Championing Venezuela on the Human Rights Council

"The Venezuelan economy was a drunk floundering in a choppy ocean, struggling to stay afloat, begging for a life buoy."
"The Trump administration threw it a hammer instead. A hammer is no help at all. It's heavy. It might make the drunk sink a bit faster. But you can't put the hammer at the center of a narrative about why the drunk is drowning."
Francisco Toro, Venezuelan journalist

"It's a dilemma, for Venezuela and the world."
"We need to use every pressure tool [including sanctions] we can get."
Juan Guaido, Venezuelan opposition leader

"When Chavez died, I cried."
"But I would poison Maduro myself."
Resident of San Isidro shantytown

"I'm afraid she [her five year old daughter weighing 12 kilograms] will die [of severe malnutrition]."
"Because I now know that I can't take her to a hospital. They have nothing."
Elsys Silgado, 21, Caracas, Venezuela

Another 21-year-old Venezuelan, living in the country's capital, Daniela Serrano's 8-month-old infant girl, both living in the impoverished slum of La Dotorita, was  taken to hospital, suffering from malnutrition. The young mother was turned away from three hospitals where she frantically sought medical help to save her baby. There were no beds available, there were no doctors to treat the baby and there were no supplies. At one emergency room the mother was told to bring a blank sheet of paper to record medical notes, when someone agreed they would examine the tiny girl.

The mother needed no official note from a hospital that couldn't even supply a piece of paper; she knew her child was starving. And then the baby was discharged, sent back home with her mother. "I realized she was cold and wasn't breathing", said the mother of her baby, Daisha who died that very night. "I screamed." A neighbour responded and called for emergency assistance. "First responders" showed up eleven hours later, to take Daisha's tiny corpse away with them.

Empty shelves in a Caracas supermarket © Reuters

Elsys Silgado has two  small children both nearing death, a five-year-old and a three-year-old, both afflicted with severe malnutrition, the younger with a severe infection and a persistent fever as well, wracking her tiny body. This mother and her children were also turned away, from four hospitals. No beds were available. The mother described the emergency rooms as filthy, lacking electricity or running water. Her children recovered but their mother knows they remain in danger of death from persistent malnutrition.

No aid trickles down to the people of Venezuela from their government. Its incompetence is not surprising since thugs comprise the ruling party. Once prosperous as an oil-producing nation, when it became a socialist-ruling country with close ties to Russia and Cuba through its 'Bolivarian' revolution that Hugo Chavez famously championed, then groomed a bus driver to ascend to the presidency before he died of cancer, the country was set for complete ruin.

Men stand in line outside a soup kitchen for what may be their only meal for the day. © Getty

President Nicolas Maduro is indifferent to the plight of his nation. Why should he not be? Socialists everywhere support his rule, claiming that the West, the wealthy democratic countries that find fault with socialism are responsible for the failed economy by imposing sanctions on the already-frail economy, with its high unemployment, debt, sky-high inflation, shortage of food and medicine and oil, steadily increasing crime and violence, and people so desperate they flooded neighbouring countries as refugees looking for haven in their millions.

And now, why is it so predictable that Venezuela would be elected to the United Nations Human Rights Council last month, with 105 votes and a round of applause? Responsible for the promotion and protection of human rights, the Human Rights Council, created in 2006 by the General Assembly busies itself condemning one sole country for ostensible human rights abuses: Israel, while electing a vicious kleptocracy like Venezuela to sit on it.

Children scavenge for food at the back of garbage pick-up trucks in Caracas. Reuters

Over a month ago, the council agreed it would set up an international fact-finding mission and if violations of human rights were discovered, they would be documented. They would check the allegations of torture and summary executions, in their thousands. A July report authored by Michelle Bachelet, the human rights chief, reported that Venezuelan security forces were responsible for death squads sent to kill young men opposed to the regime, staging the executions to appear as though the victims had resisted arrest....