Bachelet updates Venezuela human rights report (July 2, 2020)

United Nations human rights chief Michelle Bachelet just presented a new report on human rights violations in Venezuela, today. It documents 38 alleged extrajudicial executions of youths over the past year by security forces. The report counts 1,324 deaths between January and May of this year, within the context of "security operations," reports Infobae. (Full document)

Bachelet emphasized that detentions of opposition leaders and government critics continue, but also valued advances in cooperation between her office and the Maduro government, reports EFE.

News Briefs

Venezuela

• A British judge ruled that Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela cannot access over $1 billion in gold in a Bank of England vault, because Britain doesn't recognize him as Venezuela's legitimate president, reports the New York Times. The British government has “unequivocally recognized” the opposition leader Juan Guaidó as the country’s interim president, a London high court judge, Nigel Teare, said in his ruling. 

• The work of Venezuela's investigative journalists -- carried out despite significant limitations and official harassment -- was key to the recent detention of businessman Alex Saab in Cape Verde. (See June 15's briefs.) Armando.info has been reporting since 2015 about how Saab has collaborated with Nicolás Maduro for years, most egregiously with irregularities in the state food distribution program, write  Ewald Scharfenberg and Roberto Deniz in the New York Times Español.

Colombia

• At least 118 members of the Colombian army have been investigated since 2016 for alleged involvement in sexual abuse against minors. Of these 45 were fired, while the remaining 73 are facing criminal and disciplinary investigations by the attorney general and procurator’s offices, Colombia's army chief said yesterday. The announcement comes amid growing social anger after two separate incidents involving soldiers raping indigenous girls were reported in recent weeks. (Reuters)

• Colombia's ELN guerilla is at the heart of an unfolding regional crisis. The group has become an increasingly binational insurgency, entangled in tense geopolitics between the U.S., Venezuela, Cuba and Colombia, according to Americas Quarterly. Since the FARC disarmed in 2017, the ELN has grown in strength and expanded into new territories, including power vacuums left by the FARC.

Brazil

• Brazi's education minister resigned yesterday -- after just five days in the post -- after his CV credentials were disclaimed. Brazil’s Getúlio Vargas Foundation business school publicly refuted Carlos Decotelli's claims he had worked there as a teacher, and also accused him of plagiarism on his master’s dissertation. And universities in Argentina and  Germany disproved that Decotelli had completed PhD and postdoctoral studies, reports the Guardian. A former navy officer, Decotelli's appointment satisfied President Jair Bolsonaro's military supporters, but the UOL news site reported that Decotelli even exaggerated about the length and prestige of his naval career. Bolsonaro's administration has lost about a dozen ministers due to controversy or incompatibility with the president, reports AFP. Decotelli was the third education minister in 18 months.

• Bolsonaro's trouble retaining allies extends to the animal kingdom, reports the New York Times.

• Brazil's runaway Covid-19 infection rate makes it a fertile testing ground for vaccines. One trial is underway and a second will begin soon. Italian researchers will probably follow with a third and other immunological firms are also signaling interest, reports the Washington Post.

• Brazilian researchers detected 2,248 fires in the Amazon last month -- the highest number of fires recorded in the month of June since 2007. Environmental activists say that illegal loggers and ranchers have taken advantage of limited official resources during the coronavirus pandemic to increase their activity in the Amazon, burning wide swaths of the forest, reports CNN.

• The biggest motor of Amazon destruction, by far, are attempts to illicitly occupy public land, feeding into illicit real estate markets, writes Manuela Andreoni at Open Democracy. Experts agree that strengthening protection agencies and introducing harsher sanctions for environmental destruction are key. 

• The Kuikuro people of Upper Xingu in Brazil's Mato Grosso state, have been forced to confront Covid-19 on their own, with little government response. "Our culture is collective. Unlike whites, who think individually, we do everything together — we live in communal houses, we cook, clean, work and celebrate our rituals with the entire village. The only option for us is to isolate together," writes Takumã Kuikuro in Americas Quarterly.

Migration

• A U.S. federal judge struck down a Trump administration policy that bars most Central Americans and other migrants from requesting asylum at the country's southern border, reports the Washington Post. The government failed to justify making the sudden change last July without public notice or comment, he said.

Cuba

• The Cuban Observatory of Human Rights condemned state repression of protesters this week, who were demonstrating against the death of Hansel Hernández, a young black man in police detention. According to the group 80 people, including dissidents and activists, were detained Tuesday. Several journalists were subjected to police watch outside their homes, a method used to prevent reporting. (Europa Press)
• Cuba's government plans to restart foreign tourism by sending visitors to five narrow islands that will offer all-inclusive vacations, isolated from the rest of the country's population. (Associated Press)

Haiti

• Haiti reopened its two international airports in Port-au-Prince and Cape Haitian, as well as four official border crossings, reports Voice of America.

Argentina

• Argentina's pandemic policy is dividing the country's otherwise unified political opposition, reports Brendan O'Boyle in Americas Quarterly.

• A judicial investigation has uncovered an extensive spy network that operated in the shadows of the country's intelligence agency and illicitly spied on politicians, journalists and leaders of civil society. Included among the targets were former president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner -- now the country's vice president. Though the espionage was apparently carried out at the behest of members of the then-governing Macri administration, journalist Hugo Alconada Mon -- another of the targets of the illicit surveillance -- notes that rogue intelligence agents have been a scourge of Argentina's democracy for decades. While he urges reform, which current President Alberto Fernández promised, he is pessimistic about success.  -- New York Times Español

• This week a judge ordered the arrest of 22 people in the case, including including Susana Martinengo, the co-ordinator of presidential documentation during Mauricio Macri's presidency. Macri's former private secretary Darío Nieto was detained in the case last week. He said the case is politically motivated, aimed at discrediting the former administration, reports the Buenos Aires Times.

• Nieto locked himself in his car when police raided his home and came to detain him -- it is believed he used the opportunity to delete messages from his phone. Nieto is accused of receiving espionage reports from the illicit network. (Página 12)

• After years of Kirchnerite complaints about judicial irregularities in cases against their political force during the Macri administration, members of Macri's inner circle are now implicated in investigations and are also crying foul. "Beyond the fact that the reproaches have an arguable symmetry, it is notable that the judges, or if you prefer, the executioners, in both cases are the same," writes conservative columnist Carlos Pagni in La Nación. (Some experts do question the "arguable" equivalency, however.)

• The overarching issue is systemic, said lawyer Graciana Peñafort, the Senate's director of judicial affairs, who has long been a critic of judicial irregularities and a strong advocate of procedural guarantees. "The Judicial Power doesn't work well, there are officials who do their work well, but as a system it works poorly. A lot of people curse at a judge, but they are the emergent of a system that works this way," she said in an interview with La Nación last weekend, before this week's detentions. President Alberto Fernández has promised a significant judicial reform.

• This week Argentina's congressional leaders -- Cristina Fernández de Kirchner in the senate and Sergio Massa in the lower chamber -- agreed that the bicameral intelligence commission will control the activities of the judicial wiretapping office. (Clarín)

I hope you're all staying safe and as sane as possible, given the circumstances ... Comments and critiques welcome, always.

Latin America Daily Briefing