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NEWS
Wall Street Journal
THE AMERICAS
October 17, 2003
Venezuela's Reign of Terror
By MARY ANASTASIA O'GRADY
"At 4:45 on the morning of September 25, 90 well-armed military men
burst into Los Semerucos, a PdVSA workers' camp in the [Venezuelan]
state of Falcon, attacking some 300 residents with tear-gas bombs and
rubber bullets, with the objective of evicting them from their homes."
So says Gente del Petroleo, a nongovernmental organization that
represents former workers of the state-owned oil company (PdVSA), who
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez fired earlier this year because they
went on strike. The workers were protesting what they say is the
politicization by Mr. Chavez of a company long known for its merit-based
promotions and management.
The group claims that since the strike, the unemployed oil workers have
become targets of a government-sponsored campaign of violence and
harassment designed to teach other would-be critics a lesson.
"The brutal action," Gente del Petroleo writes in an open letter of
testimony, "in which men, women and children were savagely beaten and
humiliated and in which 26 locals were arrested, marked the beginning of
a more repressive phase of the political persecution that 20,000
Venezuelan families have been subjected to during all of this year, for
their dissent from the government regime."
This is classic Chavez politics. In the Bolivarian Revolution, opponents
are fair game in every sense. Indeed, enemies must be terrorized and
destroyed, not only to remove a particular resistance but also to signal
society that dissent is a dead end. The oil workers, who were
middle-class and heavily dependent on the company, are just the right
group to make an example of. For five years Mr. Chavez has preached
hate, fomented odious class conflict and instructed his civilian
supporters in the ways of Cuba's "acts of repudiation" against
counterrevolutionaries. The assaults on the oil workers were entirely
predictable.
What is more surprising is the response from Washington, or more
accurately the lack thereof. In recent years, certain members of
Congress have been seemingly overcome with preoccupation and sympathy
for Latin American workers. Just this spring Michigan Democrat Sandy
Levin traveled to Guatemala to insist that International Labor
Organization standards be incorporated in trade agreements. Yet
according to the labor syndicate that the fired Venezuelan workers have
formed, Unapetrol, the U.S. Congress has not provided a lick of support
for their cause. Mr. Levin explained to me yesterday that "no one in
Congress or the administration has viewed this as a separate issue of
labor rights but rather as part of a political struggle. To the extent
that Chavez has violated core ILO standards it should be as much of a
concern as it would be anywhere else."
A more cynical view might conclude that notwithstanding the rhetoric
from the likes of Mr. Levin, Washington's real concern when it comes to
Latin labor is ensuring that the cost of output from the developing
world is sufficiently high to protect its labor constituency in the U.S.
Whether Congress recognizes it or not, the treatment of the fired PdVSA
employees is nothing short of criminal. The crimes go well beyond the
fact that the workers have been fired in a manner thoroughly
inconsistent with Venezuelan law. One may argue that the government had
a right to remove them because the strike paralyzed PdVSA. Yet no
private sector company can remove striking employees in this way, and
certainly not without paying a hefty severance. A Venezuelan court has
ruled against PdVSA in the matter and the company has appealed to the
Supreme Court. In the meantime it has ignored the lower court ruling.
There are also the housing evictions, nearly impossible under Venezuelan
law and never with such terrifying force. Moreover, the court order that
supposedly allowed the action was issued eight hours after troops moved
in. Still, for Mr. Chavez, taking the workers' jobs and homes away was
not enough. He has also confiscated their savings and pensions. To
finish the job of destroying them, he has decreed to all contractors and
suppliers of PdVSA, that under penalty of contract termination, they may
not hire the former oil workers.
On Sept. 26, the Inter-American Regional Association of Workers, part of
the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, condemned the
government's "attacks perpetrated against the workers and their
defenseless families including women and very young children." It
demanded that Venezuela "cease the inhuman harassment, persecution and
repression against the PdVSA workers and their families and permit them
access to their savings, which have been illegally confiscated by the
company and the government." The AFL-CIO is a member of the
Inter-American group but hasn't intervened directly.
Unapetrol has also appealed to the International Labor Organization for
support. Unapetrol says "that process has been slow and bureaucratic,
owing to the ILO's methods of analysis, which require a response from
the government." It also says that the case has been hampered by the
fact that the government has not allowed the ILO into the country.
Still, Unapetrol is hoping for an ILO ruling in its favor in November.
On Tuesday, a Venezuelan NGO -- Force for Integration -- will use the
case of the Los Semerucos evictions as part of its proof in oral
arguments to a Spanish court that Mr. Chavez, Vice President Jose
Vicente Rangel, Attorney General Isaias Medina and some 22 members of
Mr. Chavez's tactical committee for the national revolution are
committing crimes against humanity and acts terrorism.
The director of Force for Integration told me that the case includes
evidence and testimony that proves Venezualan assistance to Colombian
guerrillas and Cuban ties to the Chavez regime. But equally importantly
the case will show the regime's atrocities against its own people.
Indeed, the most alarming thing about this government is the legitimacy
it claims as a democratically elected power on the one hand and the
systematic suppression and eradication of the opposition on the other.
Exhibit A to prove the government's bad faith is the organized vengeance
-- military, paramilitary and financial -- unleashed against Mr.
Chavez's opponents in the oil company.
URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/
0,,SB106634658082046000,00.html
Received from: S.A.VE Social Artistry Venezuela
http://www.sa-ve.org/
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