US
charges harassment, corruption in Venezuela
AFP
WASHINGTON
Petroleumworld.com
03 09 06
The United States on Wednesday charged Venezuela with restricting
freedom of the press, harassing the opposition and injecting
politics into the judicial system.
"Politicization of the judiciary, restrictions on the media,
and harassment of the political opposition continued to characterize
the human rights situation during the year," the State
Department said in its annual human rights report.
Venezuela, led by leftist President Hugo Chavez, a sharp critic
of the US administration, was the only Latin American nation
mentioned in a section of the report about countries where "civil
society and independent media are under siege, fundamental freedoms
of expression, association, and assembly are undermined."
"New laws governing libel, defamation, and broadcast media
content, coupled with legal harassment and physical intimidation,
resulted in limitations on media freedoms and a climate of self-censorship
widespread corruption at all levels of government," the
report charged.
Attacks on the media were fewer than in 2004, however, it said.
"The government or its agents were not accused of committing
any politically motivated killings. Security forces committed
unlawful killings, including summary executions of criminal
suspects, and mistreated persons in custody resulting in deaths,"
it added.
And "corruption was a major problem among all police forces,
whose members were poorly paid and trained. Impunity for corruption,
brutality, and other acts of violence were major problems,"
it added, acknowledging that "some local police forces
offered human rights training for their personnel.
"The government and its supporters occasionally demonstrated
anti-Semitism. In December the international Jewish rights group,
the Simon Wiesenthal Center, denounced comments made by President
Chavez as anti-Semitic and demanded an apology," the US
report said.
Relations between Venezuela and the United States in recent
years have grown increasingly strained.
In Caracas Tuesday, Chavez slammed the arrest in New York Monday
of Cindy Sheehan, an activist whose son was killed in Iraq,
saying that was yet another affront by the US "dictatorship."
"What a democracy they have in the United States,"
Chavez said at a diplomatic event.
The United States "likes to present itself to the world
as a champion of democracy. What they have in the United States
is a dictatorship, a dictatorship of very powerful business
interests and the hawks, who have a puppet there whose name
is George W. Bush," Chavez said.
AFP
03 08 06
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