Universal rights, double standards
Universal rights, double standards
Alejandro Garcia de la Garza 16 March 2015
What is the difference between the human-rights shortfalls of Venezuela and Mexico? Objectively, not much, but Washington has a different perspective.
The US president, Barack Obama, has issued an executive order declaring Venezuela a threat to US national security, sanctioning several officials and publicly accusing them of human-rights violations. The White House spokesperson, Josh Earnest, told reporters that “Venezuelan officials past and present who violate the human rights of Venezuelan citizens and engage in acts of public corruption will not be welcome here”. And he said that “we are deeply concerned by the Venezuelan government’s efforts to escalate intimidation of its political opponents. Venezuela’s problems cannot be solved by criminalising dissent.”
There is little doubt that the Venezuelan president, Nicolas Maduro, has been responsible for a crackdown on political opposition and decreeing additional powers that have increased state control of the country. But if the Obama administration is so concerned with violence against political dissent and injustice inflicted on the population by a corrupt government, how is it that Mexico, its neighbour country, does not represent a similar threat?
According to President Obama, the Venezuelan government’s “erosion of human-rights guarantees … constitutes an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States”. Yet Mexico, where more than 100,000 have been killed and over 22,000 have disappeared since the start of the ‘war on drugs’, does not seem to constitute such a national emergency.
How is it that a country where, according to the UN special rapporteur on torture, Juan Méndez, “torture and ill treatment during detention are generalised … and occur in a context of impunity” does not raise the same alarm in Washington? The US and its allies are quick to condemn the corruption in Venezuela when, just south of its border, 43 students in Ayotzinapa were carried off by security forces and handed over to criminal groups who specialise in torturing, mutilating, and beheading those who oppose them.
More:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/opensecurity/alejandro-garcia-de-la-garza/universal-rights-double-standards
