I would like to underline that's it's really an honour to be in Canada, close to people who care for human rights. Every time I go to a parliament, I feel closer to the people who work on human rights than anything else.
I think what Tamara Yolanda Suju Roa explained already provides an image of the country. One of the worst violations against human rights in Venezuela that I've seen for a long time is the indifference and lack of solidarity of most countries and of the international community in general. As you know, I've been to the Security Council—I've seen Bosnia, Cambodia, Somalia, Rwanda—and I understand how long it takes for politicians and diplomats to act while so many people are killed. While I was complaining to the Security Council about Bosnia, 200,000 people were killed. You know this well. I met the Canadian battalion in Srebrenica. We saw the same thing in Rwanda, where you had the very distinguished Canadian, General Dallaire. For a long time, this has been the case.
I think Canada has broken that. I think you are aware that Canada has played a very important role in reactivating the interest in our region. I don't think Canadians realize how important they are for the rest of the region as a respected, honourable, independent broker in the most important causes that affect us. I believe that the power of dissuasion that you have is enormous. It has probably not been exercised enough, but no one has been stronger than this government and the foreign minister in actually espousing our case in a very firm and clear way.
I will do a couple of tweets as a way to make some comments or to put it in context.
We don't have a government. We have a regime that has morphed into a narco-state. This means that we have criminal gangs managing the country. I was saying yesterday at the Senate that Pablo Escobar was the President of Colombia and El Chapo was the President of Mexico, but in Venezuela the counterparts are the president, the vice-president, and even the president of the illegitimate supreme court, who has been indicted for two crimes of assassination.
We are in a very peculiar and unprecedented situation that will require the international community to look at us with very different eyes. We are not a classic case of two parties, as the United Nations says. We are not two parties. There's only one party here; it's a criminal party. The moral ambivalence of the parties has created many problems in the world. Actually, the doctrine of the responsibility to protect is, in a way, an act of repentance of the international community for the crimes committed in Rwanda and Bosnia, because we looked the other way.
In fact, I'm writing a book called A Room Without a View because the United Nations has a wonderful room that overlooks the East River, but they have the curtains drawn because they don't want to look outside. You are looking inside, hearing us and hearing our case, and that will be very important, I think. Tamara insisted on something that will make a very strong point, which is to help in the referral of the OAS case against the Maduro regime for crimes against humanity. The Secretary General of the Organization of American States, Luis Almagro, had a definitive and very significant role in bringing to the fore our tragedy, which is monumental, so I think he deserves all our support.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.