezuelan government of
Hugo Chavez.

Through the Human Rights Foundation, which I founded and direct, I
have carefully monitored the Venezuelan state and have established that
its current government is among Latin America's worst human rights
violators.

In Venezuela, exercising free speech is fraught with risks.
Political dissent is criminalized. Property is capriciously and
unlawfully seized. Opposition politicians are disqualified from
elections thanks to false accusations. Journalists are harassed and
media critical of the government is simply shut down. Judges are fired
and even sent to prison when the president dislikes their rulings. More
than 150,000 people have been killed in Venezuela since Lieutenant
Colonel Chávez was elected president in 1999. Add to this the more than
5,000 who have died in the country's disgraceful prisons, many of them
awaiting trial and therefore possibly innocent of the charges that put
them behind bars in the first place. No such murder rate had ever
existed in Venezuela, or anywhere else in the world for that matter. The
government has proven that it is incapable of protecting the most basic
human right -- the right to life.

While all of this has taken place this council has remained silent.

Madam President, despite all of this, Venezuela is now seeking
election to this council. When it was founded in 2006 the council
promised that only those countries that "uphold the highest standards in
the promotion and protection of human rights" would be the only ones
elected. To elect Venezuela would shame and embarrass this council and
would allow Venezuela to shield its horrendous record of abuse and
equally problematically, to validate other authoritarian governments
such as Syria, Iran and one that sits shamefully on this council: Cuba.
Electing Venezuela would deny this council the chance to shine a light
into the darkness that envelops Venezuela and it will blunt actions to
protect 29 millions Venezuelans who are at the mercy [of a malicious and
incompetent government].

At this point the Cuban representatives of the 53-year Castro family
dynasty began their kinetic table-banging. They asked that my words be
struck from the official UN record. A debate ensued between Cuba, China,
and the U.S. as to whether to include my remarks. I was given the floor
back by the council's president so that I could "finish" my statement
and I was able to get this line out:

"Madam President, this year, four authoritarian governments --
China, Cuba, Saudi Arabia and Russia -- will step down. You have a
golden opportunity..."

It was as if a crime had been committed. Cuba, Russia, China, and
Pakistan all loudly protested. The council's president immediately cut
me off. Cuba stated it would not permit such language in the council.
Russia aligned itself with Cuba and stated that the human rights council
had its own agenda. Russia accused me of violating procedure. China went
further and demanded that I be prohibited from continuing with my
presentation as it was out of the scope of what I was "permitted" to
say. In other words, mentioning human rights violators like Cuba or
China (the only country with an imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize laureate),
at the human rights council, in the time allotted to an NGO focused on
human rights, is considered an unseemly deviation from the agenda.

I went to Geneva to leave testimony, for posterity given the
demonstrable inefficacy of this august UN body, but I didn't expect that
the dictatorships represented in the room would behave like a perfectly
choreographed set of villains, as one would expect a dictatorship to
behave. I was unable to finish but I didn't have to -- they proved my point.

Outside the council, several country delegates approached me and thanked
me for my "courage." How pitiable that it is considered courageous,
inside the United Nations, which sits in a free country, Switzerland, to
say a few words that could upset governments that should be pariahs. And
to think that those who came over to me said they had to do so
discreetly fearing that the Cuban delegation "might give us a lot of
trouble." No less than two European powers are afraid of a bankrupt
police state in the Caribbean whose main exports are broken dreams,
exiled political prisoners, and failed revolutionary ideas. No wonder
the Human Rights Council is so dysfunctional. The only delegate to
interact with me on the floor of the council was a diplomat from Sweden.

Venezuela will most likely succeed in obtaining a seat on the council
this coming fall. And on Venezuelan state television they will boast of
membership at the highest UN body addressing human rights -- making it
clear to any observer that the UN will not address human rights matters
there. Remarkably, they have not once lived up to the dictates of the UN
Working Group on Arbitrary Detention that has published findings of
political persecution. Already, Venezuela has indicated it wishes to
leave the highest human rights court in the Western Hemisphere -- the
Inter-American Court for Human Rights. Why? Because it loses, time and
time and time again. At the UN they will take Cuba's seat as chief
interrupter.

The experience was a powerful reminder that those who fear freedom of
speech are those with something to hide. The truth, in Russia, China,
Cuba, and Venezuela, is a frightful thing to the criminals in charge.

Thor Halvorssen is president of the New York-based Human Rights
Foundation and founder and CEO of the Oslo Freedom Forum.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/thor-halvorssen/testimony-at-the-united-n_b_1635544.html