Former UN Rapporteur on Human Rights: US Sanctions Have Killed More Than 100 Thousand Venezuelans

Orinoco Tribune

The Swiss-American historian and Human Rights expert, Alfred de Zayas, said that more than 100,000 Venezuelans have died as a result of the sanctions implemented by the United States government and that such deaths were due to the impossibility of timely access to medicines.

De Zayas, who served as an independent expert for the United Nations Human Rights Council for the promotion of an international democratic and egalitarian order, participated on Wednesday in the forum “Unilateral Coercive Measures as a crime against humanity: The case of Venezuela”, held in Geneva, Switzerland, and which was attended by Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza, as well as other academics specializing in international law. READ MORE

The World Demands U.S. Out of the Middle East - Will the U.S. Listen?

By Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers | Black Agenda Report

American troops in Iraq are at increasing risk every day the US stays in that sovereign nation.

The world is saying no to war with Iran and US out of the Middle East. Hundreds of protests were held in the United States and around the world on Saturday with a unified voice of “No War.” These protests are in solidarity with massive protests in Iraq calling for the US to get out, where it is now an occupying force as the government has asked it to leave.

These protests and the uprising over the US remaining in Iraq are not being covered in the US corporate media. Millions of people participated in the memorials for General Soleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandes after the US assassinated them. Now, millions have protested the refusal of the US to leave Iraq. The Pentagon knows the reality is that US troops in Iraq are at increasing risk every day the US stays in that sovereign nation. READ MORE

Drop All Charges! Against Venezuela Embassy Protectors

Trump Prosecutors Make Move to Ensure that Embassy Protectors are Convicted

By Ajamu Baraka | Black Agenda Report

Trump’s prosecutors are trying to suppress the facts of the US attempted coup in Venezuela, and railroad the Embassy Protectors to prison.

As the trial approaches, the lawyers for the Trump Administration’s  prosecution of the four Venezuelan Embassy Protectors who were arrested last May are asking the court to make sure the jury is kept ignorant about the facts and circumstances surrounding the actions of the protectors.

In a recently filed motion by government lawyers, state prosecutors are seeking to severely restrict what can be discussed during the trial scheduled for February 11, 2020. Judge Beryl Howell will hear arguments on the motion at the pre-trial hearing on January 29. READ MORE

Barring Politics from the Courtroom: The State Versus the Venezuela Embassy Protectors

By Ajamu Baraka | Black Agenda Report

A black, Obama-appointed judge intends to hide key facts from the jury and referred to the embassy protectors as a "gang."

On Friday, December 13, Judge Beryl A. Howell, the chief judge of the US District Court, denied the discovery motions requested by the four embassy protectors who were arrested on May 16 after staying in the Venezuelan Embassy in Washington, DC for 37 days to prevent it from being handed over to coup-leaders in violation of the Vienna Convention. This denial will severely restrict the scope of the trial, currently scheduled for February 11, 2020, of Adrienne Pine, David Paul, Margaret Flowers, and Kevin Zeese. They face federal charges punishable by up to a year in prison, a $100,000 fine each and restitution to the government for police time and damages. READ MORE

When Even The FBI Can’t Hold Police Accountable, How Can Anyone Else?

By Nida Khan | Black Agenda Report

A brutal New Jersey police chief who routinely spouted racist slurs and threats was fingered by his own officers, but exonerated in court.

In the barrage of endless breaking news, you wouldn’t be alone if you likely missed a recent important story: the federal hate crime trial of a former New Jersey police chief. For three weeks a jury in Camden, NJ, listened and deliberated over the fate of Frank Nucera Jr., who served as chief of the Bordentown Township Police Department until his resignation in 2017 upon learning of the FBI probe. Nucera faced three counts: a federal hate crime charge, deprivation of civil rights under color of law and lying to the FBI. Back in 2005, when Nucera was deputy chief, I tried to have this very same police department investigated for what I said was a culture of racism, negligence and corruption after my dad’s death. Too bad nobody listened then. READ MORE

All Occupying Foreign Forces Out Of Syria!

The U.S. Peace Council strongly condemns the illegal incursion of the Turkish forces into Syria with the approval of the Trump Administration and in direct violation of the United Nation’s Charter and international law.

Immediately after Turkish incursion, the US war establishment, Republican and Democrat alike, went on a broad attack on Trump’s decision to “withdraw” US forces from Syria, calling it a disaster for US foreign policy. According to the New York Times (October 14): “Mr. Trump says his decision to pull American troops out of the way of the Turkish advance was part of his effort to extricate the United States from ‘endless wars’ in the Middle East and elsewhere.” For the New York Times and many others in US foreign policy circles, the extrication of the US from its many foreign adventures represents a grave threat to the bipartisan commitment to US policy of global “Full Spectrum Dominance.” READ MORE

PRESS RELEASE: Drop All Charges Against Embassy Protectors!

Originally Released by Embassy Protectors Defense Committee

IMMEDIATE RELEASE

August 20, 2019
PRESS CONTACT: +1 856 219-0203
admin@defendembassyprotectors.org

The newly formed Embassy Protectors Defense Committee created in response to the arrest and bogus charges leveled by the Trump Administration against the last four remaining activists of the Embassy Protective Collective that occupied the Venezuela Embassy for 37 days, has launched an international campaign to demand that the Trump administration drop all Federal charges against the protectors.

The last remaining 4 Embassy Proctors — Kevin Zeese, Margaret Flowers, David Paul and Adrienne Pine — were arrested in the Washington D.C. Embassy of Venezuela on May 16, 2019 having occupied the Venezuelan Embassy with as many as 100 other activists with the permission of the Venezuelan government over the course of those 37 days. The Embassy Protection Collective were welcomed into the Venezuelan Embassy in order to prevent it from being illegally taken by the unelected regime of Juan Guaidó that was being imposed on the Venezuelan people by the Trump Administration.

The Four are now facing misdemeanor charges of “Interfering with certain protective functions” of the Federal government that carries a maximum of one-year imprisonment and $100,000 fine for each of them. The United States Government is intent on making example of these citizens and is using its unlimited resources to make sure that they are penalized and incarcerated.

The Embassy Protectors Defense Committee, made up of a collection of human rights defenders, international law experts, journalists, labor activists, anti-war and social justice advocates, is involved in raising resources to help cover the enormous expenses of defending against the bogus charge and the outrageous fines that the government appears intent on imposing if the charges are not dropped and the case proceeds to trial.

This is a politicized case initiated by an administration that is unrestrained by accepted international law and recognized state relations as part of the international order established over last seven decades.

The Embassy Defense Committee is circulating a petition and launching a massive international campaign to have all charges dropped and to compel the Trump Administration to reenter the community of law-abiding states. For more information please visit: https://DefendEmbassyProtectors.org.

Background: 

The United States Government, once again attempting regime change, has been, and still is, in clear violation of human rights by taking the whole of the Venezuelan population hostage through its illegal efforts to bring the Venezuelan government down, by imposing sanctions and threats of violence, by denying the citizenry much needed food and medicine and utilities — in parallel to the oppressive measures taken in Washington D.C., in our own nation’s capital, by denying the deliver of food and medicine and ultimately shutting off utility services of water and electric power as they did, in attempt, to drive out the Embassy Protection Collective.

Clear solutions were offered. The public must come to understand that the means of selection of a Protecting Power was formalized during the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations of 1961. In fact, on May 13, 2019, the Embassy Protection Collective issued a most salient statement calling for the implementation of Protecting Power Agreement.

The erosion of civil liberties — the abuse of human rights and the defiance of international laws when instituted by our own Government — must be addressed head on, at the time the actions or inactions are taken. Knowing full well that abusive power is a threat to absolutely everyone — when they grow comfortable enough in silencing the voices of the defenders, the next target for oppressive power is always the people in general.

BAP Condemns Trump Administration’s Racist and Illegal Embargo on Venezuela

Immediate Release

Contact: Netfa Freeman and Vanessa Beck

Phone: 301 938-4628

Email: diasporadelicas@gmail.com

We will never abandon people of Venezuela

August 6, 2019, Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) condemns the Trump Administration’s’ economic embargo as a racist assault on the people of Venezuela that will be disproportionately borne by Black working class Venezuelans and campesinos in general. BAP calls on all progressive elements in the U.S. and around the world to oppose this dangerous escalation by the Trump administration along with support from Congress to impose a right-wing counterrevolutionary government on the people of that nation through state terror.

National BAP Coordinating Committee members Netfa Freeman and Vanessa Beck just returned from Venezuela as part of the Embassy Protectors delegation that spend 10 days in the country meeting with community leaders, social organizations and government officials, including a private meeting with Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

Freeman and Beck are prepared to speak on behalf of BAP and report on the conditions that they observed in Venezuela. With the national conversation centered on Trump’s racist agenda encouraging white nationalist violence in the U.S., Vanessa Beck asserts that “it is a contradictory position on the part of progressives in the U.S. and even the general public not to link Trump’s racism domestically with his foreign policies that clearly have no regard for the lives of people of color.”

BAP national organizer Ajamu Baraka, therefore, poses the question to progressive forces in the U.S. “How much more war, how much more death and destruction will you endure before you break with the capitalist duopoly of the U.S. and say no more war, no more subversion, no more killings in my name by a state that by every definition has become a rogue state and threat to global humanity?


Background on Embassy Protector Collective:

For 37 days, members of the Embassy Protection Collective heroically refused to hand over the control of the Venezuelan Embassy, with the permission of the legitimate government of Venezuela, to a representative of the US-appointed, self-proclaimed “interim President” of Venezuela, Juan Guaidó.

The arrested Embassy Protectors are now facing trials on the trumped-up charge of “interfering with certain protective functions” of the Federal Government, a misdemeanor charge that carries a maximum of one-year imprisonment and $100,000 fine for each one of them.

U.S. Peace Council Calls on Colombian Govt to Comply with Its Obligations Under the Colombian Peace Agreement

The United States Peace Council (USPC) calls on the Colombian government to uphold the peace agreement that it signed with the FARC-EP and to stop the move towards war and implementation of more repressive political measures.

Since signing the peace agreement, in November of 2016, the Colombian government has failed to meet its obligations under this agreement, and the US Peace Council notes with alarm that it now appears that this government is actually planning for further war and social conflict, rather than working for peace.

Pursuant to the long-negotiated peace agreement, the Colombian government agreed to carry out many reforms that would benefit Colombian Society. These reforms included the promise

• to forego the use of force for political ends,

• to stop the use of the poisonous weed killer glyphosate to eradicate sources of drugs,

• to invest in infrastructure in the countryside including a system to assist campesinos to gain title to their land,

• to invest in projects designed to assist the reincorporation into civilian life of former guerilla combatants,

• to release political prisoners and prisoners of war as part of the transitional justice system called the Special Peace Jurisdiction (JEP),

• to take responsibility and to be held accountable for its own violation of international humanitarian law and human rights law and

• to protect members of the opposition, among other promises. The USPC notes with alarm that there have been attacks on Afro-Colombian and Indigenous communities to have state protection while the authors of the attacks have not been held to account.

It is widely accepted that the Colombian government has only completed 30% of their responsibilities under the peace agreement. The Colombian government continues to use glyphosate in drug eradication endangering the environment and the lives of its rural inhabitants. The Colombian government has failed to invest in needed community-oriented infrastructure in the countryside. The Colombian government has failed to protect leaders of the opposition with approximately 700 hundred social leaders and 135 former guerilla combatants assassinated since the signing of the peace agreement. There are still over 500 political prisoners languishing in prison who have not been granted conditional release as part of the Special Peace Jurisdiction as called for in the peace agreement.

One of the most concerning issues is described in a recent article in the New York Times detailing from the highest echelons of the Colombian Military to increase the killing of the opposition and “‘criminals,” (“Colombia Army’s New Kill Orders Send Chills Down Ranks”, by Nick Casey, May 18, 2019). “The head of Colombia’s army, frustrated by the nation’s faltering efforts to secure peace, has ordered his troops to double the number of criminals and militants they kill, capture or force to surrender in battle” stated the New York Times. If these orders are to be put in effect, it breaks the promise to renounce the use of force for political ends and marks a move towards intensified social conflict and war.

This chilling order reminds one of the “false positive” policy in effect under the government of former president Alvaro Uribe. The military were given monetary and other incentives to increase their body count. This resulted in over 3,000 additional deaths including innocent civilians who were assassinated and then dressed up in military fatigues to increase body counts. These assassinations are considered extra-judicial killings, and are international crimes under the Geneva Convention and international humanitarian law.

The USPC is concerned that Colombia is on the precipice of renewed conflict. The peace agreement of 2016 was a brave attempt to end 54 years of civil war. The USPC calls on the Colombian government , and its ally the US Government, to being immediately to fulfill its obligations under the peace agreement, including the protection of human rights, and to recommit to working for peace.