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Aug
15
2012
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ICYMI: Venezuela Prison Violence Rises, Report Says

Associated Press via Huffington Post
August 13, 2012
By Fabiola Sanchez

r VENEZUELA PRISON VIOLENCE large570 ICYMI: Venezuela Prison Violence Rises, Report Says

Courtesy of: AP / Fernando Llano

CARACAS, Venezuela — The number of killings inside Venezuela’s notoriously violent prisons has increased this year even as President Hugo Chavez faces mounting pressure to curtail the violence as he campaigns for re-election, according to a human rights group.

Riots and clashes between rival gangs in Venezuelan prisons left 304 dead inmates during the first half of 2012, a 15 percent increase compared to the same period last year, according the Venezuelan Prisons Observatory, which tracks the violence.

Prison violence killed 264 inmates in the first six months of 2011, and a total of 476 prisoners in all of 2010, according to the watchdog group.

Prison violence continues to rise because “the policies the government has implemented and all the work that has been done has not focused on protecting the lives of inmates,” said the group’s director, Humberto Prado.

Prison unrest and overcrowding within Venezuela’s 33 prisons have become major problems for Chavez’s government. Violence is common inside Venezuela’s prisons, where inmates obtain weapons and drugs with the help of corrupt guards.

Following last year’s deadly armed uprising at El Rodeo I and El Rodeo II, prisons located just outside the capital of Caracas, Chavez announced plans to restructure the country’s troubled penitentiary system and ordered authorities to move many of the inmates from the two prisons to El Rodeo III, an adjacent lockup.

The socialist leader promised to improve living conditions inside the country’s prisons and speed up trials for inmates who have not been sentenced.

The president also created a new ministry dedicated exclusively to resolving prison-related problems and appointed Iris Varela, a former ruling party lawmaker, to take charge of the government’s initiatives.

Opposition presidential candidate Henrique Capriles has strongly criticized the government’s failure to stem prison violence and vowed to significantly resolve the problem if he defeats Chavez in the upcoming election.

Capriles has proposed to reduce the violence by building new prisons while expanding the capacity of existing ones, separating prisoners accused of nonviolent crimes from their violence-prone counterparts and rooting out widespread corruption among guards who often takes brides to provide inmates with drugs and firearms.

On Monday, relatives of inmates languishing inside El Rodeo III said guards have recently attacked the prison’s 650 prisoners, shooting rubber bullets at them and battering them with wooden clubs and metal tubes, causing numerous injuries.

Prado, a former inmate-turned-activist, called the alleged attacks by guards part of “a policy of retaliation” and said their allegations would be sent to the Costa Rica-based Inter-American Court of Human Rights.

Venezuela currently has 33 prisons built to hold about 12,000 inmates, but officials have said the prisons now hold about 47,000.

Varela has said the government plans to soon begin building eight new prisons, which are scheduled to be finished next year.

To read this article on the Huffington Post, please click here.

 
Jul
25
2012
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Venezuela’s Free but Not Fair Elections

jose r cardenas Venezuelas Free but Not Fair Elections

José R. Cárdenas

José R. Cárdenas served in several foreign policy positions during the George W. Bush administration (2004-2009), including on the National Security Council staff. He is a consultant with Vision Americas in Washington, DC.

With Venezuela’s presidential election only a few short months away, international attention is starting to focus on the country leading up to the vote. Such scrutiny is welcome, given Hugo Chávez’s historical track record of tilting the playing field in his favor every time Venezuelans go to the polls.

In recent weeks, two reputable international organizations — Human Rights Watch (HRW) and the Brussels-based International Crisis Group (ICG) — have released comprehensive reports detailing the Chávez administration’s abuse of power, and the extremely difficult conditions being faced by the Venezuelan opposition prior to the October 7th election.

While the reports’ observations will not surprise anyone who has remained informed of Chávez’s systematic hollowing out of the country’s democratic institutions over the years, they are nonetheless important, non-partisan additions to the record by serious watchdog organizations. Try as he might, Chávez can hardly dismiss them as mouthpieces of “the empire.”

Human Rights Watch’s 133-page report, “Tightening the Grip: Concentration and Abuse of Power in Chávez’s Venezuela,” is a follow-up to their critical 2008 report that earned its authors an unceremonious expulsion from Venezuela. It concludes that basically nothing has improved and that, “the accumulation of power in the executive and the erosion of human rights protections have allowed the Chávez government to intimidate, censor, and prosecute critics and perceived opponents in a wide range of cases involving the judiciary, the media, and civil society.”

On the media in particular — which plays an essential role in ensuring freedom of expression in any electoral campaign — the report documents how “the Chávez government has used its regulatory authority to expand the number of pro-government media outlets, while reducing the availability of those that engage in critical programming.”

The International Crisis Group’s report, “Dangerous Uncertainty ahead of Venezuela Elections” paints an equally bleak picture: “Under President Chávez’s watch, power has been concentrated in the executive and checks and balances steadily eroded. Politics are polarised, society divided and levels of criminal violence high, while the proliferation of weapons and of pro-government armed groups offer easy opportunities for stoking violence.”

The report does an impressive deep-dive into all facets of the campaign and finds Chávez up to his old tricks: using his control of the state treasury and the media to try and steamroll any challenge, and to prevent the opposition from getting a fair hearing before the Venezuelan people.

For example, the report’s authors write, “Arguably the gravest symptom of CNE [Venezuela's electoral authority] bias is the failure to check blatant violations in the rules restricting the use of state resources for campaigning mostly – though not exclusively – by the ruling party.” The ICG report calls on Chávez to halt his practice of using the promise of government social programs to induce Venezuelans to vote for him.

On the media, they write, “…together the Chavista dominance of the state media, the cadenas [government-mandated broadcasts], the compliance or self-censorship of much of the non-state media and the harassment of outlets that openly support [opposition candidate Henrique] Capriles give the president a handy advantage.”

Nor does it appear that credible international observers will be present on election day, because the Chávez government has no intention of inviting any. Still, the ICG urges regional governments to press Venezuela for credible observers to monitor the election — a plea certain to fall on deaf ears in Caracas.

The ICG report also devotes some analysis to Henrique Capriles’ chances amidst Chávez’s continuing abuses of power. Most notable is the report’s assessment that Capriles’ campaign has not let itself become distracted by Chávez’s unfair tactics. It is focused, disciplined, moderate in tone, and absolutely committed to convincing voters that the opposition understands the country has changed and that working-class and poorer sectors’ interests will be respected.

Polls for October’s election continue to give the edge to Chávez, but his health remains the wildcard. The uncertainty – along with the substantial proportion of undecided voters – means events could go off in any number of directions should he succumb to his cancer. But the Capriles campaign remains clearly focused on the here and now. The playing field may be tilted in Chávez’s favor, but the opposition are clearly determined to take the campaign to him regardless of the disadvantages. In this they make Chávez, who continues to preposterously assert that his cancer is cured, look weak. It is indeed a measure of how far the Venezuelan opposition has come since the early days of Chávez’s rule.

 
Feb
7
2012
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Game Changer in U.S.-Venezuela Relations

DSC 0754 150x150 Game Changer in U.S. Venezuela RelationsJosé R. Cárdenas served in several foreign policy positions during the George W. Bush administration (2004-2009), including on the National Security Council staff. He is a consultant with Vision Americas in Washington, DC.

Bombshell testimony on Capitol Hill last week by U.S. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper has dramatically altered the stakes in Washington’s relations with the Hugo Chávez regime in Venezuela. Speaking before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence for the annual Worldwide Threat Assessment, Clapper said that Iranian leaders had changed their calculus and are now prepared to respond to perceived threats with terrorist attacks inside the United States.

Clapper said: “The 2011 plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States shows that some Iranian officials — probably including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei — have changed their calculus and are now more willing to conduct an attack in the United States in response to real or perceived U.S. actions that threaten the regime. We are also concerned about Iranian plotting against U.S. or allied interests overseas. Iran’s willingness to sponsor future attacks in the United States or against our interests abroad probably will be shaped by Tehran’s evaluation of the costs it bears for the plot against the ambassador as well as Iranian leaders’ perceptions of U.S. threats against the regime.”

The implications for U.S.-Venezuela relations are clear. Now that it has been assessed that Iran is prepared to attack the U.S. homeland, focus must now be placed on its capabilities and means to do so. That Hugo Chávez has made Venezuela — less than a three-hour flight from Florida — one of Iran’s most important international allies is now a paramount concern to U.S. security agencies.

Indeed, Chávez’s deep-seated economic, military, and intelligence relationship with Iran, running into the tens of billions of dollars, provides an enormous cover for covert operations and other destabilizing activities. That relationship runs from establishing Venezuela’s Margarita Island as a center for Iranian and Hezbollah operations in the Americas and facilitating Iran’s development of a nuclear capability by helping it obtain uranium, to blunting  sanctions by providing Iran’s access to Venezuela’s banking system and jointly trafficking in weapons (here and here) and narcotics. The DEA believes a weekly flight between Iran and Caracas is used for, among other nefarious purposes, smuggling South American cocaine to the Middle East.

Moreover, we know already that a member of the terrorist network plotting to detonate fuel tanks at JFK International Airport in New York in 2007 was arrested on the run to Venezuela, where he planned to board a Venezuelan flight to Tehran.

Lastly, the explosive documentary aired last month on Univisión, “The Iranian Threat,” included not only incriminating information on Venezuelan and Iranian diplomats discussing cyberattacks on sensitive U.S. computer systems (The State Department subsequently expelled the Venezuelan diplomat from the United States, where she had been re-posted), but also compelling evidence on how young Latinos are targeted for recruitment and paramilitary training in Iranian and Venezuelan camps visited by Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Colombian FARC.

As the Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, put it succinctly in another hearing last week, “The Iranian regime has formed alliances with Chávez, Ortega, Castro, and Correa that many believe can destabilize the hemisphere. These alliances can pose an immediate threat by giving Iran – directly through the IRGC, the Qods force, or its proxies like Hezbollah – a platform in the region to carry out attacks against the United States, our interests, and allies.”

In addition, Clapper told the Senate that the intelligence community remains concerned about Iran’s ties to governments in the region and was tracking the issue closely, adding, specific to Iran’s activities in the region, “there is more to unfold here.”

Clearly, Clapper’s testimony reflects a substantial change in the U.S. government’s own calculus about Iran, Venezuela, and the Western Hemisphere.  If Iran is now prepared to strike the U.S. homeland, then all actions need to be pursued to debilitate its capability to do so, and that means targeting its presence in Venezuela. Hugo Chávez made a very dangerous bet when he introduced Iran to the Western Hemisphere. Now, he should be made to pay the price.