New Organization Opens Fire on Chavez

By Scott L. Glabe | Tuesday, November 22, 2005

On November 10, the nascent Human Rights Foundation hosted its first event, a breakfast at the Yale Club in New York co-sponsored by the Atlas Economic Research Foundation in which panelists gathered to "discuss the dimensions and definition of human rights." HRF is the brainchild of Thor Halvorssen, who previously served as the first executive director and chief executive officer of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, an organization dedicated to upholding civil liberties on campus. Dartmouth students are no stranger to the FIRE, which was instrumental in forcing the administration to repeal its speech code this past spring.

The FIRE was conceived as an equal-opportunity antidote to the increasingly partisan American Civil Liberties Union, and Halvorssen hopes HRF grows to occupy a similar place in the human rights world. "'Progressive' organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch are charged by critics as having redefined human rights in such a way as to weaken the concept and make it unworkable," Halvorssen says, while HRF will "champion the definition of human rights that originally animated the human rights movement, centered on the twin concepts of freedom of self-determination and freedom from tyranny."

Existing organizations, Halvorsson believes, have approached human rights with an incorrect sense of proportion, such as by focusing on the cruelty of the death penalty in America while prisoners of conscience are tortured and murdered around the world. HRF, in contrast, is designed to emphasize basic, apolitical freedoms that in a way that will "appeal to everyone. HRF doesn't seek to polarize with other human rights organizations, we seek to polarize with governments that violate human rights or permit the violation of human rights by their inaction."

As an example of a realistic model for what his organization hopes to achieve, Halvorssen cites the 1976 UN Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and elaborates on the freedoms he hopes to emphasize thusly:

These ideals find their purest expression in the belief that all human beings have the elemental rights to free speech and a free press, to worship in the manner of their choice and to associate with those of like mind, to own property and to move within and across national borders, to receive equal treatment and due process under the law, and to participate in the government of their country; they likewise find expression in the conviction that all human beings have the right to be free from arbitrary detainment or exile; from slavery and torture; and from interference and coercion in matters of conscience and private choice.

Halvorssen's idea for HRF developed from reflections on the state of his home country of Venezuela. The recent political problems in Halvorssen's birthplace are well-known: poverty and corruption, the two crises that ushered the populist military commander Hugo Chavez into office in 1998, have worsened markedly in recent years. Record oil income has been expended not on public welfare, but on defense, with military spending slated to increase twenty-fold.

Meanwhile, Chavez has styled himself a dangerous demagogue, covertly working with terrorist groups (such as FARC in Colombia) to destabilize democracies throughout the region, and vociferously opposing the U.S.—which he accuses, with no evidence, of sponsoring a coup d'état that temporarily deposed him 2002. Chavez has crafted an anti-U.S. coalition and established bilateral relations with such stellar friends of freedom as Cuba's Fidel Castro, Iran's new president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Iraq's Saddam Hussein, to whom Chavez was the first official state visitor after the first Gulf War.

Political freedoms in Venezuela are also under threat. As Halvorssen explained in his 2004 resignation letter from FIRE, "the government constantly tramples its constitution; due process, freedom of speech, freedom of movement, and economic liberty are all under assault."

Chavez's abuses have systematically denigrated the rule of law in Venezuela. In 1999, he jammed through a constitution that greatly consolidated presidential powers in a referendum in which fewer than 40% of eligible voters cast a ballot. Last year, he withstood recall in a election that was widely believed to be rigged; Chavez announced a nearly 20-point victory despite exit polls that showed him trailing by nearly that same margin. And recently, Chavez packed the country's supreme court by doubling its membership.

In Halvorssen's vision, this curtailment of political freedoms is exactly the kind of human rights issue HRF would tackle. It is important to note, however, that Venezuelans have also been subject to the kind of human rights abuses on which both Halvorssen and more progressive organizations could agree. In his FIRE letter, he continued that "I know first-hand how readily innocent civilians may be arrested and even tortured for disagreeing with the government," abuses which Halvorssen has himself chronicled in numerous publications.

In late December 2002, a Chavez crony named Joao de Gouveia shot into a crowd of innocent civilians. Jesus Soriano, a Chavez supporter who attempted to reach out to protestors reacting to the incident, was arrested and tortured in prison. Ironically Soriano was to shared a cell with de Gouveia, who was free to come and go and is accused of sodomizing Soriano.

Dozens if not hundred of dissidents have been harassed, arrested, and beaten for doing nothing more than peacefully expressing their opposition to the government. In particular, the torture and murder of students who have opposed the regime has gone unpunished, while members of the press have often been singled out for particular maltreatment. Indeed, Chavez has tried to eliminate an independent press wholesale through both de facto and de jure discrimination. Anti-Semitism is also on the rise; in late 2004, security forces raided a Jewish school the same day Chavez was on a state visit to Iran.

For Halvorssen, the recent terror—and there is no other word—in Venezuela is also personal: his mother was shot when Chavez henchmen shot into a crowd peacefully protesting the rigged recall. His cousin, Leopoldo Lopez, is the opposition mayor of Chacao, a municipality in Caracas. Lopez, a graduate of Harvard's Kennedy School who helped found the Primero Justicia (Justice First) party in 1995, has had his office wiretapped by federal police and survived an assassination attempt in which his car was riddled with over a dozen bullets. Seen as a threat if he were to run for the presidency, Lopez was recently banned from running for office nine years on a trumped up charge. Yet, even though personal circumstances focused his attention on Venezuela, Halvorssen believes the human rights abuses in his home country should be of concern to all. Similarly, while inspired by Venezuela, Halvorssen has a larger vision for HRF. When he decided to leave FIRE, he wrote the following:

"In December, the president of the Venezuelan labor movement and the former head of the Venezuelan chamber of commerce, both of whom are now in exile, asked me to assist in the formation of a new advocacy group. Located in the United States, this organization would promote civil liberties, human rights, and democracy in Venezuela."

Although Halvorssen left FIRE, ostensibly to work on Venezuela's freedom, he sees HRF's mandate as extending to the entirety of the Americas. It is obvious that the foundation's work will take it to the places in this hemisphere where it is most needed: Cuba and Venezuela. Among the founding directors of HRF is Cuban dissident Armando Valladares, who at age 23 was imprisoned by Fidel Castro and spent 22 subsequent years in prison, suffering extreme torture. He was later appointed by President Reagan as ambassador to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights.

In addition to Cuba and Venezuela, HRF will within the next year open affiliates in eight other countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and El Salvador. Currently one of the foundation's new programs involves the production of a documentary video, shot on location in the Caribbean, the United States and Europe, to expose a network that uses children as slave labor.

The foundation's programs will include the creation of a country-by-country database listing as well as specific political prisoner work, which Halvorssen says will be reminiscent of the FIRE's website. For students at Dartmouth and elsewhere who wish to get involved, the Human Rights Foundation will also sponsor chapters at campuses around the country.

New Organization Opens Fire on Chavez

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