Bid to suspend Venezuela after sentencing of opposition leader

The United States, France, Germany and the United Kingdom have been asked to take action at a UN session that opens on Monday to suspend Venezuela's membership at the world body’s 47-nation Human Rights Council in reaction to the controversial Caracas verdict of 13 years in jail issued against opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez, and over other “gross and systematic violations of human rights.”

The draft resolution was submitted Friday to the four influential UNHRC member states by the Geneva-based non-governmental organization UN Watch, which recently invited Mr Lopez’s wife, Lilian Tintori, to address the council.

The text calls for the dispatch of an independent commission of inquiry to Venezuela, and for the suspension of Venezuela from the council, which has a precedent in the UNHRC’s 2011 ousting of Libya’s Gaddafi regime from its membership.

“Venezuela’s verdict, following a trial that denied basic due process to the defendant, is a travesty of justice that exemplifies the Maduro government’s gross and systematic violation of its own citizen’s basic rights and freedoms,” said Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch.

“When the jailer of a human rights hero is allowed to sit as a world judge of human rights, it’s like having a pyromaniac as the town fire chief. It’s absurd, and casts a shadow upon the reputation of the United Nation as a whole,” said Neuer.

The U.S., France, Germany or the UK will now have time to consider and, if they choose, to revise the text, hold informal consultation with fellow member states and observer states, and then submit it formally to the council by September 28th. Voting on resolutions begin on Oct. 1.

Source: MENA