VENEZUELA

Report at the 64th General Assembly
Madrid, Spain, October 3-7, 2008

Extensive debates, queries, resolutions, conclusions and petitions made by the Inter-American Press Association (IAPA) on the status of freedom of expression in Venezuela are known worldwide.

Multiple IAPA's missions have visited Venezuela in furtherance of the commitments that substantiate its role as a hemispheric organization that advocates the people's right to free expression. The IAPA's 2008 mid-year meeting was eventually held in Caracas, after overcoming many pitfalls.

Such a moral entity like IAPA, hated and assailed by dictators, agents of totalitarianism and lobbyists, is more than ever for Venezuelans an extraordinary support towards democratic reaffirmation to continue fighting for people's rights, for inalterable perseverance in principles.

The totalitarian program undertaken ten years ago by the government of President Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, together with harmful global interests and before the indifference of many people, has now expensive Russian weaponry to stage a war against the Venezuelan people's democratic strength; against the strength of people loaded with ideas that are mirrored in the independent media; against the dissatisfied crowds and peaceful protests.

This confrontation clearly emerged last December 2nd, when the people defeated in a referendum President Chávez's proposal to reform the Constitution, approve his indefinite reelection and stay in office forever.

However, the people's opinion was not observed by the Chávez's administration. Through the National Assembly handled by him, he enacted 26 statutory decrees that impose almost the same rules rebutted in the referendum.

Such an action against the people's will has been widely refused by the civil society, as expressed in public demonstrations and … through the media that are not under the government control.

However, the role played by the independent media and journalists is increasingly difficult and dangerous.

In accordance with the responsibility to inform there is the need to report on facts and file complaints that show unprecedented corruption in management of public monies. As a result, Venezuela has been declared the second most corrupt country in Latin America.

Now, there is a domestic public debt that has been multiplied by Chávez by more than 1,200 percent; the foreign debt heightened threefold and goes beyond USD 67 billion.

The current government has received the highest oil income in history, yet more than two million Venezuelans are hungry.

There are claims of crisis in health, rebirth of old diseases that had been eradicated quite a while ago; epidemiologists and university teachers joined efforts to ask the Pan-American Health Organization to enforce global mechanisms of surveillance and control of infectious diseases in Venezuela; students, parents and teachers rally against indoctrination in education and culture. Also, denial of national values is condemned as the government and its followers pay homage to guerrilla members, terrorists and killers.

Unprecedented violence, insecurity and impunity have turned Caracas into the capital city with the largest number of murders in Latin America, and Venezuela in the scene of unpunished crimes.

Such a reality rides roughshod over the people who have the universal right, constitutional assurances for life and peace.

Such a truth brings us face to face with those, who are in office and try to hide and deny facts; threaten, chase, prevent access to official information sources and suppress statistical data.

We, the press, the independent media, will not be quiet.

We cannot complete this report without considering the false statements against the Venezuelan media made by Chávez's ambassador at the Organization of American States. He was sent by his government to take the floor last Monday, September 29th in a session of the United Nations General Assembly.

The office boy recited the Chávez's primer against Venezuela's independent media, labeling them as "pro-coup factions" and linking them with a "neo-liberal dictatorship that avails itself of the private media to conceal its crimes."

The Chávez's agent pointed among the "servants of the international hardcore rightwing" to US network Fox, the Group of Newspapers of the Americas and this institution, among others.

President Chávez's office boy said that there is a campaign to prevent "the progressive democracy from spreading over the Americas." According to him, "it has blossomed in Latin American and Caribbean spaces, particularly over the last ten years, to the extent that the hemisphere has been inclined to deep social changes." Incidentally, Chávez already turned ten years in office and has been accused time after time of meddling in the internal affairs of several Latin American countries by means of an unprecedented, plentiful oil income that belongs to the Venezuelan people.

As a Venezuelan editor, chairman of the Venezuelan Press Association, IAPA member and IAPA's Vice-President for Freedom of Expression in Venezuela, our responsibility is to state that the experience lived by us, journalists and the independent media in our homeland, records serious and repeated human rights abuses by the current government, that should be investigated by the UN Human Rights Council, created on March 15th, 2006 in a session of the General Assembly without the support of Venezuela's Chávez's government, Belarus and Iran.

In July of this current year, during his speech at the 7th Conference of Ministers of Information of the Non-Aligned Movement in the city of Margarita, Venezuela, Chávez proposed the creation of "a powerful International of communications that airs our voice to the world, that is, a true global chain." Two years ago, Chávez's government announced its purposefulness to consolidate a "communicational hegemony." At the present time, the government has organized media outlets with public monies; controls most of the media and imposes them ideological contents, propaganda and proselytism.

Upon the unconstitutional enactment of 26 statutory decrees that run counter to the people's opinion in the referendum of last December 2nd, President Chávez is entitled to expropriate any business, including the private media that he will fail to break.

The democratic conviction and spirit of fight of the crows provides assurances for a better future in Venezuela.

Translated by Conchita Delgado