Mexico among Top Countries Where Killers of Journalists Enjoy Impunity

EFE. October 29, 2019

NEW YORK – Mexico is one of the countries where the killers of journalists enjoy the most impunity, according to a ranking published Tuesday by the Committee to Protect Journalists.

According to the New York-based organization, Mexico has not yet resolved the murders of 30 journalists, a number that is only exceeded by The Philippines, with 41 such cases.

The CPJ’s 2019 Global Impunity Index focuses on countries where journalists have been slain but their killers have not yet been brought to justice.

Next, with 25 unsolved murders of journalists, comes Somalia, which has headed the percentage impunity rankings prepared each year by the CPJ, an indicator that calculates the number of unresolved cases as a percentage of a country’s population.

Thus, with its more than 126 million people, the 30 unresolved murders of journalists put Mexico in seventh place in that percentage index.

Ahead of it, besides Somalia, are only Syria, Iraq, South Sudan, The Philippines and Afghanistan, all of which are countries experiencing ongoing armed conflicts.

Following Mexico on the list of the 13 worst countries in terms of impunity for the murders of journalists are Pakistan, Brazil, Bangladesh, Russia, Nigeria and India.

In its ongoing tally, the CPJ has examined the murders of journalists taking place between September 2009 and August 2019.

“The impunity we have witnessed in these countries year after year, and the knowledge that authorities take little action against those who attack the press, cripples the ability of journalists around the world to do their job,” said CPJ Advocacy Director Courtney Radsch in a statement.

“Democratic governments cannot stand silent in the face of impunity if they want to be seen as supporting press freedom. It is imperative that journalists and their families receive the justice they deserve, and that world leaders demand accountability,” Radsch added.

Over the past 10 years, 318 journalists have been killed around the world as a result of their profession and in about 86 percent of the cases those responsible have not been successfully prosecuted, the CPJ said.

Of those, 31 of the murders took place in Mexico, where there has only been one conviction in all those cases, the organization said.

Mexico’s impunity indicator has not stopped getting worse over time, with drug trafficking cartels frequently targeting the press, the CPJ emphasized.

So far this year, Mexico has been the country where the most journalists have been killed, with 11 deaths and five other cases in which it was confirmed that the motive for the attack was the target’s profession, the organization said.

Meanwhile, in 2018, Colombia was the only country that managed to move off the CPJ list after the death in a security operation of Walter Patricio Arizala, alias “Gaucho,” the head of the Oliver Sinisterra front, who had been accused of kidnapping and later killing two journalists working for the Ecuadorian daily El Comercio and their driver.

Mexican Economy Barely Grew in Third Quarter

Anthony Harrup. Wall Street Journal. October 30, 2019

MEXICO CITY—Mexico’s economic activity expanded modestly in the third quarter amid weakness in industrial production and a slowdown in services, keeping the economy on track this year for its weakest performance in a decade.

Gross domestic product, a measure of output of goods and services, expanded 0.1% in seasonally adjusted terms from the second quarter, the National Statistics Institute said Wednesday.

Industrial production shrank 0.1%, services were unchanged and agricultural production grew 3.5%.

It was the first quarter this year in which the economy showed any growth, after GDP contracted in the first quarter and was flat in the second.

GDP was down 0.4% from the third quarter of 2018.

In the first nine months of the year, GDP was flat compared with the same period of 2018. The lack of growth leaves the economy on track for its worst showing since the recession of 2009.

The slowdown, amid declines in both public and private investment, poses a challenge for the government of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador in his first year in office as he seeks to increase social spending while keeping a lid on budget deficits.

“It’s clear that the economy is very weak and that services—which previously had been the strong point in the economy—are now faltering,” Capital Economics chief emerging-markets economist William Jackson said in a note. “Although we think the economy will strengthen in the coming quarters, these data reinforce our downbeat view.”

Revised third-quarter GDP numbers are due on Nov. 25.

The spectre of IMF in Ecuador

VIJAY PRASHAD. Front Line. October 29, 2019

Everything about Ecuador President Lenin Moreno’s speech on October 1 appeared to be anachronistic. There he was, a smile on his face, offering his people an end to fuel subsidies for this energy-rich country and massive cuts in public workers’ benefits and wages. This, he said, was the price to be paid by the Ecuadorean people for a loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The next day, the IMF described Moreno’s package as one that would “protect the poor and most vulnerable” and “generate jobs in a more competitive economy”.

Few Ecuadoreans believed either Moreno or the IMF. It appeared that once more the people were being asked to tighten their belts so that the country’s oligarchy and international creditors could emerge from the crisis unscathed. No wonder that the trade unions (the United Workers Front, FUT), the students, and most importantly, the indigenous organisation (the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador, CONAIE) came out onto the streets to protest against Moreno and the IMF on October 3. They said they would go on an indefinite general strike as long as Moreno and the IMF continued to push the austerity agenda. For weeks now, Ecuador has been in crisis, with the momentum no longer in the hands of Moreno or the IMF; the streets are in charge, and Moreno appears less and less confident of remaining the country’s President.

It was this fragility that led Moreno to declare a state of emergency on October 4, on the second day of the protests. The Constitution allows the President to sustain this emergency for 60 days. Nonetheless, the declaration of emergency did not stop the protests. They continue unabated. Matters became so difficult for Moreno that he relocated his government from Quito to the city of Guayaquil. The protests, like a wave, crashed on the Carondelet Palace and the National Assembly. He ran from the anger, only to return days later when his armed forces had beaten back the protests for the moment.

Moreno has been trying to curry favour with the United States in order to secure both the IMF loan and political cover for the unrest that would necessarily follow. As a gift to the U.S., Moreno had WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange removed from the Ecuadorian embassy in London and he called for the arrest of the Swedish Internet activist Ola Bini. Moreno’s government backed away from prosecuting Chevron, the multinational U.S. energy corporation, for creating an “Amazon Chernobyl” in Ecuador. Moreno appeared willing to do anything to please the U.S. and get the IMF deal.

CONAIE called for negotiations with the government as a sign of good faith. As a precondition, CONAIE asked Moreno to dismiss some of his Cabinet Ministers (including his Minister of Defence), take responsibility for the deaths during this unrest and repeal the gas subsidies decree. When Moreno appeared ready to talk, CONAIE struck the demand for the return of the subsidies. But the streets did not respond well. The protests intensified, as did the repression. There is no guarantee that any deal will be possible as long as the IMF-imposed austerity programme remains in place.

IMF riots
A few days before Moreno’s announcement, Bulgaria’s Kristalina Georgieva was appointed the new head of the IMF. She came to the IMF from the World Bank, where she had made a name for herself as a major fund-raiser for the bank. Its assets have increased substantially. When she took the helm, she said, “It is a huge responsibility to be at the helm of the IMF at a time when global economic growth continues to disappoint, trade tensions persist, and debt is at historically high levels.” She said that the IMF’s “immediate priority” would be to build up the resources for countries so that they are “ready to cope with downturns”. The IMF has forecast that world output will grow by a mere 3.2 per cent this year, lower than the 3.8 per cent in 2017 and the 3.6 per cent in 2018. A crisis in the financial markets is long expected. All this means that the IMF under Kristalina Georgieva will have to be prepared for major problems from a host of countries.

These problems are already before her. Ecuador’s unrest is an early canary in the coal mine. That the IMF went for an orthodox austerity programme with Ecuador suggests that few lessons have been learned from the past. When the IMF created the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) in the 1980s as a response to the Third World debt crisis, it produced a decade of unrest that took its name from the Fund, the IMF Riots. Neither Moreno nor the IMF is willing to roll back their proposals. These are not to be brought before the National Assembly or to the electorate. The niceties of Brexit—a referendum, a parliamentary debate, a media firestorm—are not to be granted to countries like Ecuador. The IMF comes with its medicine; Ecuadorians are expected to swallow it or be held down while it is being administered.

South of Ecuador, in Argentina, the IMF is also embroiled in crisis. It had provided the government of Mauricio Macri with the largest bailout in its history—$57 billion. Neither does Argentina have the funds to service this debt nor do the Argentinian people have the patience to give Macri a second term. He will likely lose the elections in late October. The likely removal of Macri and the political chaos around Moreno suggest that the IMF has failed in its two largest interventions in South America. The ballot and the riot have embarrassed Kristalina Georgieva even before she has had a chance to put her mark on the IMF.

Kristalina Georgieva came to the IMF with a commitment to tackle the climate catastrophe. She said that she would find the tools to involve the organisation in this arena. But the IMF is merely a lending agency. It does not have the mandate to demand policy changes to tackle budgetary problems faced by countries although this is precisely what the austerity programmes that emerged out of the SAPs produced. Cutting subsidies on fuel is not a good way to enter the climate change debate. This is not so much an environmental policy as fiscal austerity. The IMF, Kristalina Georgieva will find, cannot put a green cloak over its demand for budget cuts.

It is worthwhile to recall that a rise in fuel prices in France led to the yellow vest (gilets jaunes) protests. The protests in Ecuador now are both part of that yellow vest dynamic and part of the broader anti-austerity drive that runs across the world. More and more people are unwilling to buckle down to austerity so as to allow their creditors to be paid off. It will not do to dismiss this anger and try to paint it as a dynamic that is against a new environmentally conscious world economy. The indigenous protesters in Ecuador, for instance, are perfectly prepared for a new economic dispensation that is friendly to the environment; but they are not prepared to starve for it.

Moreno sat with the representatives of the streets on October 13, two weeks into the protests. He has now room to manoeuvre. He withdrew the decree that enforced the end of the subsidies. A wave of calm came over Ecuador, but this is not permanent. Moreno will have to return to the IMF and sell his withdrawal. He is caught between the people on the one side and the IMF on the other. Popular struggle put too much pressure on him and he had to withdraw the decree. But what will the IMF say?

Peru's Top Court Accepts Lawsuit Against Vizcarra's Closure of Congress

Reuters. October 29, 2019

BUENOS AIRES - Peru's top court on Tuesday accepted a lawsuit to determine whether President Martin Vizcarra exceeded his powers by dissolving Congress last month amid a long-running standoff with lawmakers over anti-corruption reforms.

The seven members of Peru's Constitutional Tribunal unanimously voted to admit the suit, court president Ernesto Blume said, the latest development in a battle between Vizcarra and lawmakers that has rattled the South American country.

Pedro Olaechea, the former Congress president who now leads a smaller permanent parliamentary commission, submitted the appeal earlier this month against the "arbitrary" dissolution of Congress.

Vizcarra's shutdown of Congress garnered support from the armed forces in the copper-rich nation, as well as the police and Peru's voters. A poll showed his popular support had jumped to the highest level during his administration.

The past three years in Peru have been marked by repeated clashes between the executive and legislative branches and back-to-back corruption scandals, including one that led former president Pedro Pablo Kuczynski to resign in March last year.

Blume said on Tuesday the court would not for now overturn the closure of Congress, and previously at least two members of the court have said that the legal process could take up to three or four months.

There are legislative elections already scheduled for Jan. 26 to elect new Congress members.

OAS audit of October 20 election result will be 'binding': Bolivia Foreign Minister

Vivian Sequera. Reuters. October 30, 2019

LA PAZ (Reuters) - An Organisation of American States (OAS) audit of Bolivia’s disputed election results will begin on Thursday and be binding for all parties, Foreign Minister Diego Pary said on Wednesday.

The results of the Oct. 20 election handed a slim victory to President Evo Morales, a leftist seeking a fourth term, but his oppponent Carlos Mesa and his supporters cried foul after a delay in publishing the voting scores.

Pary said that the report resulting from the review would be “binding” for all parties, who would sign an agreement to that effect on Wednesday.

He said Bolivia had invited observers to the process from Spain, Mexico and Paraguay. He did not say when the audit report would be completed.

“This agreement will enter into force upon signature by the authorized representatives of the parties, remaining in force until the electoral audit process is concluded,” he told reporters at the government headquarters in La Paz.

Mesa said on Tuesday that he believed the OAS audit would demonstrate that the election was fraudulent “in a clear and unequivocal way”.

A wave of protests has rocked Bolivia since the elections in which the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) unexpectedly suspended the publication of results of an electronic vote count, which eventually granted Morales a fourth term of five years.

The US Double Standard in Venezuela vs. Honduras

STEVE ELLNER TERI MATTSON. Jacobin. October 29, 2019

If you want evidence that the US government doesn't actually care about drug trafficking, violation of democratic norms, violation of human rights, or widespread corruption, just look at how the Trump administration has treated Honduras versus how it has treated Venezuela.

The recent conviction of Tony Hernández for massive cocaine smuggling in a federal court case in which his brother, Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández, was an unindicted co-conspirator demonstrates one thing beyond a doubt: Honduras is a narco-state. The equally compelling evidence of widespread corruption, electoral fraud, and savage repression confirms Honduras’s status as a rogue state and begs comparison with Venezuela, which has faced similar accusations.

Venezuela, however, is paying an infinitely higher price in the form of international sanctions and other regime-change efforts. Even if one accepts as accurate the denunciations against the government of President Nicolas Maduro put forward by most of its critics, Venezuela doesn’t reach Honduras’s level of unethical and undemocratic behavior.

This is just one example of the notorious inconsistencies of US foreign policy, dating back to the beginning of the Cold War. Long before Trump, Washington condemned some governments for violating democratic norms and embraced others that were just as bad, if not worse. It threatened military intervention or carried it out against nations for reasons that could have applied to others that received substantial military assistance from Washington.

Under Trump, these inconsistencies and gaps between rhetoric and practice have widened. Consider the democratic credentials of presidents who Trump lavishly praises while condemning Maduro for allegedly undemocratic behavior: Rodrigo Duterte (the Philippines), Jair Bolsonaro (Brazil), Prince Mohammad bin Salman (Saudi Arabia); and Andrzej Duda (Poland). Many European leaders have harshly criticized these regimes for their blatantly undemocratic behavior.

Consider also that while Trump threatens Iran and Venezuela with military invasion, if not obliteration, he pledges to put an end to the “endless wars” throughout the Middle East, the longstanding and high-risk stalemate with North Korea, and antagonistic relations with Russia. These latter positions may actually be worthy of support, unlike the bellicose rhetoric of Democratic party leaders.

There is no better contrast that demonstrates the contradictory nature of Trump’s foreign policy than that of Venezuelan and Honduras. What makes the comparison so compelling is the four principal accusations that Washington hurls at Maduro to justify the imposition of crippling economic sanctions: drug trafficking, violation of democratic norms, violation of human rights and widespread corruption. All four could well be cited to justify international measures against Honduras.

So let’s make the comparison. For the sake of argument, we’ll accept the validity of the accusations against Maduro coming from detractors, other than those of the most blatant fabricators of fake news.

Drug Trafficking
President Juan Orlando Hernández was accused of receiving a million-dollar bribe from Mexico’s El Chapo in the trial of Tony Hernández, who was found guilty on counts of “Cocaine Importation Conspiracy” and “Possession of Machineguns and Destructive Devices,” Yet, just one day after the trial ended, US charge d’affaires in Tegucigalpa Colleen Hoey was photographed at a public gathering smiling alongside the president. But the case for calling Honduras a narco-state goes deeper than that.

The president’s sister, the late Hilda Hernández, was also the subject of a major drug trafficking and money laundering investigation by US authorities. The evidence against the Honduran state even goes back further in time. The son of Hernández’s predecessor Fabio Lobo received a twenty-four-year sentence in US prison following a guilty plea of “conspiring to import cocaine into the United States.”

Compare this solid case against Honduras with that against Venezuela. November 2015 saw the arrest of two of Venezuelan First Lady Cilia Flores’s nephews in Haiti in a sting operation by the US Drug Enforcement Agency. Both received an eighteen-year prison sentence in US court, although they were not linked to a cartel and (in the words of their lawyers) “never had the intention or the ability to deliver a huge amount of drugs” as charged.

The other main drug-trafficking charge involving the Venezuelan government lacks verified evidence. Days before the 2018 presidential election, the US government accused Diosdado Cabello, the second in command after Maduro, of drug trafficking and slapped him with financial sanctions. Unlike Lobo’s son and Hernández brother, no formal US judicial charges have been lodged against Cabello nor has he been granted the right of reply.

Democratic Norms
Honduras also compares unfavorably in the area of electoral fraud. The November 2017 presidential election suffered a thirty-six-hour delay in ballot counting when center-leftist candidate Salvador Nasralla had taken a decisive lead. When the process resumed, the election swung in favor of Hernández, the incumbent.

Nasralla noted that a rectification of the fraudulent results was unlikely given the fact that the nation’s supreme court and electoral tribunal were in Hernández’s camp. In contrast to many governments throughout the region as well as the Organization of American States, Washington immediately recognized Hernández’s presidency as legitimate and called on Nasralla to do the same.

Venezuela’s last presidential election held in May 2018 saw a 46 percent voter turnout despite a boycott by most, though not all, of the major opposition parties. The opposition’s objections to the electoral process centered on unfair practices — such as the failure of the state-run TV channel to provide all candidates with the stipulated advertising time — but did not, for the most part, consist of allegations that votes were not properly counted or that voting was not secret. Following the elections, President Trump issued an executive order restricting Venezuela’s ability to liquidate state assets and debt in the United States.

Human Rights
Venezuela’s record on human rights has been denounced on many grounds with well-founded evidence. The government has jailed opposition leaders, and security forces have clashed with protesters in 2014 and 2017 resulting in nearly two hundred deaths in total. An objective evaluation, however, needs to consider context.

On both occasions, urban areas were paralyzed for four months, hundreds of barricades built, and arms used by protesters resulting (in 2014) in the death of six national guardsmen and two policemen while military and police installations were fired upon and overrun. On August 4, 2018, two drones attempted to assassinate President Maduro, who was addressing a rally, along with his wife and members of the military high command. One can only imagine the response of other governments in the face of similar tactics.

In Honduras, President Hernandez’s security forces are not victims of violence — they are perpetrators. The UN’s Human Rights Council (UNHRC) report issued in March stated: “Impunity is pervasive, including for human rights violations, as shown by the modest progress made in the prosecution and trial of members of the security forces for the human rights violations committed in the context of the 2017 elections.”

Corruption
Few can deny that corruption is widespread in both nations. In the case of Venezuela, President Maduro acknowledged the possible veracity of denunciations formulated by insiders in 2014 regarding a multi-billion dollar swindle as a result of the system of exchange controls. He failed to act. Only in mid-2017 did he begin to clamp down on corruption through the appointment of a new attorney general.

In Venezuela, however, there is nothing equivalent to the type of evidence presented in the trial of Tony Hernández that millions of dollars of drug money contributed to the election of the president of Honduras.

Backlash on the Horizon?
Why are countries like Venezuela on Washington’s hit list while undemocratic ones like Honduras receive favorable treatment? One explanation is that while Venezuela has pursued anti-neoliberal policies, Honduras since the US-supported overthrow of President Manuel Zelaya ten years ago has implemented neoliberal policies. This includes the privatization of health and water this year, which was met with street protests that were harshly repressed.

Another explanation is that Washington has its eyes on Venezuelan oil, a policy objective that Trump has justified with the slogan “to the victor goes the spoils” and is now considering for Kurd-occupied territory in northeastern Syria. A third explanation is Venezuela’s cozy economic, political and military relations with Russia and China. Rather than mutually exclusive, all these arguments contain important elements of truth.

The Honduras-Venezuela comparison shows how self-serving and conspicuous Washington’s role as judge and cop has become under Trump. Although interventionism in favor of US interests has been a long-standing component of Washington’s foreign policy, it is now being applied with steroids.

An international backlash appears to be on the horizon. This was evident in the UN General Assembly on October 17 when 105 delegates voted to admit Venezuela as a member of the UNHRC, and many of them roundly applauded after the results were announced. The US had actively campaigned against Venezuela’s membership, but since the vote was secret, efforts at bullying combined with material inducements could not be effectively employed.

Meanwhile, protests on the streets of Tegucigalpa and other cities in Honduras are calling for the resignation of Juan Orlando Hernández in reaction to his brother’s conviction. It may be that in spite of all the efforts of the Trump administration to oust Maduro, our man in Tegucigalpa will end up going first.

Venezuelan Opposition Files Lawsuit Attacking Citgo-Backed Bonds

Andrew Scurria. Wall Street Journal. October 29, 2019

Venezuela’s opposition government escalated its efforts to protect Citgo Petroleum Corp. from seizure, seeking a U.S. court order erasing bondholders’ collateral rights over the state-owned refiner and invalidating $1.7 billion in debt.

U.S.-backed opposition leaders filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in New York on Tuesday claiming that bonds backed by the Houston-based, Venezuelan-owned refiner were issued illegally under President Nicolás Maduro and can’t be enforced.

The complaint marks the most direct confrontation yet between the country’s bondholders and opposition forces led by Juan Guaidó, who has tried for months to seize political power in Caracas.

The bonds, issued in a 2016 debt swap by state oil giant Petróleos de Venezuela SA, have clouded Citgo’s future as a Venezuelan asset. They were secured by a 50.1% stake in Citgo, potentially enabling bondholders to wrest control of the company if they weren’t paid.

At the urging of Mr. Guaidó’s opposition, the Trump administration last week extended a three-month shield over Citgo, preventing creditors from transferring and auctioning the shares through Jan. 22. With Citgo temporarily safe from seizure, the PdVSA bondholders weren’t paid $913 million they were owed on Monday.

Tuesday’s complaint said the PdVSA bonds are “null and void” because they were issued without the approval of Venezuela’s opposition-controlled legislature, the National Assembly. Creditors provided Mr. Maduro with “a financial and political lifeline,” knowing the bonds were questionable, according to the complaint.

Bondholders include Ashmore Group PLC, BlackRock Financial Management Inc. and Contrarian Capital Management LLC. A spokesperson for the bondholders wasn’t immediately available for comment.

Representatives for Mr. Maduro couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.

As Venezuela’s largest asset in the U.S., Citgo is a natural target for creditors that have grown impatient during Venezuela’s long economic meltdown. In addition to bondholders, multinational companies are also circling Citgo, viewing its valuable Gulf Coast refineries as possible compensation for assets in Venezuela that were expropriated under socialist rule.

There isn’t nearly enough of Citgo to go around, sparking a race among creditors to lay claim to the company.

The Venezuelan opposition has asked for permanent protection for Citgo, arguing that losing the company to creditors would discredit Mr. Maduro’s political rivals and undermine U.S. efforts to oust him from power. Members of Congress from Gulf Coast states have also urged the Trump administration to intervene on the company’s behalf.

With U.S. support, Mr. Guaidó and his allies took over Citgo’s boardroom in February, installed directors friendly to the opposition government and severed the company’s ties with its owner, PdVSA. The takeover delivered a potential revenue source to the opposition but meant payments on the Citgo-backed bonds were its responsibility to make.

The U.S. Treasury Department has said it would look favorably on a potential deal to restructure the debt. Citgo has considered bankruptcy as one option for sorting out claims on its assets if creditors closed in, The Wall Street Journal has reported.