Arcadia Foundation

Farmer Franklin Britos, 49, died last night at approximately 9 pm, at the Carlos Arvelo Military Hospital of Caracas as a result of a hunger strike which began several months ago to protest against “expropriation policy and nationalizations carried out by the Hugo Chávez government.”

According to his wife, Elena Brito, “he died around 9 pm due to a heart attack.” His weight was 35 kilos, his body mass index was below 10 percent and he showed clinical signs of hypothermia critical.

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The wheels of diplomacy grind slowly in Havana, but now at last Raúl Castro has acted after negotiations with the Catholic church and the Spanish foreign minister, Miguel Ángel Moratinos.

UN human rights chief Navi Pillay hopes Cuba’s move to release 52 political prisoners represents “the start of significant steps” to protect human rights in the country, her spokesman said Friday.

The High Commissioner for Human Rights welcomed Cuban dissident Guillermo Farinas’s decision to end a hunger strike after 135 days as a result of the “positive development“, spokesman Rupert Colville said.

“The High Commissioner welcomes the announcement that Cuba plans to release 52 political detainees and it will particularly be good news when the phased release of all 52 has actually been completed,” he told journalists.

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Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton pleaded Monday with Latin American countries to welcome Honduras back into their circle.

Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, Nicaragua and other nations have thus far refused to recognize the new Honduran leader, Porfirio Lobo, who was elected following the ouster of former President Manuel Zelaya.

Addressing a meeting of the Organization of American States here, Mrs. Clinton noted that the United States had originally condemned Mr. Zelaya’s ouster. But she said, “We saw the free and fair election of President Lobo,” and she praised him for nonetheless setting up a truth commission to investigate Zelaya’s removal from office, which was legally authorized by the Honduran judiciary. Read Full Paper

The daughter of a Venezuelan farmer who has repeatedly staged hunger strikes over a land dispute with the government says his condition is worsening.

Angela Brito said Sunday that her father is barely able to speak after many days without food or water. She told the Venezuelan TV channel Globovision that his health is “very, very delicate.”

The 49-year-old Franklin Brito has said his protests are aimed at forcing the government to acknowledge it violated his property rights.

Santiago Cantón, the Executive Secretary of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), thought that the Venezuelan State, in accordance with the precautionary measures issued by the IACHR, had allowed Franklin Brito to be assisted by doctors trusted by him.

However, wife Elena de Brito, told him on the phone that the Venezuelan government has ignored the request and holds him “hostage” at the Military Hospital.
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Bolivian workers began an indefinite strike yesterday to demand higher pay in a challenge to leftist President Evo Morales, who has previously enjoyed strong support from the poor country’s unions.

Miners and other workers in the mineral-rich Andean country joined the walkout called by the leading Central Obrera Boliviana (COB) umbrella union to protest a 5 percent government pay offer, but the impact of the nationwide strike appeared limited.

“This is a struggle for our basic rights,” said Pedro Montes, a COB mining leader, at the head of a 200 km (125 miles) protest march from the highland town of Caracollo to the capital La Paz that began just before midday.

Morales’ government played down the effect of the strike. “There’s no stoppage in the country. Things are proceeding normally,” said Presidency Minister Oscar Coca.

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Denis MacShane is a Labour MP and was minister for Latin America in the Blair administration. Below he asks why Brazil’s President Lula da Silva, who once stood for human rights, now stands with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

You don’t remember me but we met now and then nearly 30 years ago when you were an inspiration to labor movements around the world. Your struggle to create a strong, independent trade union in Brazil helped take your country to its democratic future.

I wrote articles about the great workers’ rights movement in the ABC region around Sao Paulo, where you organized strikes for fair pay and decent labor conditions. Proto-globalization helped you. European companies like VW and Renault had opened plants in Brazil. Your appeals for solidarity from European comrades were transmitted via the International Metalworkers Federation where I worked in exile from Margaret Thatcher’s anti-labor England. Read Full Paper

Wait ’till he tweets about this one.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez rejected charges by Colombian President Alvaro Uribe that he is meddling in the Andean country’s political affairs ahead of presidential elections next month.

Chavez, who said last week that former Colombian defense minister and presidential candidate Juan Manuel Santos could “generate a war” if elected, said last night that he has no preferred candidate for the May 30 election and will seek improved ties with his neighbor regardless. The comments came as Green Party candidate Antanas Mockus, who has reportedly said that he “admires” Chavez, begins to gain ground.

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While top leadership of South Africa’s ANC has confirmed that disciplinary charges are being brought against Julius Malema, the ANCYL (youth league) head today jetted off on another “study trip”. Most recently, Malema was in Zimbabwe, discussing indigenization with Robert Mugabe, exploring it as a method of ‘restoring heritage‘ to South Africa following the World Cup. Today, it is time to meet Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

Malema, whose conduct while in Zimbabwe was seen to undermine President Jacob Zuma’s efforts as a mediator, will learn more about Venezuela’s so-called ‘nationalization‘ policies on what will be a six-day visit.

Malema has become a dangerous figure in contemporary geopolitics. International bodies associate him with South African leadership, as the reins on his hate-speech and controversial opinions about land reform, clearly have not been pulled hard enough by the Zuma administration. Worse, he is building allegiances with authoritarian figureheads on a global scale, utilizing their criminal ideology as his own each time he returns to Johannesburg and raising questions as to what the future of South Africa will look like by the final match of World Cup 2010.

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China has promised to lend $20 billion to Venezuela, the country’s President Hugo Chávez said over the weekend. This underscores the Asian giant’s push to deepen ties to oil-rich nations in the developing world and single-handedly boosting the rhetoric of the would-be socialist revolutionary when it seemed his support was beginning to truly wane.

The credit—which Chávez claims ranks among China’s biggest foreign loans ever—symbolizes the growing importance of oil in China’s energy mix, and indeed the lengths the fast-growing nation is willing to go to secure it.

In the past, some major international deals announced by Mr. Chávez haven’t come to fruition. However, these funds come at a key moment for Mr. Chávez, whose popularity has come under pressure as a crumbling infrastructure has led to energy shortages and other problems. Venezuela suffers the region’s highest inflation rate of 25%.

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The following retrospective has been brought to us from Arcadia Foundation Vice President Robert Carmona-Borjas. It is truly a robust yet insightful report on a tragic situation emanating from Latin America.

Human rights in Venezuela are at a critical impasse. Political discrimination, the lack of independence in judicial power, the attacks to freedom of expression all demonstrate a crisis more serious than Venezuelan history has experiences regarding a fundamental element of its democracy.

The first observation that one must make when examining the political reality and the state of human rights in the country is the clear and present distance of the government from democracy. A distance that is demonstrated by the concentration of powers in the executive, the integral domination of the national institutions, all to the service of a government who represents a consistent political tendency which has faced international scrutiny.

The declarations of Ministers, the Members of the Assembly and representatives of the citizenry, in particular the Ombudsman, showcase a submission to these institutions, supposedly independent, originally conceived for the defense of the interests of the citizens and the nation. The absolute lack of independence between the executive and the judicial system is perhaps the most serious atrocity to human rights that the bolivariano regime shows.

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