Andres Oppenheimer: Surprise! Mexico Backs Human Rights Cause! Andres Oppenheimer - The Miami Herald
go to original March 24, 2013

What a pleasant surprise! Mexico, whose government routinely supports human rights violators throughout the region, played a key role in thwarting an effort by a group of countries to weaken the region’s most important human rights commission.

Mexico — alongside Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Panama, Canada and the United States — succeeded in defeating a proposal by Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia and Nicaragua to strip the 34-country Organization of American States’ human rights commission of most of its funding, and to significantly reduce its powers.

The semi-independent body, known as the Inter-American Human Rights Commission, has long been a thorn on the side of governments that violate human rights and suppress freedom of the press.

It’s by far the best — if not the only — thing the OAS has to show. Over the past decades, the commission and its Office of the Special Raporteur of Freedom of Expression have singled out abuses from governments across the political spectrum. They have criticized both the United States for its prison camp in Guantánamo, and Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia for their constant attacks on press freedoms.

Venezuela and its allies, whose presidents already control all government branches and want to clamp down on the last vestige of criticism in their countries — the media — had mounted a diplomatic offensive over the past two years to effectively silence the two OAS agencies.

Fortunately, the Venezuelan-led group — in this case, with Ecuador acting as its spokesman — failed in its effort.

Read the rest at The Miami Herald

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