Venezuelan and Cuban activists lobby U.N. on human rights

Venezuelan and Cuban activists lobby U.N. on human rights
BY STEPHANIE NEBEHAY
GENEVA Wed Jun 18, 2014 1:51pm EDT

(Reuters) - Venezuelan and Cuban activists lobbied the United Nations on
Wednesday to investigate the deaths of dozens of student protesters in
Caracas and the jailing of Cuban dissidents.

The two Latin American powers, led by socialist Presidents Nicolas
Maduro and Raul Castro, are members of the 47-member U.N. Human Rights
Council.

"We came to Geneva to ask the U.N. to send a mission to Venezuela to
evaluate the cases of human rights violations that students have been
subjected to," Eusebio Costa, a student activist and President of the
Student Center at the Catholic University Santa Rosa in Caracas, told a
news briefing.

He said 117 students are still being held, some in high-security
military prisons, after three months of protests that began in the major
oil-producing nation in February. Forty-two people including 38 students
were killed in the violence.

The government says the protests were a veneer for a U.S.-backed
conspiracy to oust the successor to the late Hugo Chavez.

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay, in an opening
speech to the Human Rights Council on June 10, called for independent
U.N. investigators to have access to Venezuela.

Venezuela last invited a U.N. human rights investigator in 1996, and
Cuba in 2007, whereas 108 countries have extended standing invitations
to all investigators, U.N. officials say.

'FINANCED BY FOREIGN POWERS'

So far, no country has presented a resolution on Venezuela or Cuba at
the Council's three-week session ending on June 27.

Venezuelan student Alejandro Suarez Teppa, a national board member of
the Juventud Activa Venezuela Unida (United Active Youth of Venezuela),
recalled witnessing students being shot in February and said his student
camp was attacked on the night of May 8.

"They put drugs and weapons inside the camps and U.S. dollars to
indicate we were financed by foreign powers," he told reporters, saying
he was beaten then held in isolation for 72 hours.

Venezuelan government supporters and even some in opposition have
criticized demonstrators for blocking streets and staging violent
confrontations with police.

Cuban activists, backed by groups including UN Watch, said authorities
detained and assaulted Jorge Luis Garcia Perez, a dissident known as
"Antunez" who previously served 17 years in prison, and his wife Yris
Tamara Perez Aguilera last week.

The Cuban government says the activists are working for the United
States to discredit Cuba.

Cuba in recent years has freed political prisoners and taken to
temporarily detaining political opponents such as Antunez. Some 1,000
people a month are jailed and released within a few hours or days for
political activity, Cuban dissidents say.

The Cuban government does not acknowledge the statistics and views the
activists as mercenaries who are doing the bidding of the United States
to undermine the 1959 revolution.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; additional reporting by Brian
Ellsworth in Caracas and Daniel Trotta in Havana; Editing by Ruth Pitchford)

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/06/18/us-venezuela-cuba-rights-idUSKBN0ET2B820140618