International Human Rights Groups Denounce Venezuela’s Record

May 11, 2010

As Hugo Chávez’s regime continues to tighten its already firm grip on the Venezuelan media, two new reports from respected international human rights organizations shed light on the state of the freedoms of expression and the press in the South American country.

A recent report by Freedom House ranks Venezuela 163 out of 192 countries analyzed in terms of freedom of the press. Venezuela’s grade puts Chávez’s government behind countries such as Iraq, Pakistan, and Kyrgyzstan.

The contrast with other nations is even more stark when Venezuela is stacked against its neighbors. Of the 35 countries in the Americas, Venezuela came in at 34, surpassing only Cuba. Venezuela and Cuba were the only countries in the Western Hemisphere graded as “not free.”

Though Chávez has tirelessly publicized the recent launch of his own Twitter account, he has not been as open to allowing in Venezuela the free use of the Internet. Freedom House’s report concludes that the Venezuelan government has gone to great lengths to “censor and block access to particular types of information, to flood the internet with antidemocratic, nationalistic views, and to provide broad surveillance of citizen activity.”

On the heels of the Freedom House rankings comes a damning report from the Venezuelan human rights organization, Espacio Público. The 308-page report analyzes every major free speech offense by the Chávez government in 2009. Individual chapters are dedicated to events such as the shutdown of popular TV station RCTV, the censorship of pro-private property ads produced by civil organizations Cedice and Asoesfuerzo, and the overall suppression of the Internet by the Chávez regime. Espacio Público published the report in partnership with the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, a German think tank dedicated to analyzing the effects of the media on democratic societies.