Political Report # 1431
The US Double Standard in Venezuela vs. Honduras
|
If you want evidence that the US government doesn't actually
care about drug trafficking, violation of democratic norms, violation of human
rights, or widespread corruption, just look at how the Trump administration has
treated Honduras versus how it has treated Venezuela.
he recent conviction of Tony Hernández for massive cocaine
smuggling in a federal court case in which his brother, Honduran president Juan
Orlando Hernández, was an unindicted co-conspirator demonstrates one thing
beyond a doubt: Honduras is a narco-state. The equally compelling evidence of
widespread corruption, electoral fraud, and savage repression confirms
Honduras’s status as a rogue state and begs comparison with Venezuela, which
has faced similar accusations.
Venezuela, however, is paying an infinitely higher price in
the form of international sanctions and other regime-change efforts. Even if
one accepts as accurate the denunciations against the government of President
Nicolas Maduro put forward by most of its critics, Venezuela doesn’t reach
Honduras’s level of unethical and undemocratic behavior.
This is just one example of the notorious inconsistencies of
US foreign policy, dating back to the beginning of the Cold War. Long before
Trump, Washington condemned some governments for violating democratic norms and
embraced others that were just as bad, if not worse. It threatened military
intervention or carried it out against nations for reasons that could have
applied to others that received substantial military assistance from
Washington.
Under Trump, these inconsistencies and gaps between rhetoric
and practice have widened. Consider the democratic credentials of presidents
who Trump lavishly praises while condemning Maduro for allegedly undemocratic
behavior: Rodrigo Duterte (the Philippines), Jair Bolsonaro (Brazil), Prince
Mohammad bin Salman (Saudi Arabia); and Andrzej Duda (Poland). Many European
leaders have harshly criticized these regimes for their blatantly undemocratic
behavior.
Consider also that while Trump threatens Iran and Venezuela
with military invasion, if not obliteration, he pledges to put an end to the
“endless wars” throughout the Middle East, the longstanding and high-risk
stalemate with North Korea, and antagonistic relations with Russia. These
latter positions may actually be worthy of support, unlike the bellicose
rhetoric of Democratic party leaders.
There is no better contrast that demonstrates the
contradictory nature of Trump’s foreign policy than that of Venezuelan and
Honduras. What makes the comparison so compelling is the four principal
accusations that Washington hurls at Maduro to justify the imposition of
crippling economic sanctions: drug trafficking, violation of democratic norms,
violation of human rights and widespread corruption. All four could well be
cited to justify international measures against Honduras.
So let’s make the comparison. For the sake of argument,
we’ll accept the validity of the accusations against Maduro coming from
detractors, other than those of the most blatant fabricators of fake news.
Drug Trafficking
President Juan Orlando Hernández was accused of receiving a
million-dollar bribe from Mexico’s El Chapo in the trial of Tony Hernández, who
was found guilty on counts of “Cocaine Importation Conspiracy” and “Possession
of Machineguns and Destructive Devices,” Yet, just one day after the trial
ended, US charge d’affaires in Tegucigalpa Colleen Hoey was photographed at a
public gathering smiling alongside the president. But the case for calling
Honduras a narco-state goes deeper than that.
The president’s sister, the late Hilda Hernández, was also
the subject of a major drug trafficking and money laundering investigation by
US authorities. The evidence against the Honduran state even goes back further
in time. The son of Hernández’s predecessor Fabio Lobo received a
twenty-four-year sentence in US prison following a guilty plea of “conspiring
to import cocaine into the United States.”
Compare this solid case against Honduras with that against
Venezuela. November 2015 saw the arrest of two of Venezuelan First Lady Cilia
Flores’s nephews in Haiti in a sting operation by the US Drug Enforcement
Agency. Both received an eighteen-year prison sentence in US court, although
they were not linked to a cartel and (in the words of their lawyers) “never had
the intention or the ability to deliver a huge amount of drugs” as charged.
The other main drug-trafficking charge involving the
Venezuelan government lacks verified evidence. Days before the 2018
presidential election, the US government accused Diosdado Cabello, the second
in command after Maduro, of drug trafficking and slapped him with financial
sanctions. Unlike Lobo’s son and Hernández brother, no formal US judicial
charges have been lodged against Cabello nor has he been granted the right of
reply.
Democratic Norms
Honduras also compares unfavorably in the area of electoral fraud.
The November 2017 presidential election suffered a thirty-six-hour delay in
ballot counting when center-leftist candidate Salvador Nasralla had taken a
decisive lead. When the process resumed, the election swung in favor of
Hernández, the incumbent.
Nasralla noted that a rectification of the fraudulent
results was unlikely given the fact that the nation’s supreme court and
electoral tribunal were in Hernández’s camp. In contrast to many governments
throughout the region as well as the Organization of American States,
Washington immediately recognized Hernández’s presidency as legitimate and
called on Nasralla to do the same.
Venezuela’s last presidential election held in May 2018 saw
a 46 percent voter turnout despite a boycott by most, though not all, of the
major opposition parties. The opposition’s objections to the electoral process
centered on unfair practices — such as the failure of the state-run TV channel
to provide all candidates with the stipulated advertising time — but did not,
for the most part, consist of allegations that votes were not properly counted
or that voting was not secret. Following the elections, President Trump issued
an executive order restricting Venezuela’s ability to liquidate state assets
and debt in the United States.
Human Rights
Venezuela’s record on human rights has been denounced on
many grounds with well-founded evidence. The government has jailed opposition
leaders, and security forces have clashed with protesters in 2014 and 2017
resulting in nearly two hundred deaths in total. An objective evaluation,
however, needs to consider context.
On both occasions, urban areas were paralyzed for four
months, hundreds of barricades built, and arms used by protesters resulting (in
2014) in the death of six national guardsmen and two policemen while military
and police installations were fired upon and overrun. On August 4, 2018, two
drones attempted to assassinate President Maduro, who was addressing a rally,
along with his wife and members of the military high command. One can only
imagine the response of other governments in the face of similar tactics.
In Honduras, President Hernandez’s security forces are not
victims of violence — they are perpetrators. The UN’s Human Rights Council
(UNHRC) report issued in March stated: “Impunity is pervasive, including for
human rights violations, as shown by the modest progress made in the
prosecution and trial of members of the security forces for the human rights
violations committed in the context of the 2017 elections.”
Corruption
Few can deny that corruption is widespread in both nations.
In the case of Venezuela, President Maduro acknowledged the possible veracity
of denunciations formulated by insiders in 2014 regarding a multi-billion
dollar swindle as a result of the system of exchange controls. He failed to
act. Only in mid-2017 did he begin to clamp down on corruption through the
appointment of a new attorney general.
In Venezuela, however, there is nothing equivalent to the
type of evidence presented in the trial of Tony Hernández that millions of
dollars of drug money contributed to the election of the president of Honduras.
Backlash on the Horizon?
Why are countries like Venezuela on Washington’s hit list
while undemocratic ones like Honduras receive favorable treatment? One
explanation is that while Venezuela has pursued anti-neoliberal policies,
Honduras since the US-supported overthrow of President Manuel Zelaya ten years
ago has implemented neoliberal policies. This includes the privatization of
health and water this year, which was met with street protests that were
harshly repressed.
Another explanation is that Washington has its eyes on
Venezuelan oil, a policy objective that Trump has justified with the slogan “to
the victor goes the spoils” and is now considering for Kurd-occupied territory
in northeastern Syria. A third explanation is Venezuela’s cozy economic,
political and military relations with Russia and China. Rather than mutually
exclusive, all these arguments contain important elements of truth.
The Honduras-Venezuela comparison shows how self-serving and
conspicuous Washington’s role as judge and cop has become under Trump. Although
interventionism in favor of US interests has been a long-standing component of
Washington’s foreign policy, it is now being applied with steroids.
An international backlash appears to be on the horizon. This
was evident in the UN General Assembly on October 17 when 105 delegates voted
to admit Venezuela as a member of the UNHRC, and many of them roundly applauded
after the results were announced. The US had actively campaigned against
Venezuela’s membership, but since the vote was secret, efforts at bullying
combined with material inducements could not be effectively employed.
Meanwhile, protests on the streets of Tegucigalpa and other
cities in Honduras are calling for the resignation of Juan Orlando Hernández in
reaction to his brother’s conviction. It may be that in spite of all the
efforts of the Trump administration to oust Maduro, our man in Tegucigalpa will
end up going first.
Original article can be found (here). URL: Click here for article |
