Manipulation of Human Rights Continues
A recurring theme over these days has been human rights, giving rise to media manipulations, and involving individuals who, from centers of power or paid by them, are making a veritable feast with the issue…
Elson Concepción Pérez | internet@granma.cu
March 22, 2017 12:03:37
To date, Venezuela’s Great Housing Mission has built 1,505,028 homes for the country’s most vulnerable. Photo: TELESUR
A recurring theme over these days has been human rights, giving rise to media manipulations, and involving individuals who, from centers of power or paid by them, are making a veritable feast with the issue, for those wanting to impose their model on the world and others who, working as paid mercenaries, are used for that purpose.
Some, such as Luis Almagro, secretary general of the discredited Organization of American States (OAS), have targeted the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, seeking foreign intervention in the country. This could be due to the fact that the nation’s governments, first led by Chávez and subsequently Maduro, have developed social programs to guarantee the population their basic human rights, such as building and delivering over one million homes, free healthcare for all, eradicating illiteracy, or many other achievements which have been recognized both in and outside the country.
It could also be because of Venezuela’s solidarity efforts, primarily with Latin America and Caribbean nations, efforts the OAS and its secretary general have chosen to ignore.
In a move to put pressure on the country, Luis Almagro has requested that Venezuela be suspended from the OAS.
This begs the question: is leaving the OAS is a disgrace or an honor? I’d say the latter, as Cuba has shown.
For decades our country has been targeted by those who critique human rights from behind the bullet proof glass of a command post, in order to wage wars and kill millions of civilians, like in Iraq, or in pursuit of monetary gain by way of illegal arms dealing, causing the death of thousands of people, including U.S. adolescents and children in their own schools, recreation centers, and streets.
They have always used, and are doing so again, some mercenary, who for a couple of bucks would even dress up in white with the sole intention of creating a media circus by causing disturbances in order to later accuse local authorities of human rights violations.
Hence the recent attempt made from within the United States - which pays officials like Almagro extra - to put on a show with counter-revolutionary frills, with the “innocent” OAS secretary general leading the aggression which Cuba has never allowed and never will.
As such the Cuban government has stated that the OAS has always been one of Washington’s tools, a platform from which to launch attacks against Latin America and the Cuban Revolution.
In the same vein, the U.S. State Department draws up lists condemning nations, applying blockades, economic sanctions, and even authorizing military intervention.
It seems to me that the issue of human rights and democracy – from a U.S. perspective – are the most frequent and most damming, and almost always used to enable the powerful to impose their standards on poor nations, and above all, progressive governments.
Of course no one would ever cite what happened to Jesús Navarro as a human rights violation; denied a kidney transplant at the San Francisco University Hospital, in California, for being an undocumented immigrant.
According to a report at the time by newspaper La Opinión, Navarro had been waiting for the transplant for seven years. He worked for 15 years as a welder at Pacific Steel, before he lost his job after the company was audited by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, with 200 of its 600 workers laid off for being undocumented immigrants.
Family and friends of the patient were told by a hospital official that the transplant could not be performed even if they managed to raise the 200,000 dollars needed to pay for the procedure, because undocumented immigrants are not allowed to receive treatment.
In another case exposed by Europa Press, a dispatch from Washington states that a 14 year old African American boy was exonerated 70 years after his execution in South Carolina, when Judge Carmen Tevis Mullen ruled that he had not received a fair trial.
The boy in question, George Stinney Jr., was executed in 1944 and was so small that he had to sit on a telephone book to reach the headpiece of the electric chair, according to U.S. news agency NBC. Family members stated that the police interrogated the boy without his parents' presence, while it took a white jury less than 10 minutes to find him guilty. The defense attorney didn’t even appeal the conviction.
The words 'human rights' hid beneath them events such as that of a youngster gunning-down his classmates, or another forced to sell sperm on a New York street corner; or the fact that every night, hundreds of human beings sleep under bridges in cities across the United States, with no food or shelter.
None of these are human rights abuses, according to U.S. standards.
Such examples, which are daily occurrences in the richest country on the planet, are never seen, heard of or cited by a man like Almagro – who can read and speak English - and is therefore more than capable of learning more about the monster from inside its entrails, instead of seeking out alleged violations in countries where human rights are more than just simple words, or a tool used by the media for political purposes.
In Venezuela, just like in Cuba, Ecuador, Bolivia, and other nations the OAS and Washington want to control, human rights consist of guaranteeing the people health; education for all; promoting racial and gender equality; ensuring that every citizen has the right to employment; and that no one dies because they can’t afford an organ transplant; that families never have to mourn the loss of their children, killed in a school shooting…
Isn’t illegally detaining prisoners in the criminal Guantánamo base where they are savagely tortured, denied the right to a lawyer, and imprisoned without officially being charged for over 10 years, a human rights abuse?
What is the economic and financial blockade of Cuba, intended to starve an entire nation, if not a flagrant violation of human rights?
Here is a bit of advice: Almagro should start to read - in English and in Spanish – the true history of human rights and democracy in the U.S., where the OAS headquarters is based and where these continue to be a pending issue.
Perhaps those who question the validity of the OAS, and if is it worth spending so much money on maintaining this den at the service of the empire, have a point.
Elson Concepción Pérez | internet@granma.cu
March 22, 2017 12:03:37
To date, Venezuela’s Great Housing Mission has built 1,505,028 homes for the country’s most vulnerable. Photo: TELESUR
A recurring theme over these days has been human rights, giving rise to media manipulations, and involving individuals who, from centers of power or paid by them, are making a veritable feast with the issue, for those wanting to impose their model on the world and others who, working as paid mercenaries, are used for that purpose.
Some, such as Luis Almagro, secretary general of the discredited Organization of American States (OAS), have targeted the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, seeking foreign intervention in the country. This could be due to the fact that the nation’s governments, first led by Chávez and subsequently Maduro, have developed social programs to guarantee the population their basic human rights, such as building and delivering over one million homes, free healthcare for all, eradicating illiteracy, or many other achievements which have been recognized both in and outside the country.
It could also be because of Venezuela’s solidarity efforts, primarily with Latin America and Caribbean nations, efforts the OAS and its secretary general have chosen to ignore.
In a move to put pressure on the country, Luis Almagro has requested that Venezuela be suspended from the OAS.
This begs the question: is leaving the OAS is a disgrace or an honor? I’d say the latter, as Cuba has shown.
For decades our country has been targeted by those who critique human rights from behind the bullet proof glass of a command post, in order to wage wars and kill millions of civilians, like in Iraq, or in pursuit of monetary gain by way of illegal arms dealing, causing the death of thousands of people, including U.S. adolescents and children in their own schools, recreation centers, and streets.
They have always used, and are doing so again, some mercenary, who for a couple of bucks would even dress up in white with the sole intention of creating a media circus by causing disturbances in order to later accuse local authorities of human rights violations.
Hence the recent attempt made from within the United States - which pays officials like Almagro extra - to put on a show with counter-revolutionary frills, with the “innocent” OAS secretary general leading the aggression which Cuba has never allowed and never will.
As such the Cuban government has stated that the OAS has always been one of Washington’s tools, a platform from which to launch attacks against Latin America and the Cuban Revolution.
In the same vein, the U.S. State Department draws up lists condemning nations, applying blockades, economic sanctions, and even authorizing military intervention.
It seems to me that the issue of human rights and democracy – from a U.S. perspective – are the most frequent and most damming, and almost always used to enable the powerful to impose their standards on poor nations, and above all, progressive governments.
Of course no one would ever cite what happened to Jesús Navarro as a human rights violation; denied a kidney transplant at the San Francisco University Hospital, in California, for being an undocumented immigrant.
According to a report at the time by newspaper La Opinión, Navarro had been waiting for the transplant for seven years. He worked for 15 years as a welder at Pacific Steel, before he lost his job after the company was audited by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, with 200 of its 600 workers laid off for being undocumented immigrants.
Family and friends of the patient were told by a hospital official that the transplant could not be performed even if they managed to raise the 200,000 dollars needed to pay for the procedure, because undocumented immigrants are not allowed to receive treatment.
In another case exposed by Europa Press, a dispatch from Washington states that a 14 year old African American boy was exonerated 70 years after his execution in South Carolina, when Judge Carmen Tevis Mullen ruled that he had not received a fair trial.
The boy in question, George Stinney Jr., was executed in 1944 and was so small that he had to sit on a telephone book to reach the headpiece of the electric chair, according to U.S. news agency NBC. Family members stated that the police interrogated the boy without his parents' presence, while it took a white jury less than 10 minutes to find him guilty. The defense attorney didn’t even appeal the conviction.
The words 'human rights' hid beneath them events such as that of a youngster gunning-down his classmates, or another forced to sell sperm on a New York street corner; or the fact that every night, hundreds of human beings sleep under bridges in cities across the United States, with no food or shelter.
None of these are human rights abuses, according to U.S. standards.
Such examples, which are daily occurrences in the richest country on the planet, are never seen, heard of or cited by a man like Almagro – who can read and speak English - and is therefore more than capable of learning more about the monster from inside its entrails, instead of seeking out alleged violations in countries where human rights are more than just simple words, or a tool used by the media for political purposes.
In Venezuela, just like in Cuba, Ecuador, Bolivia, and other nations the OAS and Washington want to control, human rights consist of guaranteeing the people health; education for all; promoting racial and gender equality; ensuring that every citizen has the right to employment; and that no one dies because they can’t afford an organ transplant; that families never have to mourn the loss of their children, killed in a school shooting…
Isn’t illegally detaining prisoners in the criminal Guantánamo base where they are savagely tortured, denied the right to a lawyer, and imprisoned without officially being charged for over 10 years, a human rights abuse?
What is the economic and financial blockade of Cuba, intended to starve an entire nation, if not a flagrant violation of human rights?
Here is a bit of advice: Almagro should start to read - in English and in Spanish – the true history of human rights and democracy in the U.S., where the OAS headquarters is based and where these continue to be a pending issue.
Perhaps those who question the validity of the OAS, and if is it worth spending so much money on maintaining this den at the service of the empire, have a point.
No comments:
Post a Comment