Crimes against humanity

Since Maduro "reelection" nothing new happened. Or rather all that happened was previsible, except that it got worse for the regime. It was all a matter of timing. There were several international judicial decisions that were published last week. One may wonder why these were not announced before Maduro went to the ballot. What for? First, the result was known well in advance. Second, with most in the country having only access to the regime's media, the news would not have reached "el pueblo", who at any rate does not give a bit about anything anymore so busy it is scavenging for food.

No, what is going on is a continuous effort designed to topple a neo-totalitarian regime with as little blood shed as possible. I find this hypocritical. Not in the per se sense, but since blood shed is to be "avoided", or in my opinion postponed, meanwhile we have thousands of Venezuelans dead every week from violence, crime, poor nutrition, desperate lack of medicine, and what not. But that is of course much easier to hide from the world than a few dozen hysterical Palestinians with clear suicidal tendencies. I am just saying, since apparently "crimes against humanity" has become a relative concept at the UN.


But back to Venezuela: the three items I want to point are the criminalisation of the Tascon list, the OAS human rights report on regime's crime in Venezuela and the release of political prisoners in Venezuela which was not, quite.

Tascon List

There is even a label for it in this blog as ten years ago it was a mainstay. For those new in the game, in 2004 the nascent dictatorship took the names of all those who signed up for a recall election on Chavez and made them second class citizens. If you were a public employee you were summarily fired. If you sought some permits for your legal business, it could be denied if they tracked the names of the business owner to the said list. Unaccountable delays in getting a new passport happened to those who signed (like yours truly). And more. 10 years later the Tascon list was still in use, I can personally vouch for that. Today I am not so sure it is much used. After all so many of the signatories have left the country, and so much treason happened within the chavista tribe that the list is not that useful anymore.

But the human toll has been huge. Lives and careers were broken, by the thousands.  Courageously against all adversity a group lead, among others by Rocio San Miguel, went to the Inter American Court of Human Rights and won.  The sentence (only in Spanish) makes it clear that the regime of Venezuela has created political apartheid as a way to keep power. And it all started by Jose Vicente Rangel, signing on his own hand, the firing of his personnel appearing in the Tascon list. It is to be noted that JVR would move on to become vice president of Venezuela, was allegedly a defender of human rights and refused to acknowledge the evil of the Tascon list. Now there is firm judicial sentence against all that he represents from the regime. As a side bonus, even if it took 13 years to receive Justice (international justice is deadly slow) we have now the official period date of when Chavez turned the country into a dictatorship even though we had to wait for Maduro for the world to agree.

A OAS commission declares that there were crimes against the humanity committed in Venezuela

The OAS since Almagro has become its secretary has taken a militant position against human rights violations in Venezuela, and justifiably so. Many reports have been published, always worse than the preceding one. The latest salvo was the report of a panel of jurists that state without ambiguity that human rights violations have been committed in Venezuela. It is worth your time to read the statement of Almagro on the work of that panel. Here the money quote

Probably not since Nazi Germany has been seen such a perfectly synchronized operation at all levels of the State in pursuance of those objectives

The point here is that the lack of democracy in Venezuela is not quite the concern anymore. The problem now is that the Venezuelan regime is perpetrating crimes against the humanity, and those are a threat to the Western Hemisphere and, well, civilization. There is already a list of 11 Venezuelan officials that should be investigated and sent to the Hague, with a promise of more to come.

The fake prisoner release

Of course, faced with such damming evidence and new sanctions, the regime needed to do something fast. So it decided to free political prisoners. This at the request of Maduro to the high court that promptly obliged, underlining once again that the judicial power in Venezuela has ZERO independence.

Unfortunately like all that the regime does, it is a mere manipulation.  From reading the time line of human rights lawyer Alfredo Romero (among others) you will find that the 80+ released over the last two days are not so.

Some were already "released" weeks or months ago but the state security refused to apply the judicial order.
Some are mere criminals that are released along. Interestingly some are "colectivos" that attacked the Falcon campaign a few weeks ago.  I guess they were in some diabolical way political prisoners....
At least one of the released prisoner had been held for months without indictment and his lawyer never could have access to his dossier. Now they will never know why that person lost a year of his life.
And I will spare you the liberation show which by itself is yet another human rights violation.

Of course, since the releases are happening the above needs to be verified again , etc...  But keep in mind that as some were released others were sent into jail, in particular dissident military and doctors protesting for the lack of supplies. It seems that the regime has settled upon a minimum number of "political prisoners" that must be held at all time, in its Nazi strategy.

I guess if Almagro and the OAS use Nazi to describe the Venezuelan dictatorship I have the right to do so now.