The Venezuelan government has strongly denounced the “Human Rights Report” published by the US State Department on May 24.
Venezuela's Attorney-General Luisa Ortega Diaz said the US lacks the moral authority to issue human rights reports on other countries.
“How can they be issuing reports if the United States is the world’s leading military power and the protagonist of the principle wars that shake the planet?” she said on Venezuelan state channel VTV.
She said the report forms part of an international campaign to discredit the Venezuelan government, adding “Who judges it [the US]? The United States is the country with the most prisoners in the world and they have the Guantanamo prison, where the situation of prisoners is not known”.
The full statement from the Venezuelan foreign ministry, released on May 24, is included below. it is reprinted from Venezuela Analysis.
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The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela strongly and categorically rejects the “Human Rights Report” presented on May 24 by the US Department of State, and particularly the chapter on Venezuela.
The release of these unilateral reports constitutes a recurring and illegitimate practice lacking any legal basis, one that only reflects the imperialist vocation of the US government and its inability to establish relations of mutual respect with other sovereign nations.
The policy of integral promotion and protection of human rights developed by the Venezuelan state has been widely documented and recognised in the Report of the Working Group on the Universal Periodic Review adopted by the United Nations Human Rights Council in March.
In it, the Bolivarian Government showed its full commitment to strengthening the national human rights system, which, by constitutional mandate, requires the participation of all branches of government and the democratically organised people.
It is particularly scandalous that the US government aspires to establish itself as a “world judge” in terms of human rights and meanwhile largely does not accept the agreements of the universal system to promote and protect human rights, nor its mechanisms of oversight and control.
The irresponsible claims contained in the aforementioned “report” are disrespectful of the democratic vocation of the Venezuelan people, an unacceptable interference in domestic affairs, and an attack on the electoral processes that are the maximum expression of the sovereignty of the people.
The Bolivarian Government of Venezuela reiterates that these acts of aggression against the Venezuelan people, sovereign owners of their destiny and full guarantors of human rights, only serve to further damage the already diminished bilateral relations and constitute an insurmountable obstacle for respectful political dialogue.