In a recent report of the United Nations (UN) organization about Venezuela generated commotion in the international public opinion. Under the sponsorship of the former Chilean president, Michelle Bachellet, the report presents the officials figures of homicides and deaths at the hands of State security forces in the year 2018, that up to now were unknown. It is about a slowly cooked massacre occurring in popular slums. However, a part of the Left looks the other way.
By Keymer Avila, June 2019
A Report of the Office of the High Commissioner of the United Nations for Human Rights (ACNUDH) about Venezuela has generated numerous debates about the situation of civil and political rights in the country. One of the many contributions of the report sponsored by the former Chilean president Michelle Bachelet is the presentation of homicide and death figures at the hands of the State’s security forces in the year 2018, that up to now were unknown.
The Venezuelan government reported a total of 10,598 homicides during the year 2018. This figure, as well as the one from 2017, does not include the cases of deaths at the hands of the State`s security forces (considered as “resistance to authority”). This exclusion results in the homicide figures being 33% smaller than the actual total figure. Omitting the deaths at the hands of the security forces not only is misguiding, it is also a hiding and normalizing the serious violations of human rights. When the deaths that result from intervention of state security forces are included, which amount to 5,287, the total number of homicides according to these official figures increases to 15,885.
As has been explained in other opportunities and as ratified by the cited report, the general trend of deaths at the hands of State´s security forces in the last few years has had a clear increase. According to the official figures given by the own government to the ACNUDH, in 2018 33% of all homicides that happened in the country were a consequence of the intervention of public forces. It is about the lives of 5,287 of young Venezuelans, racialised, belonging to the working class, dead at the hands of officials that exercise police duties. In other words, 15 young people die every day at the hands of “agents of order” in Venezuela.
The percentage of these deaths to the total number of homicides in the country is increasing: in 2010 it was just about 4% but eight years later it reaches 33%. This means that now one in three homicides that take place in the country is a consequence of the intervention of the State´s security forces.
To have an idea of the dimensions of what goes on in Venezuela, let us can compare the situation with Brazil’s, a country with seven times more population. In 2016, 4,222 people died in Brazil by the intervention of public force. Numbers much smaller than Venezuela`s, both in the number of victims and in the percentage that these represent of the total number of homicides in the country.
It can be confirmed with certainty that in Venezuela between the years 2010 and 2018, which is the period that counts with the best systematised and continuous information, 23,688 people have died at the hands of the State’s security forces. 69% of these cases happened in the last 3 years.
The increase of firm hand policies in a good part of the region is worrisome, expressed in police tendencies that do not respect any legal nor constitutional limit, and that have even the most humble and ethnic minorities as military targets. Different countries like Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia, Honduras, El Salvador and Mexico stand out because of the militarization of their citizen security policies, as well as the thousand deaths caused by State security forces in the last few years. The report of cases as serious as the murders of Marielle Franco, Bertha Caceres, Sabino Romero, as well as the hundreds of Colombian social leaders -the number of murders after the peace accords has increased-, the disappearance of the Ayotzinapa 43 or Alcedo Mora are just a few of the most popular cases.
In this matter negative patriotism to see who occupies the dishonourable first places could be a susceptible exercise of being instrumentalized by partisanship interest. But also, it is complicated to do it with required rigorousness, and that is what those in power are responsible for behind all the violence. The access to these figures is hard and in those cases where they are accessible, the quality of the data is not trustworthy.
Brazil, Jamaica, El Salvador and Venezuela are the countries with the most lethal security forces of the whole continent. We can reach the conclusion that if we take into account the recent investigation by Anneke Osse and Ignacio Cano as a database and we contrast it with the latest official data shared by the Venezuelan authorities in the cited report by the ACNUDH. On the other hand, it is important to highlight the cases in Colombia and Mexico, which seem as serious since investigators -in general- have a hard time to grasp the clear magnitude of what really happens in these countries.
In this work Osse and Cano calculate the rates of citizens killed by firearms at the hands of policemen per 100,000 citizens in eleven countries across all continents. For their report they used different types of sources: international studies, publications of police control bodies, analysis of non-governmental organizations, academic studies and official sources. The countries that obtained the highest rates were El Salvador (5.2), Jamaica (4.1) Brazil (2) and South Africa (0.6).
Because of the diverse sources, it is hard to make a rigorous comparison between these numbers and the rates calculated for Venezuela during the last three years that, according to the official information, would range between 16 and 19 dead people at the hand of the State`s security forces for every 100,000 people. These results place Venezuela amongst the countries with the highest rate of police lethality, at regional and worldwide scale.
Despite this data, some sectors of the orthodox left -that have not gotten over the logic of the Cold War- appeal to automatic solidarity. They possess a negationist, justifying and propagandist logic that is very harmful, and delegitimates them. These sectors, increasingly a minority, when they are not justifying legitimizing or relativizing what is happening in Venezuela, simply keep quiet or look the other way. Because of this attitude from a part in the Left, the most liberal sectors end up bearing the struggles against state repression, they hoist the flags of human rights and minority rights.
Some sectors and groups persecuted in the past have now become the persecutors, and they justify their current actions “because it was also done in the past” and “they also did it”. They try to make comparisons and gradations, they argue that “before they did it more” and now it is also done but just “a little bit”, that the neighbour “also does it”. With such an immaturity and irresponsibility they try to legitimize their actual miseries. They are like scolded children that try to defend themselves by showing that others do it as well and they do not get scolded for it, that everyone is against them, that they have an issue with them.
It is worrisome that many of the currently persecuted people might be the future executioners, in a cyclical logic that in the Venezuelan case has as the centre the appropriation of the oil rent.
One of the favourite justificatory speeches of the trade is the fight against “terrorism”, the permanent state of “war”, a state of exception where “everything goes”. This is a very similar argument to the justifications of the Southern Cone dictatorships that did everything for the sake of fighting against “communism”. Now everything seems to be justified for the sake of fighting against “imperialism”. Of course, not all types of imperialism, since with the Chinese and the Russians they look the other way and turn silent.
This is the form of justifying the actions similar to those of their “enemies’”, whose own atrocities are sometimes even superior. This is known in criminology as “neutralization techniques”. These techniques, as explained by David Matza and Gresham Sykes over seventy years ago, are five: the negation of responsibility, the negation of damage, the negation of the victim, the condemnation of the condemned and the appeal of the highest loyalties or superior values. The intent is to conserve their own self-image with these techniques while acting in contrast to their values they were brought up with. It is first a self-justification before a justification for others. It is a way to neutralize the values and better bear the feelings of guilt and shame.
With this theorical basis, Eugenio Raul Zaffirini explains how some can justify the crimes of the State trough diverse historical examples: colonialism, Nazism, Stalinism and national security doctrines. “This technique is utilized when it is affirmed that in every war there are deaths, that in all wars innocents suffer, that they are inevitable mistakes, that excesses can not be controlled, etc.”
This is how people justify the death of a political prisoner under custody of the Venezuelan State, which since 2015 sums up to five cases, all of them labelled as “terrorist” by official statements. With a similar logic they justify the massacre of thousands of young people in slums, which their only crime was being poor. These practices have been used for years in Venezuela and serve as rehearsal to apply them in other sectors, in a varied and commensurate way of intensity and extensiveness, depending on the social class of the receiver.
Finally, we must not lose sight of the fact that terrorist States are the ones that use the most anti-terrorist discourse. Terrorism is a muddled concept that is defined by power according to its cyclical interests. In that framework, anyone can be a terrorist. In this game they are left naked, they betray themselves: if the “other” does it, it is a crime, if the friend does it then it is more than justified. It is a double standard that can progressively lead us into the abyss.
