The Darkness in Venezuela coming to light
By: Joshua Collins
Tags: Activism, Human Rights, Journalism, Venezuela, World

The Darkness in Venezuela coming to light

Years of bloody repression are confirmed, will the world shrug and move on?

Dusk in Maracay, Venezuela on July 22, as the country suffered massive blackouts (Photo: @gharbim66)

(Guajira, Colombia)- As I write this, Venezuela is shrouded in darkness, both literally and metaphorically. But the bloody deeds committed in those shadows are coming to light, and with luck, that once-gleaming gem will emerge from both ongoing blackouts and a repressive regime to shine again.

The United Nations High Commissioner for human rights’ report on the horrific and murderous actions of the Venezuelan government has illuminated a darkness that many have spoken of for years.

The U.N report detailed nearly 7000 extra-judicial murders, systematic torture and sexual violence against political prisoners, arbitrary detention, press censorship, food insecurity used as a political weapon and widespread physical and economic violence against indigenous people in Venezuela.

Those accusations are just the ones that made the headlines. The report goes on to detail massive food shortages, economic and social suffering, widespread collapse of the medical system and dispels the governments absurd lies about having an independent press or any semblance of democracy.

Women in particular face severe oppression; being forced to trade sex for food, a lack of access to contraceptives or abortion, waiting in lines for upwards of 10 hours to obtain basic foodstuffs as well as facing sexual and physical intimidation from police and Venezuelan officials.

A migrant family we met on the Road to Bogota (photo: Joshua Collins)

Some former allies abandon Maduro

The most recent validation of what independent reporters and NGO’s in Venezuela have been saying for years has caused a number of former regime-defenders to quietly move on to other topics.

Naom Chomsky, a sharp critic of international efforts to remove Maduro, co-authored a letter this week in the New York times calling on Venezuela to release hundreds of political prisoners without charge and underscored the regimes human rights abuses.

But perhaps most powerfully, Michelle Bachelet herself, who once stated publicly that Maduro had “always been a great friend, and a great colleague” wrote a devastating rebuke of his actions in the most recent U.N report. Bachelet was imprisoned and tortured by Pinochet’s government (whom Maduro is on pace to surpass in raw numbers of murders) and was exiled from Chile.

Her friendship with Venezuela and her very justified hatred of a right-wing dictator was widely expected by many in the “chattersphere” to lead to a white-washed report on the Maduro regime.

The final report defied that prediction. A contrary take emerged- Bachelet knew a dictator when she saw one.

This supports two fundamental accusations that some fringe “journalists” at TeleSur and Russia Times (Putin’s personal propaganda network) had been denying.

Namely:

There is a humanitarian crisis happening in Venezuela of grand proportions. Maduro is quite literally murdering his own people

Will it matter?

This is just the latest of thousands of such reports, and it is not the first time that the UN has criticized Venezuela’s human rights record. They did so in 2017 and 2018 as well. Reports about the bloody repression of protesters and acts of intimidation against the populace have been coming out for years. The world largely yawned and moved on.

Perhaps it is because outside of the neighboring countries, who are becoming increasingly destabilized by Venezuelan chaos, there is little reward for forging the kind of global consensus that brought about the end of Apartheid in South Africa. Politicians would rather address more partisan and more easily-leveraged issues.

(photo courtesy of pexels.com)

Or perhaps it is distrust of U.S motives in the region.

The world is right to be skeptical of U.S motives in Venezuela- they are indisputably not only shallow but dangerous as well. The U.S has a bloody history in South America and it’s destructive interest in oil-rich nations is well-documented.

But we must not allow this well-founded skepticism to transform us into apologists for a regime that is just as brutal as the dictatorship of Pinochet. History will not be kind to people who defended the actions of the Venezuelan government.

The media landscape is changing

In the media at least, defenders of the regime find themselves increasingly isolated. Greyzone, led by Max Blumenthal, denied in January that there was wide-widespread hunger in Venezuela. As that report emerged I was talking to thousands fleeing on the border who told a very different story.

Max was joined by Democracy Now in claiming that the humanitarian aid trucks attempting to enter Venezuela on Feb 23rd contained weapons. I was there. They did not.

Anya Parampil, formerly of RT and Telesur, is a particularly fanatical misinformer. After a trip to Venezuela at the invitation of Maduro, she quickly scuttled away to more comfortable countries.

Her investigations were hardly exhaustive and consisted of pre-approved and guided tours designated by the regime. She grows increasingly hysterical as other journalists and advocates begin to call her out for what she is- a propagandist for hire. she was particularly sensitive to Chaomsky’s criticism of the Maduro regime.

She goes on to say that the ideas from his book, “Manufacturing Consent”, which she has happily quoted in the past, are actually stolen from an author named Michael Parenti.

The Invisible wall is falling

Each new true story from a Venezuelan survivor, each report on the atrocities of an authoritarian regime that has dismantled democracy and each horrible fact that comes to light, leaves apologists looking not only less credible, but also increasingly morally culpable.

There are no clear “good guys” in the crisis in Venezuela other than the people themselves. But one thing is clear:

Maduro will be remembered as the modern-day Pinochet; a dictator that murdered dissidents, tortured enemies, dissolved democratic institutions and created a system of State best described as a kleptocracy.

For those who have been trying to shine a light on the shadows of Venezuela, and especially for those who bravely do so from inside of that crumbling country- the destruction of that wall of disinformation gives us great hope.

May that light return not just to the cities currently obscured by that darkness, but to the Venezuelan people as well. They deserve it.

for more stories about Venezuela you can visit www.murosinvisibles.com or follow us on twitter at @InvisiblesMuros

Joshua Collins is a freelance reporter covering the Venezuelan immigration from the border in Cucuta, Colombia. He is also the editor of Muros Invisibles.