OPINION:
Human rights matter — that’s the message a resolute U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley just sent the Security Council’s way, reminding that Venezuela, land of the socialists, shouldn’t be allowed to skate on civil abuses.
This is why Haley rocks. She’s unafraid to take the high ground on behalf of America, even when world players disapprove.
Specifically, Haley called the country an “increasingly violent narco-state” that’s simply posing a risk to global peace and security, The Associated Press reported. Why? It’s steeped in poverty, its citizens suffering under abject living conditions that include insufficient food, medicine and electricity. And oh yes, there’s that whole egregious treatment of citizens thing, as perpetrated on the people by the government.
The United Nations itself, in a recent report from the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, determined that Venezuela was home to an “increasingly critical human rights situation” that saw “mounting levels of repression of political dissent by national security forces, and increasing stigmatization and persecution of people perceived as opposing the government of President [Nicolas] Maduro.”
That’s not all.
The European Union has imposed sanctions against the country for these same human rights abuses; other nations are mulling travel bans and restrictions, as well as embargoes on oil exports and the freezing of assets.
In other words: Don’t believe the liberals. Venezuela is a mess.
Well, into this mix walks Haley, unwilling to let her U.N. speaking platform slide without raising the points about Venezuela that need addressing — that demand universal, global, collaborative addressing, for that matter. What’s a United Nations for if it can’t stand in solidarity against blatantly wrong human rights abuses, right?
So Haley raises the matter of Venezuela and made her comments during an informal gathering of Security Council players. And she’s immediately vilified. Russia, China, Bolivia and Egypt boycotted the meeting.
Venezuela Ambassador Rafael Ramirez characterized Haley’s gathering as a “hostile act from the United States and an interference that violates the sovereignty” of another member state of the United Nations, as AP noted.
And Russia’s U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia, just hours before Moscow bailed out Venezuela with a $3.15 billion debt restructuring deal, slammed America for “meddling with the internal domestic affairs” of another country, Reuters reported.
OK. That’s one way of looking at it. But here’s another: Maybe Haley’s bold remarks were a way of addressing a long-running political disgrace that’s been kicked under the carpet for long enough.
Liberals love to love Venezuela, and it’s because of their dreamy-eyed blinders that the truths of socialism often go unreported, underreported, or incorrectly reported. Prior to Maduro, there was authoritarian Hugo Chavez. Chavez died in 2013, but not before leaving a wake of national poverty and corruption in his path — and a fan club of delusional, dreamy-eyed leftists in his clique.
Hollywood’s Sean Penn, for instance, famously bemoaned the death of Chavez and wished the country’s “revolution [would] endure” under Maduro. Jesse Jackson gushed how “Hugo fed the hungry” and “lifted the poor,” and so on and so forth. Michael Moore championed how Chavez took over the country’s privately held oil assets as a means of funding the government — an act that’s known in more honest circles as theft, pure and simple.
Polite society, it seems, deems blind eyes on Venezuela as the proper way to go.
Haley isn’t playing that. America, land of the free, home of the brave, country of the Constitution and God-given human rights, shouldn’t play that. And neither should the United Nations — not if it wants to remain relevant on a world stage, anyway. Ignoring the Venezuelan problem won’t make it go away.
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