Human Rights Watch Responds to Criticism of Venezuela Report

[subsuelo]

In December, NACLA published an open letter signed by over 100 experts on Latin America that criticized Human Rights Watch's recent report on Venezuela. In this response, Kenneth Roth, director of Human Rights Watch, says the academics' letter disseminates "unfounded allegations" by misrepresenting "both the substance and the source material of the report." Roth calls the letter "an unhelpful distraction, which ... can only serve to undermine legitimate efforts to promote human rights in Venezuela."

...At Human Rights Watch we are accustomed to having our reports provoke angry reactions. We are routinely subject to baseless allegations regarding our findings, our sources, and our motives. In Latin America, these attacks come most frequently in response to our work on Colombia. Just two months ago, for example, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe publicly accused Mr. Vivanco of being “an accomplice of the FARC” after he released a report in Bogotá. Typically, the aim of these attacks is to bully us into retracting our criticisms and watering down our findings. I firmly believe that the credibility which Human Rights Watch now enjoys around the globe is due in large measure to the fact that we have never backed down in the face of such bullying.

I would like to take at face value your own professed concern for promoting accurate reporting on human rights in Venezuela. But I do not see how disseminating a grossly inaccurate depiction of our report can possibly contribute to that goal. Given what’s at stake in Venezuela today, I think your letter is an unhelpful distraction. If anything, its unfounded allegations will only contribute to the climate of political intolerance that currently exists in the country, undercutting local efforts to promote democratic pluralism and greater respect for basic human rights.

http://nacla.org/node/5369">NACLA - read more (it's worth reviewing some, if not all, of Roth's response, of which I only quoted a small portion at the end)

[Judi Lynn]

1. Precisely what one would expect, isn't it?

http://i36.photobucket.com.nyud.net:8090/albums/e8/TrentKojiras/FrenchTaunt.gif

http://www.thecomputershow.com.nyud.net:8090/computershow/graphics/screen2.jpg

I fart in your general direction.
Apparently they've dug in, will be there for life. It doesn't seem there's actually any oversight there, does it? They are their own agents. They run their show.

Of course they felt a certain societal pressure to condemn TORTURE, and MASS MURDER. Real big of them. What humanitarians. It was the only way they could possibly lay claim to any shred of legitimacy.