Prime Minister Trudeau’s imperialist Venezuela policy

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October 27, 2020
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Illegal regime change efforts with a “human rights” face: Prime Minister Trudeau’s imperialist Venezuela policy
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Rights Action shares this op-ed piece by Venezuela’s Foreign Minister. This was published just after a big majority of Bolivians took back and restored their democracy, after the U.S. and Canadian-backed military ouster of President Evo Morales in 2019.

The issues addressed are directly related to our long-term work in Guatemala and Honduras. Both countries are ruled by corrupt, exploitative, military-backed, open-for-global-business "democratic allies" of the U.S. and Canada, brought to power via U.S. and Canadian-backed coups (Guatemala, 1954; Honduras, 2009).

The U.S. and Canadian political and legal systems, and mainstream media, are – in many ways – complicit in enabling and ‘justifying’ our unjust military, political and economic support for imperialist interventions and support for brutal, anti-democratic regimes.

As with all serious political change and reform, it is up the U.S. and Canadian people to keep on chipping away, building the understanding and political weight necessary to hold our dominant political, economic and military sectors – along with the media - accountable for our illegal, greed-driven, destructive and deadly interventions in countries around the world, including Venezuela and Bolivia, Honduras and Guatemala.

Grahame Russell
[email protected] (mailto:[email protected])

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Regime Change with a Human (Rights) Face: Trudeau’s Venezuela Policy
by Jorge Arreaza, Venezuela’s Foreign Minister
October 27, 2020, The Canada Files
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Relations between Venezuela and Canada are currently at its worst moment. Although previous Canadian governments did not hide their dislike for our policies aimed at reclaiming sovereignty over our natural resources and prioritizing social policies, none had so actively imitated the U.S. regime change policy as much as the current Trudeau Administration.

Canada is making a calculated and ill-intentioned use of human rights discourse in order to effectively undermine Venezuela’s democratic institutions and promote illegal sanctions that cause enormous pain on the majority of all Venezuelans.

Although he had been Prime Minister since 2015, it was in 2017, after Donald Trump took office, when Canada escalated its interventionism in Venezuela’s affairs. Prior to that, our foreign ministries were in constant communication and met at least 9 times in 2016 to discuss bilateral issues.

After notorious disagreements with Trump over climate change and to a lesser extent, on the terms of a new free-trade agreement for North America, Trudeau found in Venezuela an issue he could openly support Trump in and in exchange obtain regional leadership that would help him win a seat in this year’s election to the U.N. Security Council. In addition, he would also help the interests of corporate Canada who was longing for occupying Venezuela’s place as the heavy crude supplier in U.S. refineries, and why not even take over Citgo, a U.S. subsidiary of Venezuela’s State oil company, PDVSA.

Nowhere to be seen in this plan was real concern for Venezuelan democracy, human rights or even stability. Trudeau picked up a playbook designed by the likes of John Bolton and issued four rounds of illegal coercive measures against Venezuela imitating and in some cases even amplifying the list of U.S. targets. Officials sanctioned are responsible for organizing elections, carrying out diplomatic duties, and even implementing the country’s official human rights policy. Even Olympic athletes known to sympathize with the government have been blocked from entering Canada and completing their trail for the next Olympics.

However, former general Manuel Christopher, who in April of 2019 plotted a failed coup against President Maduro, was swiftly pardoned and erased from the list.

Since 2017, Canada, under U.S. close supervision, engaged in the creation of the Lima Group, a cartel of neoliberal governments in the American continent who failed to carry the majority of votes at the Organization of American States (OAS) to harass Venezuela and were seeking a platform to portray Venezuela as a regional threat in order to benefit the pro U.S. opposition.

Where were Canada’s humanitarian concerns when through the Lima Group it sought to revive the Rio Treaty to be used as a framework for a potential military intervention?

Venezuelan democracy has also taken a backseat in this interventionist policy. During the elections of May 20, 2018, Canada was the only country in the world that specifically forbade Venezuelan diplomatic missions – the Embassy in Ottawa and the consulates in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver – from opening as voting centers for Venezuelan citizens living in Canada.

Rather, Ottawa’s government has engaged in recognizing self-proclaimed interim President Juan Guaidó in violation of the Venezuelan Constitution. Since, Canada has politically and materially supported Guaido’s lobbying to other governments in the region and appointed a special advisor, Allan Culham, to use his “network of contacts to advocate for expanded support to pressure the illegitimate government”, as it refers to the democratically-elected government of President Nicolas Maduro.

In supporting Guaido’s Washington-designed farce, Canada has also been complicit in the plunder of Venezuela’s foreign assets. Citgo’s Simon Bolivar Foundation, once dedicated to financing social programs such as low-cost heating oil for low-income North American families or specialized bone marrow treatment for Venezuelan patients, now uses its funds to finance a so-called NGO – the Venezuelan Engagement Foundation, whose board in Canada is filled by Orlando Viera-Blanco and his family, an opportunist who Ottowa recognizes as Guaido’s Ambassador to Canada.

This week, during the Canada continued lobbying the European Union on behalf of the U.S. with the purpose of questioning the upcoming Legislative Elections of December 6. Millions of Venezuelans - both government and opposition supporters - want to vote, to renew the National Assembly and fulfill the Constitutional mandate, yet Canada, always seeing itself above Venezuelan law, considers otherwise.

On August 20, I had the rare pleasure of addressing Canadians at the invitation of the Canadian Foreign Policy Institute on these issues. Today, I reiterate the invitation to minister Champagne and the Canadian government to return to diplomacy, to seek a realistic understanding among our nations and to cease this dead-end policy that the Trump Administration has laid out for Ottawa.

Unconstitutional and illegal adventures should no longer be encouraged by Canada. Our invitation is to return to electoral politics as an option, to diplomacy as an option. Only then will Canada be again looked upon as a good neighbor and not as the accomplice to the greatest aggression to the Venezuelan people in its modern history.

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Why do 10s of thousands of Hondurans & Guatemalans flee home and country, year after year?
The U.S. and Canadian governments, the World Bank and global businesses and investors (hydro-electric dams, mining, African palm, sugar cane and fruit production, garment “sweatshop” factors, tourism, etc.) maintain profitable relations with anti-democratic, corrupt, repressive governments in Honduras and Guatemala, participating in or benefitting from exploitation and repression, environmental harms and human rights violations, corruption and impunity.
* “Shithole countries: U.S., Canada & international community helping produce forced migrancy from Honduras & Guatemala”, by Grahame Russell, October 2019, [link removed]

Rights Action (U.S. & Canada)
Since 1995, Rights Action funds human rights, environment and territory defense struggles and projects in Guatemala and Honduras; funds victims of repression and human rights violations, health harms and natural disasters; works to hold accountable the U.S. and Canadian governments, multi-national companies, investors and banks (World Bank, etc.) that help cause and profit from repression and human rights violations, environmental harms and forced evictions, corruption and impunity in Honduras and Guatemala.

Act – Stir up the pot – Chip away
Keep sending copies of Rights Action information (and that of other solidarity groups/ NGOs) to family, friends and networks, politicians and media – always asking the question as to why our governments, companies and investment firms benefit from and turn a blind eye to poverty, repression and violence, environmental and health harms that caused the forced migrancy / refugee crisis in Guatemala and Honduras.
* U.S. Senate: [link removed]
* U.S. House: [link removed]
* Canadian Parliament: [link removed]

Other solidarity/ NGO groups in U.S. and Canada
* Honduras Solidarity Network: www.hondurassolidarity.org ([link removed]) ;
* Witness for Peace Solidarity Collective: www.solidaritycollective.org ([link removed]) ;
* School of Americas Watch: www.soaw.org ([link removed]) ;
* Common Frontiers Canada: www.commonfrontiers.ca ([link removed]) ;
* Breaking the Silence: www.breakingthesilenceblog.com ([link removed]) ;
* NISGUA (Network in Solidarity with People of Guatemala): www.nisgua.org ([link removed]) ;
* Mining Watch Canada: www.miningwatch.ca ([link removed]) ;
* CISPES (Committee in Solidarity with People of El Salvador): www.cispes.org ([link removed]) ;
* Alliance for Global Justice: www.afgj.org ([link removed]) ;
* CODEPINK: www.codepink.org ([link removed]) ;
* GHRC (Guatemalan Human Rights Commission): www.ghrc-usa.org ([link removed]) ;
* Mining Injustice Solidarity Network: [link removed] ([link removed]) ;
* Mining Justice Alliance: [link removed] ([link removed]) ;
* Simcoe County Honduras Rights Monitor: [link removed] ([link removed]) ;

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