Venezuela rejects the renewal of the “interfering” UN Human Rights mission

The Venezuelan Government has expressed its discomfort with the renewal of the International Independent Fact-Finding Mission on Venezuela mission of the United Nations Human Rights Council for Venezuela for considering it “interfering”.

“Regarding the infamous Resolution approved in the UN Human Rights Council, which renews the hostile monitoring mechanism called the Fact-Finding Mission, Venezuela ratifies that it does not recognize any tutelage maneuver that intends to violate us,” said Venezuelan Foreign Minister Carlos Faria in a message published on Twitter along with the official statement.

“A new outrage has been committed against Venezuela, renewing a mission that lacks all credibility. It is designed for interventionism and for the falsification of reality. This commission is a political instrument for the most shameless defamation on human rights issues,” added the Ministry.

For Faria this decision has a “colonialist character”. “It is an old habit of imperialist powers, such as the US and the EU, to pressure the rest of the world with infamous colonialist postures. In this case, they use the hackneyed expedient of human rights,” he said.

“They do not forgive Venezuela the social development achieved on the basis of independence, an advance seriously affected by the criminal blockade of these powers”, he adds. “Nor do they forgive us for having defeated the brutal policy of ‘regime change’. There is no blackmail that can stop our people in their determination to be sovereign”, he continues.

Of the 47 States that make up the United Nations Human Rights Council, 19 have supported this extension, while five voted against — Venezuela itself, Cuba, Bolivia, China, Eritrea — and the rest abstained.

The decision has also been applauded by the NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW), which considers it “a fundamental step” towards accountability for the “serious crimes” allegedly committed in Venezuela.

HRW has recalled that this independent mission of the United Nations has already published four reports that it considers “lapidary”, since in them there is evidence of “crimes against humanity” with the “judicial complicity”.

The evidence gathered so far by the UN mission could contribute to an investigation by the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), which since November 2021 has been monitoring the situation with a view to establishing possible individual responsibility for international crimes.