VenEconomy: Caught in a Crossfire between Venezuela, U.S. From the Editors of VenEconomy Latin American Herald Tribune March 10, 2015
Monday wrote another chapter in the confrontation between Venezuela and the U.S. since the late President Hugo Chávez came to power in 1999. A confrontation that has gotten worse during the last year in office of Nicolás Maduro after a series of violations committed by his government against the human rights of protesting students and political leaders from the opposition.
President Barack Obama issued an executive order on Monday punishing seven Venezuelan government officials by freezing their assets in the U.S., also banning them from entering the country. Six of them are military officers that currently hold, or once did, key positions in State security agencies during the student protests that took place throughout the country since February of last year, and that left a death toll of 43, hundreds of injured and more than 3,000 detainees, 60 of whom are still in prison. The seventh official sanctioned by the Obama administration is Katherine Nayarith Harringhton Padrón, a National Prosecutor of the Public Ministry, who, among other people, accused student leader Gómez Saleh of committing offenses referred to in the laws against Corruption, Aliens and Immigration, and the Special Computer Crime Law, as well as student leader Gaby Arellano, the Caracas Metropolitan Mayor Antonio Ledezma and former opposition lawmaker María Corina Machado of conspiracy and planning a presidential assassination with evidence that has been allegedly falsified.
This executive order is the second issued by the Obama administration since the "Venezuela Defense of Human Rights and Civil Society Act of 2014," signed into law on December 18 of that same year, which according to a statement released by the Obama administration reflects its commitment to "advancing respect for human rights, safeguarding democratic institutions, and protecting the U.S. financial system from the illicit financial flows from public corruption in Venezuela."
One of the differences with the previous executive order is that the first did not identify the officials by name and surname, or was specific about the number of officials being sanctioned. The other is that the Obama administration is taking a more decisive step on this occasion by declaring a national emergency because of an "unusual and extraordinary" threat to homeland security and the foreign policy caused by the situation in Venezuela.
As expected, the Maduro government responded on Monday night, first by calling the Chargé d’Affaires of Venezuela in the U.S. for consultation, and then by expressing its rejection of the measure on a national TV and radio broadcast full of contradictions and reinforced threats against the North American nation.
The most important aspect on the broadcast was an announcement of Maduro on Tuesday requesting the Parliament a new Enabling Law that would grant him "anti-imperialist enabling powers." A law that is expected to become a new Pandora’s Box to continue the communist onslaught against democracy, to keep undermining the rights of Venezuelans and that will make Maduro remain in power for good. A fact that is leading many analysts to consider a strategic error of the Obama administration in its relations with Venezuela for giving it excuses to keep blaming it for the hardships of the country.
However, these punitive measures from the U.S. government are specific against officials who have violated human rights of Venezuelan citizens, and will not affect the population, the State or the trade relations of both countries in any way.
On the contrary, these are measures that are in tune with the reactions generated at international level because of the evident fragility of the Rule of Law and the vulnerability of human rights in Venezuela, and that also have generated negative statements against the government of Maduro with regard to human rights by the Vatican, the European Parliament, the Czech Parliament and other lawmakers from Latin American countries.
We can only sit and wait for a new chapter of verbal and diplomatic confrontations unlikely to have a happy ending, while Venezuelans keep plunging into misery and are oppressed by a vulgar tyranny.
_______________________
|