Venezuela news for June 7, 2010. Stories you must read today if you care about protecting democracy, human rights, freedom of expression and private property in Venezuela:
Venezuela’s Chavez orders seizure of more companies, voices about corporate water use (AP)
Chavez urges probe of critical website over column (AP)
Chavez: Venezuela buying more K-8 planes (AP)
June 4
As the Organization of American States gathers in Lima, Peru, this Sunday for its 40th General Assembly, it does so under the cloud of the continued erosion of civil liberties in Venezuela. Earlier this year, a report by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (CIDH) expressed profound concern over the authoritarianism creeping into Venezuelan democracy. The report stated that “in Venezuela one of the basic pillars of democracy, the right to equality and non-discrimination before the law, has been attacked. […] Political intolerance does not just impair the effectiveness of democratic institutions: it also contributes dangerously to their fragility.”
In reaction to the report, President Chávez called the OAS a “mafia” and demanded that one day “the OAS has to disappear.”
En julio del 2009 las organizaciones CEDICE Y ASOESFUERZO lanzaron en Venezuela la campaña “En Defensa del Derecho a la Propiedad”. Pero el gobierno chavista censuró a Globovisión, Venevisión y otros medios su difusión.