There are mountains of evidence pointing toward the uncountable Human Rights violations in Venezuela. However, some people might be unconvinced. That's okay! You don't have to believe everything that the media says.

Let's look at the hard facts: People have been complaining about extrajudicial murders taking place all over the country in the hands of government authorities (police, military, colectivos, and other official and unofficial representatives). This has been happening for years. There are online compilations of the many dead in just one event, from one subset of the population. There are also countless accounts of torture facilities all over the country.

Still, people could be wrong. This could all be conspiracy theory on top of conspiracy theory, all pushed by CIA agents trying to mislead!

Push for a UN HR Council report

In the week between the days 13 and 19 of January 2019, there was a dramatic event in the Venezuelan National Assembly: the family members of the dead and the political prisoners organized to denounce Human Rights violations, and to demand that the UN Human Rights Council come to Venezuela and make an inquiry regarding their claims.

In February 2019, after Juan Guaidó, then-president of the democratically elected National Assembly of Venezuela, took upon the controversial role of Interim President of the country, there were many calls led by him for foreign countries and international institutions to intervene in Venezuela.

There were many calls for the UN HR Council to come to Venezuela, but this was not something new! In September 2018, the UN's HR Council had already ordered Michelle Bachelet, the Council's High Commissioner, to develop a detailed report on the Human Rights situation in the country.

Who is Michelle Bachelet?

This is such an important topic that it deserves its own section. Michelle Bachelet is not some random woman. She's Chile's former president, a member of the Socialist Party of Chile. She supported Chávez, supported Castro, supported Maduro at the start, and it was in 2017, near the end of her presidency, when she apparently stopped her unconditional support for Venezuela's current government.

Chavez started his government in 1998, and for 19 years, Bachelet was never against it or its continuation after he died. While there were complaints about Human Rights violations in Venezuela during all that time, she continued to either not believe them or simply ignore them. It was in 2018, after she was out of the presidency, and had become the High Commissioner of the United Nation's Human Rights Council, that she mentioned her deep concern.

The Spanish online journal El Mundo puts it better (my translation). This was published on September 10, 2018:

Maduro's government, and that of his close ally, Daniel Ortega, were at the center of the High Commissioner's criticism. Their old political ties, and the criticized closeness between Bachelet and Havana, were useless. Even though the High Commissioner will meet tomorrow with Venezuelan Chancellor Jorge Arreaza in the UN's 39th Human Rights session, her last government was part of the Lima Group, which consists of 14 countries that don't recognize the legitimacy of the presidential elections that took place in May. "The growing number of people running from Venezuela and Nicaragua shows us again the need to defend human rights", highlighted the ex-president in her report.

Is Bachelet, an old ally of Castro and Chávez, the big bringers of communism and socialism to Latin America, a CIA operative? Is she an agent of destabilization and imperialism? Does she want to push right-wing policies?

It's clear from her past that she isn't. In fact, at the start of 2019, it was an enormous scandal for the Venezuelan opposition that the High Commissioner of the Human Rights Council, the one that was supposed to help them, was such a "commie-lover." I didn't know one person who took her seriously, because everyone thought her bias toward socialism, toward Maduro, would lead her to absolve his government of all blames, and to keep on the charade that everything is the US's fault, and that all claims of HR violations are false distractions. This was why there was such a high effort to bring more and more claims, to fill her plate with thousands of victims, hundreds of interviews, and reports on top of reports. That way, she would have no excuse.

Comedic relief

I would just like to mention that in the end, in 2019, she did visit Venezuela, and the news were hilarious. Maduro would pick a top hospital, paint it all over and clean it, then take her to it. "See? All good!". The best part was when he did this as well for a jail, taking the prisoners in worse conditions to the bottom basement, then cleaning and painting everything to show how good and proper Venezuelan prisons are.

Kirchnerist tunnel-visioned hypocrisy

Luis D'Elia looks down on freedom of speech in Argentina and condemns Cristina Kirschner's freeing of journalists

A criticism that is often read and heard about the worldwide left is that they tend to support tyrants that claim to be socialist or communist. They circumvent the topic of Human Rights violations, some even claiming that Human Rights are a bourgeois invention with no validity, and therefore any claim of HR violations is irrelevant. Chávez sides with Castro, Castro sides with Maduro; it's a simple reality, "the enemy of my enemy is my friend," which leads to Maduro supporting Iran's "ultra-right" religious dictatorship as well, even though that's precisely what the left would typically criticize.

Alberto Fernández is left, right? That's why he imposes a 35% tax on dollar purchases, reminiscent of Chávez's foreign currency exchange control. That's why he claims to "miss" Lula, Evo Morales and Hugo Chávez. He's a leftist, and leftists stand together.

Until they don't, of course, and this is incomprehensible to Nestor Kirchner's supporters, then Cristina Kirchner's supporters, then Alberto Fernandez supporters, because they are Kirchnerists and they vote for the many faces of Kirchner, the many faces of the left, of socialism, of syndicalism. It seems otherworldly to them that a president that is so lefty, that represents a movement where all the leftists stand together in Cuba, Venezuela, Argentina, Nicaragua and any other country with a left government, could one day denounce a "fellow" lefty government of Human Rights violations.

The reasons why Kirchnerists claim to be against Argentina's support of UN Human Rights Council resolution on Venezuela

Translation of the first tweet (below): We hope that, in Geneva, Argentina won't vote for Lima Group's ominous Resolution, created by the US with the explicit purpose of disintegrating our regional block and intervening in Venezuela. Argentina should vote with Lopez Obrador (Mexican president), not with Bolsonaro and Piñera (Chile).

Translation of the second tweet (above): Argentina voted in support of Lima Group's Resolution with Bolsonario, Duque, Piñera, Viscarra, whose countries blatantly violate Human Rights. Mexico voted with Venezuela. A regrettable turn for our external policies.

Alicia Castro, Kirchnerist ambassador in Russia (previously in the UK), is not resigning from her ambassadorship and rejecting the resolution because Maduro is innocent, or because there are no Human Rights violations in Venezuela, but because the resolution was voted on by the right-wing block, and was rejected by the left-wing block.

All the evidence of Human Rights violations becomes irrelevant in the face of "the disintegration of our regional block". Human Rights accusations on Venezuela are irrelevant because Venezuela is part of the left-wing block, and the left stands together. Maduro tortures, kills, kidnaps? At least he's a left-winger, very preferrable to Venezuela not being part of the left-wing block anymore.

The worldwide left and Kirchnerism usually argue about this topic by using the interventionist narrative: "these arguments are being used to justify the staging of a coup and removing a socialist president from his post." All fail to mention or question the human rights situation in the country, and all fail to mention the apparent issue that a president that has become a tyrant could, perhaps, maybe, not be someone that should be defended from accusasions of HR violations.

These arguments may lead to a follow-up such as "but it will be worse under US rule," and by thinking so many steps forward, they can justify the fact that they condemn anyone who mentions Human Rights violations in Venezuela, because these accusations are sure to lead to imperialist domination.

Similar politicians stand together

Let's take a brief look at this UN HRC voting session on Burundi's Human Rights crisis. To summarize, Burundi's president is new, a bit suspicious, and nothing out of the ordinary, until he appoints suspected human rights abusers. Who's voting against? Somalia, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Cameroon, famous for their Human Rights crises, together with Venezuela. The resolution was supported, however, by many countries in the left-wing block that aren't as famous for their human rights abuses.

When a similar resolution starts to question Venezuela's human rights violations, who doesn't support the resolution? Pakistan, the Philippines, Togo, Somalia, and Venezuela, which are notable for their HR violations, and also Mexico, which is part of the left block, and left-wing governments stand together.

The surprising turn was that Argentina voted for it as well. Government supporters were outraged, to the point where Alberto Fernández was forced to suggest that a call may happen between him and Maduro, where he would explain his vote and would try to perhaps negotiate. He desisted in the end to do the call, even though the pressure on him by his supporters is enormous.

Conclusion

Leftists, in general, will accuse right-wing countries of violating their populations' human rights all the time. Look at the tweet I shared before, where it is suggested that the reason why Argentina should not accuse Venezuela of violating human rights, despite abundant evidence, is not that there is no evidence, or that there are no Human Rights violations, or anything similar, but because it's being voted on by countries that are accused by her of being Human Rights violators themselves.

The message is that it doesn't matter what happens, but who does it. Venezuela's HR violations are cool because a lefty president does them, and Chile's are bad because they're led by a right-wing president. If the righty accuses the lefty of something and provides an enormous pile of evidence, it doesn't matter, gotta reject it.

This story is funny because it's a repetition of the same pattern over and over again. Bachelet was cool when she was with Maduro; the lefties considered her to be one of them, part of the crowd, a hip chick with the right words. She's honored for her time as president, said by leftists to be wise, trustworthy, dependable, progressive, and overall someone very good. But one day, she accuses another lefty of violating human rights by staging countless extrajudicial executions, tortures, and kidnappings in his country, and boom, she's now an envious liar, what a surprise. No matter what she says, everyone has to stand against her because she is acting agaisnt the left-wing block, and lefties stand together, and her measures seem to be supported mostly by right-wingers.

This is all like a big world-sized school fight. No listening to reason, no logic; blame and pretend. Except this fight lasts decades and is designed to delay, because anything would be better than someone from the other side, no matter how bad the one from your side is doing it. It doesn't only happen around Venezuela, and it doesn't only happen right now. This has been the exact same issue for decades regarding many problems that letfy governments have brought. Left-wingers support tyrannies in North Korea, HR abuses in China, which isn't even that left-wing economically, in Cuba, and in many other places, just because they politically align with the left-wing block and "the left stands together".