Image by Planet Volumes.
“Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.” Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 2
Where are all those righteous-sounding people in the Western nations that for years have denounced in the media, to politicians, to the world that the human rights of the people of Venezuela needed to be defended from a supposed “authoritarian” government, first of Chávez then of Maduro? Where are they now when the powerful government of the United States, led by a bone fide authoritarian, trashes the human rights of Venezuelans?
Recent USA governments encouraged Venezuelans to leave their country and enabled them to enter the USA. The Trump administration, however, has rounded them up like criminals, accused them of being members of a defunct local Venezuelan criminal gang, denied them a legal hearing or access to defense lawyers, and sent them, for a handsome fee, handcuffed to a most brutal prison in another country, El Salvador. Others are helpless in domestic detention centres. They were taken out of their homes, out of schools, out of their places of work, given no notice, nor any option, nor allowed to give any explanation. Tattoos on their person were enough to convict them as terrorists and criminals. In El Salvador they were imprisoned and beate.
“No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.” Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article
Let there be no mistake: in September 2023 combined forces of the Venezuelan police and military, arrested, disbanded, and eliminated the local thugs called Tren de Aragua. At the same time, the authorities cleaned out Tocorón Prison, in the state of Aragua and re-took control from the gangs. The leaders were captured and those few that escaped had INTERPOL warrants issued against them.
What created this horrific and unjust imprisonment of Venezuelans in El Salvador? The extreme fascist Venezuelan opposition leaders, who live outside the country by choice, committed what is perhaps the worst unpatriotic and immoral crime against their own people. In 2024 Maria Corina Machado, Luis Borges, Leopoldo Lopez, persuaded Ted Cruz that the Venezuelan government had sent members of the (defunct) Tren de Aragua gang to the USA; and furthermore, that the Venezuelan migrants were instruments of that gang. Hence, Trump announced that same false and dangerous lie to the public.
There has been, to this day, no evidence whatsoever of this supposed conspiracy by the Venezuelan government to send criminals to the USA, nor has the criminality of the migrants who were rounded up been proven in a court of law.
Moreover, “a new U.S. intelligence assessment found no coordination between Tren de Aragua and the Venezuelan government, contradicting statements by Trump administration officials to justify their invocation of the Alien Enemies Act and deporting Venezuelan migrants” (https://apnews.com/article/trump-deportation-courts-aclu-venezuelan-gang-timeline-43e1deafd66fc1ed4e934ad108ead529)
“Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defence.” Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 11
This is how they rounded up the Jewish people in the Third Reich before gassing them. Even Nazi butchers were given the right of a trial and access to lawyers at Nurenburg – but not Venezuelans.
“Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him.” Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 10
The USA has created a concentration camp in El Salvador: it has paid the dictator Bukele $6 million to incarcerate Venezuelans. They are there simply because of their NATIONALITY. If any other country other than the USA had made this deal, it would have been denounced as human trafficking.
Fortunately, Trump has not been able to quite dismantle the US judicial system, despite having “stacked” courts with his followers. Thus, on April 19th the US Supreme Court, in a surprising act of defiance, temporarily blocked the deportation of Venezuelans detained in Texas under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, a controversial 18th-century military law. The Court has ordered the Trump administration not to expel these migrants held at a detention center “until further order of this court.” The ruling comes just hours after a federal appeals court similarly blocked the US government from moving forward with eliminating temporary legal protection, better known as TPS, for some 350,000 Venezuelan migrants, who are at risk of imminent deportation.
According to the Migration Policy Institute of the USA, Venezuelan migrants are merely 2% of the 47.8 million registered migrants. Clearly, Venezuelans have been targeted for strictly political reasons: it is another canard aimed at trying to depose the legitimate, democratic, Venezuelan government. “…a criminal gang is clearly being used, with its capacity and reach clearly exaggerated, in order to generate the necessary excuses for renewed attacks against Venezuela: sanctions, tariffs and, naturally, the inhuman treatment of migrants. The worst example so far was the deportation of 238 of them to El Salvador.”
Internationally, there has been very little outcry from western nations in defense of the kidnapped Venezuelans. This is disgraceful.
Another example of the lawlessness of the Trump regime is its refusal to comply with the April 10th order of the Supreme Court to obtain the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadorean, sent to El Salvador with the Venezuelans, and who the US has admitted was deported in error. “This defiance of a lower court and the Supreme Court is indeed historic and constitute what is correctly referred to as dictatorial action. But if we look around the world at the nations of the collective west, those that claim to be paragons of democratic virtues and condemning other nations for what they call human rights abuses, we see similarly repressive activities.”
Some in the press have falsely claimed that the situation of the migrants somehow favours Nicolas Maduro. Those that think this have no idea firstly, of the public outcry and anguish the people of Venezuela are showing because of their abused compatriots. Secondly, they have no idea of the many initiatives of the government to obtain the return of their citizens. Since 2018 Venezuela has had a program called Return to the Homeland which – free of charge – has flown Venezuelans home from other countries where they migrated to but ended up suffering poverty and abuse. Thousands have returned to Venezuela in these flights and have been received with open arms. Venezuela would send its planes to the US and El Salvador to obtain the return of its citizens were they allowed to do so. President Maduro has said,” if they don’t want them, we do.”
“Do not ask for whom the bells toll, they toll for thee”:
The abuse of human rights of any group or nationality means they are all at risk.
The post Where Are the Defenders of the Human Rights of Venezuelans? appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Maria Paez Victor.