Subcommittee on International Human Rights Committee on March 13th, 2012

[Russ Hiebert, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC]

We've had witness testimony before this committee about the police force and the amount of corruption that exists within the force. I'm told that there's a reform of the national police service under way. I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about that reform. Why did the government decide to establish that reform? What are the goals of the process? What have the results been so far?

[Dr. Jennifer McCoy]

I mentioned that a commission was formed in 2007; the government realized that there was a problem in Venezuela and that they needed to do something, so they formed a commission. It actually made some very good recommendations, not all of which were adopted by the government, and certainly not all of which have been carried out. Ministers who have been in charge of carrying out this reform have changed, and different ministers bring different points of view.

One of the decisions was to create a national police force, as opposed having to locally controlled police forces. They're trying to carry that out and to purge some of the police force as they move, theoretically, some of the better officers into the national police force and as they create greater training. That's the idea, the principle, of trying to create a more effective police force and getting rid of some of the corrupt, abusive, or untrained officers. That is definitely in process, but it still has a long way to go. It's a hybrid situation right now, in the process of transition.

Then, as in many countries, you have the intelligence police. In terms of human rights, there have been more concerns expressed about their role. Then, as we already talked about, I don't think that the military is directly involved with citizens very much, but in terms of potential corruption, I have certainly heard stories about that. Again, it's very hard to get direct evidence on these questions, and I don't have a lot of personal evidence. It's more of what I hear and from looking at reports that various monitoring and watchdog organizations are trying to collect in Venezuela.

[Russ Hiebert, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC]

How much time do I have?

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

You actually have 30 seconds.

[Russ Hiebert, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC]

Well, then, I'll be very brief.

We've had some members before the committee tell us that instead of pointing out the human rights violations within Venezuela, we should try to keep our powder dry, so to speak, and work behind the scenes, as opposed to being confrontational.

Do you have an opinion as to what method works in dealing with Venezuela? Is working behind the scenes more effective, or is confrontation?

[Dr. Jennifer McCoy]

I have not found confrontation to be effective. It produces a backlash, and it produces counter-confrontation that I don't find very effective.

This year in particular, as I said, is a year of uncertainty and potentially a year of transition. I think it's an extremely important year to focus much more on protecting political and electoral rights and on promoting reconciliation and dialogue rather than confrontation.

I think the that risks within Venezuela of confrontation, should the election be extremely close and should it be questioned by either side—by whoever loses—and the risks of violence and conflict are high enough that we want to try to avoid them. The opposition candidate's message, in fact, is focusing on reconciliation, unity, and moving the country forward.

I think that different exercises of dialogue trying to bring people together, such as what we're trying to do with the media sector in bringing journalists together from both sides and those kinds of efforts, are much more important for the future of Venezuela in the long term and will be an investment for the future of Venezuela. Confrontation will perhaps make us feel better and not have an important impact, but it could be counterproductive.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

We will go to Mr. Marston again.

[Wayne Marston, NDP, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Ms. McCoy, I am still appreciating very much the testimony you're giving us.

To some extent I believe that Chávez is an outcome of American's foreign policy in South America for generations, going back to the Contra affair and going back to the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. It strikes me that there are similarities, because when the Sandinistas took power in what some people called a popular revolution at the time—and of course there was a major pushback by some in the American government, and I won't hang blame for that on everybody—there was a lot of controversy.

Would you agree with the statement that it appears, at least at face value, that Chávez' original goals were to educate an indigenous population and others who had no access to processes and didn't have the education to do it, and also to reduce poverty in his country? Do you think that was a motivator in the beginning?

[Dr. Jennifer McCoy]

I do, yes. I believe that was definitely one of his goals. As I said, there was a foreign policy goal—a global goal—and a domestic goal, which included redistributing income and political power within the country and addressing the needs of the poor.

I also want to point out that someone asked before—it may have been you, in fact—whether this is a class division, whether it is a case of the wealthy against him and the poor for him. That is not the case entirely. When he first came into office in 1999, he had an approval rating over 80%. He definitely had the support of many in the private sector, of businesses, and so on. He began to lose that support, so that now when you divide into quintiles, the A and B classes are almost uniformly against him, the middle is divided, but the lower D and E sectors or quintiles of the population are divided as well. In other words, it's not uniformly the poor for Chávez and the rich against him; it is more complex. Because there are more poor people, there is some division there as well.

[Wayne Marston, NDP, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

To go back to his association with Iran, we've had desecration of synagogues and some other things there that some people think were an outcome from the relationship with Iran. Is that your view, or is it just that there is anti-Semitism, such as happens in many countries? Would you say there was a relationship with Iran that caused this, or does it exist on its own?

[Dr. Jennifer McCoy]

I'm not sure there's been much proven in terms of a Hezbollah presence in Venezuela as opposed to further south. It is in Argentina and the triangle between Paraguay, Brazil, and Argentina, I believe, that there is more evidence of that. Certainly the role in synagogue bombings in Argentina is much more clearly tied to Iran.

In Venezuela we have heard some statements on anti-Semitism and have had some of these concerns about a couple of the synagogues. I've heard different presentations about this suggesting that it should be seen in political terms more as a global strategy than as particularly anti-Semitic in an ethnic or racial or religious sense.

It's a little hard for me to characterize this, but I'm not sure that it should be seen as an anti-Semitic thing for religious reasons and I'm not sure how much of it comes from Iran; I think it is more that there is political confrontation focusing on Israel's relationship with the United States and that Chávez has championed the Palestinian cause. Looking at it in more political terms such as these might explain some of these statements, but I can't give a very definitive answer.

I'm sorry for the length of my reply.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

That's very helpful.

Mr. Sweet has one more question, and then I have a couple.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

Ms. McCoy, something I thought we needed to get on the record, since we are the subcommittee on human rights, is whether there is any truth to the idea that the opposition parties have been guilty of some human rights abuses as well. Have you heard that at all? We've had some witnesses mention this in their testimony.

[Dr. Jennifer McCoy]

There are a couple of possibilities that maybe we should look at.

One is going back to the 2002 massive march, which resulted in violence that resulted in the coup against Chávez. There has never been a good investigation about that violence—or we'll say a definitive investigation—to see who was actually responsible for the deaths at that time. There is still controversy over that, over who the snipers were and who commanded it and who was shooting against whom.

As well, immediately after the coup during the two days that the opposition was in power, there was actual persecution against Chavistas, and elected governors and mayors were being hunted and were in hiding and fearing persecution. There was violence and the deaths of Chávez supporters during that 48-hour period. Although we don't have a definitive investigation, during that period I would say that there may have been abuses by both sides.

The other case you may have heard about is something called the Lista Tascon, which was a list of the petition-signers for the 2004 recall referendum. Venezuelans still refer to it today, and fear that there may be some intimidation against voting if it can be known that you are an opposition-voting supporter. That's because there was some recrimination against those people who signed the recall petition when it became public. The government was using that list for some time to deny people government employment and perhaps government benefits. Those were the allegations.

There was a similar allegation on the other side, which was that private companies were similarly requiring people to sign the recall referendum or they would lose their jobs. There were also petitions to recall Chávez' deputies—that is, legislators—and so people would sign those petitions on the other side. These would be Chávez supporters signing to recall opposition deputies. This was all happening at the same time, in 2004. There have been some allegations that those Chávez supporters were also being punished by the private sector.

Those, I think, are the two instances in which these kinds of allegations have come up and in which the events alleged may have occurred.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

I had a couple of questions as well.

The first one relates to the Venezuelan administration's recent musings out loud about withdrawing from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the OAS. Can you offer any commentary on that, in particular about what impact this might have on their relations with the rest of us?

[Dr. Jennifer McCoy]

Yes. The problem with the OAS.... I don't think that Venezuela is threatening to withdraw from the OAS, but Venezuela has been an active supporter of creating alternative organizations that exclude the United States and Canada, the most recent of which, as you know, had its second meeting. It wasn't actually its first meeting, but its second. It was the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, which met in Venezuela in December. It included all the countries, including Cuba and except for Canada and the United States, in this hemisphere.

Then UNASUR is the organization of just South American countries; it includes Venezuela, Colombia, and countries to the south. That one has created a secretariat and has a secretary general, and it has the most potential to create some kind of organization that could compete with the OAS. The others I don't think will.

The OAS is still the only organization that is not only hemispheric but that actually has a broad range of bureaucratic capacity, from education to science to drugs, etc., as well as the inter-American human rights system, which I think is absolutely crucial for us to try to protect. It's a real jewel in the hemisphere.

Their not recognizing the last Inter-American Court of Human Rights decision is problematic, and that's why our Friends of the Inter-American Democratic Charter made a public statement about it. It is problematic. It's certainly not the first time in this hemisphere that people have rejected or ignored an Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruling, but I think we definitely want to speak out against that and defend the court.

Again, as I said, the problem for Canada and the United States is that we're not members, and so it becomes more difficult to speak out about it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

The last question I wanted to ask you is something I asked our last witness.

The murder rate in Venezuela is very high. It is in a part of the world that has a very high murder rate, measured as number of intentional homicides per 100,000, but what strikes me is not how high it is relative to other countries, nor is it the pre-Chávez versus post-Chávez numbers; what strikes me is the rapid increase between the second-last year in which numbers are available, 2010, and the last year, 2011, where we see a huge upward spike from 48 per 100,000 to 67 per 100,000, a growth of about 40%.

I'm been trying to put my finger on the cause. It suggests that some kind of system change is under way. I thought maybe it was the attempt to create a single national police force, but that was just me speculating, with no evidence other than what occurred to me randomly. Do you have any idea what's caused that enormous spike?

[Dr. Jennifer McCoy]

I ask those questions too when I go to Venezuela. I think it may be a combination of several things.

One is the transition of the police force, which is perhaps not a good presence in some of the areas, or simply not a presence at all in some of the poorer areas where crime seems to be higher. Another reason might be the displacement of some of the drug violence. Venezuela is not a producer, and as Mexico and Colombia crack down, downstream elements of the drug trade could be moving into Venezuela on the transit side. Still another possibility is that, ironically, as economic growth increases, crime seems to increase. That is counterintuitive, but it's the way it seems to be going. Yet another factor could be the availability of small arms among the population and the consequent use of those arms.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

Surely this would not have changed dramatically between 2010 and 2011. There would not have been a major change.

[Dr. Jennifer McCoy]

No, probably not. it would probably be just a gradual increase.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

I want to thank you very much for coming. I think all the members found it really useful. It was a positive and informative way to end our hearings on Venezuela. I appreciate the fact that you were able to join us.

I don't even know where you are, by the way. Are you in Washington right now?

[Dr. Jennifer McCoy]

I'm in Atlanta, Georgia.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

You're in Atlanta. You have a picture of blossoms behind you.

[A voice]

It's Carterland.

[Dr. Jennifer McCoy]

Oh, yes.