Time for left to repudiate Venezuelan leader over China—while supporting goals of Bolivarian Revolution

by Nikolas Kozloff, World War 4 Report

In an effort to appease Beijing, so-called leftist leaders in South America are backing the Chinese "Communist" Party's crackdown in Tibet, or remaining neutral. Chinese troops have brutally silenced protests calling for independence in Tibet and have reportedly killed scores of people. Nobel Peace Prize winner the Dalai Lama has condemned the repression and requested an international investigation. Communist China has occupied Tibet, a Buddhist region previously ruled by monks, since a military invasion in 1950.

Latin leaders' failure to challenge the Chinese over the Tibet question is a sorry spectacle. It's a slap in the face of socially progressive forces in South America as well as those on the US left which have been generally supportive of the Pink Tide sweeping across the region.

Chile's Bachelet Makes a Mockery of Human Rights
Let's first consider the case of Chile.

To be realistic, Chilean President Michele Bachelet's pro-China policy is not very surprising. Chile worships free trade and will do everything it can to further export-led growth. Bachelet signed a free trade deal with China in late 2006 in an effort to boost sales of copper, fruit, and fish oil to Asia's second-biggest economy. Since then, Bachelet has traveled to the Asian nation in an effort to enhance ties. The Chilean president boasted of figures showing a $1.4 billion increase in trade between the two nations last year.

"When Chile considers how to continue its development, Chile thinks big," Bachelet remarked. "And to think big means to think China."

When asked by the press about the Chinese crackdown in Tibet, Bachelet was tight-lipped lest she offend her trade partners. "Chile has taken a clear stance on the issue through our Chancellery [Ministry of Foreign Relations]," she remarked. "The Chinese government knows of this position, and it understands it and respects it."

Bachelet, whose regime boasts of its adherence to human rights and overcoming the brutal military legacy of Gen. Augusto Pinochet, has fallen under heavy criticism for its "neutral" position on human rights abuses documented in Tibet and China in the build-up to the June Olympic Games in Beijing. To her discredit, Bachelet has ignored calls by Amnesty International to take a tougher stance in denouncing such violations.

Bachelet's caving on human rights is all the more puzzling in light of her own personal story. Bachelet’s own family suffered considerable violence during the 17-year regime of former dictator Pinochet. Bachelet's father, former Air Force Gen. Alberto Bachelet, died from a torture-induced heart attack and Michele and her mother were forced into exile.

Chileans are starting to see through Bachelet's hollow rhetoric on human rights. During a recent pro-Tibet demonstration in front of Santiago's presidential building, Amnesty International coordinator Pablo Galaz remarked, "Chile maintains a very weak and hypocritical position today" regarding human rights in China. One onlooker remarked, "It's embarrassing... At the bottom of if it's about how much does Tibet weigh in copper? That's how I'd sum up the government's attitude." Copper one of Chile’s main exports to the Asian market.

Within the government too, some voices of dissent have questioned official policy. Jaime Navarro, a socialist and head of the Senate's Human Rights Commission, insisted that the international community take action "to avoid a new genocide in Tibet, especially considering that China is a permanent member of the United Nations' Security Council. We ought to raise our voices against this repression against the Tibetan people. First there are human rights and—much later—our economic and commercial interests."

Unconvincingly however, Chilean officials have justified Bachelet's position by claiming that business and human rights are two distinct areas and should be treated as such when making political decisions. The government used the same argument previously when Foreign Minister Alejandro Foxley presented the free trade agreement with China to Congress.

Now hoping to outfox Foxley, Chile's lower-house Chamber of Deputies recently approved a resolution calling upon the Minister to "condemn the violence and repression in Tibet and request that the Government of China open direct conversations with the Dalai Lama to find a peaceful solution" to the conflict. The resolution passed 35-8, with one abstention.

In a further slap in the face of progressive forces, however, the Bachelet government opposed the resolution. In seeking to blunt calls from the Chamber of Deputies, Bachelet has resorted to some rather remarkable moral acrobatics and jujitsu. To take up the cause of the Tibetan people, argued presidential spokesman José Antonio Viera Gallo, could invite similar criticisms of Chile. Remarking upon an outstanding conflict with indigenous peoples in Chile's south, he declared: "I don't know if we would like it if a foreign parliament opined on situations like that of the Mapuche."

The Mapuche have long suffered abuses at the hands of the government and accuse the security forces of killing indigenous activists and occupying Indian lands. In an ironic twist on the Tibet imbroglio, the pro-indigenous Web site MapuchExpress remarked, "The government of Bachelet and Viera Gallo know that they have their own Mapuche Tibet."

On China, Chávez is Little Better Than Chile
Unfortunately, Venezuela's President Chávez has little credibility when it comes to human rights since he, like Chile, has embraced Beijing. Venezuela has a lot of economic interests at stake when it comes to China. Chávez has signed a number of agreements with the Asian nation to deepen technological and energy cooperation.

In particular, Venezuela seeks to increase the supply of oil to China. Venezuela's strategy is to diversify its markets so as not to depend so much on supplying oil to the United States, its political adversary. Chávez's ultimate goal is to create a more "multi-polar" world in which the United States cannot act unilaterally.

Chávez's efforts to counteract U.S. imperial designs are understandable, but China is hardly a model country to lead a multi-polar world. Currently, China's human rights abuses are staggering. For example, the authorities have detained hundreds of thousands of people, including political activists, for "reeducation" programs, or (more to the point) forced labor camps.

Given Chávez's championing of labor protections in Venezuela, his support for China is particularly jarring. According to Human Rights Watch, Chinese workers are forbidden to form independent trade unions. Because Chinese workers have few realistic forms of redress against their employers, they have been forced to take to the streets and to the courts in an effort to press claims about forced and uncompensated overtime, employer violations of minimum wage rules, unpaid pensions and wages, and dangerous and unhealthy working environments.

"Workers who seek redress through strike action are often subject to attacks by plainclothes thugs who appear to operate at the behest of employers," writes Human Rights Watch in a recent report. In one recent incident, a group of 200 thugs armed with spades, axes, and steel pipes attacked a group of workers in Guangdong who were protesting over not having been paid for four months; they beat one worker to death.

Chávez's World Travels: From Saddam to Ahmadinejad
It's not the first time that the Venezuelan leader has exercised a certain lack of moral clarity in his foreign relations. As long as countries pass the crucial litmus test of opposing the US, Chávez will eagerly court their support. The Venezuelan president, for example, went to Iraq in August of 2000 to meet with Saddam Hussein. He was the first head of state to meet with the Iraqi leader since the Persian Gulf War of 1991.

"We are very happy to be in Baghdad, to smell the scent of history and to walk on the bank of the Tigris River," Chávez told reporters. "I extend my deep gratitude to him [Saddam] for the warm welcome he gave us."

At the time, the Iraqi Foreign Ministry said that Chávez's visit was a slap in the face for the United States. The official Iraqi press hailed the trip and praised Chávez's courage in defying Washington. "We salute him for his principled moral stand and his insistence on going ahead with this trip despite the silly American criticism," a newspaper, Al Thawra, said.

In his quest to rattle the US, Chávez has courted some other rather unsavory leaders. The Venezuelan leader for example has solidified ties with Iran and calls fundamentalist President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad "one of the greatest anti-imperialist fighters." Chávez added, unbelievably, that Ahmadinejad was "one of the great fighters for true peace."

And Onward to Belarus...
As if that was not questionable enough, Chávez has also carried out an alliance with Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko in order to counter "hegemonic" capitalism. Human rights campaigners say that opposition voices are harassed and stifled and independent media has been all but eliminated in Belarus. Opposition activists are closely monitored by the secret police—still called the KGB.

"An authoritarian style of rule is characteristic of me, and I have always admitted it," Lukashenko has remarked. "You need to control the country, and the main thing is not to ruin people's lives." The Belarus president has furthermore warned that anyone joining an opposition protest would be treated as a "terrorist", adding: "We will wring their necks, as one might a duck."

Many former Lukashenko allies and government ministers have either fled abroad or joined the opposition. Others, such as former Deputy Prime Minister Viktar Hanchar and former Minister of Internal Affairs Yuryy Zakharanka have disappeared altogether.

All of this was seemingly of no concern to Chávez, since Belarus is a fierce critic of the US. In a visit to Minsk, Chávez said, bizarrely, that Belarus was "a model social state like the one we are beginning to create." "Here, I've got a new friend and together we'll form a team, a go-ahead team," Chávez said.

Tibet: The Last Straw
If Chávez fans had any doubts about where the firebrand politician stood on the question of international human rights, the Venezuelan leader has surely cleared up the confusion by defending China’s nasty crackdown in Tibet. Ridiculing attempts to protest the Olympic Games, Chávez said that Venezuela was strongly behind Beijing and Tibet was an integral part of China.

True to form, Chávez remarked, "The United States is behind all that is happening as it wants to derail the Beijing Olympics." The Venezuelan leader added that the protests against the Olympic Torch were an example of the US "empire" "going against China" and trying to divide the Asian powerhouse. "America is the main force behind whatever is happening in Tibet," Chávez said, "and its motive is to create problems in the Olympic games."

One wonders whether the Venezuelan government will soon engage in the same kind of moral jujitsu practiced by the likes of Bachelet. Chávez could claim, like Chile, that economic relations should have no bearing on human rights. If that fails to convince supporters, the Chávez government might claim, in an echo of Chile's PR strategy, that Yanomami Indians of the Venezuelan Amazon have historically faced discrimination in society and that therefore, it would be inappropriate for Venezuela to take the moral high ground and criticize China for its sorry human rights record.

It's the last straw.

It's time for the incessant hero worship of Hugo Chávez, so common amongst the international left, to end. Venezuelans' right to self determination ought to be defended, and US imperial machinations against Venezuela soundly denounced. The Bolivarian Revolution, which has advanced the cause of the poor and disenfranchised, should be fortified and protected. International admirers of the Bolivarian Revolution, however, should also strongly condemn recent remarks by Chávez, who has lost any semblance of a moral compass.

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Nikolas Kozloff is the author of Revolution! South America and the Rise of the New Left (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2008)

RESOURCES

The Impact of the 2008 Olympic Games on Human Rights and the Rule of Law in China
Sophie Richardson, Human Rights Watch
Testimony before Congressional-Executive Commission on China, Feb. 27, 2008
http://cecc.gov/pages/hearings/2008/20080227/richardson.php

From our daily report:

Venezuela charges Colombian military incursion
WW4 Report, May 19, 2008
http://classic.countervortex.org/node/5523

Chile passes Tibet resolution, Mapuche heartened
WW4 Report, April 20, 2008
http://classic.countervortex.org/node/5380

Iran to launch TV station in Bolivia's coca country
WW4 Report, March 8, 2008
http://classic.countervortex.org/node/5222

Cartoon wars back on... in Belarus
WW4 Report, Jan. 27, 2008
http://classic.countervortex.org/node/4989

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Special to World War 4 Report, June 1, 2008
Reprinting permissible with attribution