Year XXXVII, Number 3, November 2024

Raúl Zibechi
Uruguayan sociologist, writer and journalist,
editor of the Uruguayan weekly magazine Brecha

The war in Ukraine "is a unique situation and cannot be compared to any other war or conflict in the world," the International Olympic Committee (IOC) tells Time magazine to justify Russia's exclusion from the Paris Games. Russia's invasion of Ukraine is a regrettable event that must be strongly condemned. But where does the IOC's idea that this is a unique and unprecedented war come from? Undoubtedly from the colonialist mentality that still dominates in the West, which underlies institutional decisions and mainstream media propaganda, which no longer inform, but rather impose concepts/visions/points of view.

The truth is that we are in the midst of the transition from a unipolar world centered on the global North (the United States, part of the European Union and its allies) to a multipolar world with different powers and regions interacting on an equal footing, with none of them able to settle the world according to their own interests, any reasonable analysis fades in the colonial winds that are blowing again with unusual intensity.

The new order that is likely to emerge after a series of local and perhaps global wars will be anchored in several countries and regions of the Global South and is taking shape in recent years in the wake of the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. Let’s remember that the majority of the Global South (85 percent of the world's population) did not support the sanctions imposed on Russia by the Global North (15 percent of the world's population) and, with some exceptions, recognizes the Palestinian state, an awareness that is slowly "contaminating" nearly half of the countries in the European Union. The contradiction of the Global North vs. the Global South orders and subordinates all others. The conflict between workers and owners (bourgeoisie and proletariat in Marxist parlance) no longer plays an important role in any scenario, although it has not disappeared, just as the meaning of family, work, and savings has evaporated as values defensible by a progressive or even conservative sensibility.

I believe that there has been fraud in the recent elections in Venezuela, for reasons that I think are inappropriate to discuss since the evidence speaks for itself, although I have read intellectuals I appreciate who claim otherwise. In short, there is an authoritarian or dictatorial regime in Venezuela that is corrupt and repressive. However, I think the biggest problem is not the fraud, which is very serious because of the degradation it shows, but the systematic violence against popular sectors. I rely on the annual reports of Provea (Venezuelan Program for Human Rights Education-Action) and particularly the latest one, on human rights in 2023. Provea is an organization created in 1988 that played an important role in exposing state crimes during the 1989 Caracazo, when the "social democracy" of Carlos Andrés Pérez, a great friend of Felipe González and the United States, was in power.

The 2023 report begins by denouncing the fact that authoritarianism has become standard policy in much of the world: Hungary, Turkey, El Salvador, Poland, the Philippines, India, Nicaragua and Venezuela, among others, many of which are accepted as full-fledged "democracies." As for our region, he also claims that there are "serious human rights violations in countries such as Cuba, Nicaragua, Peru, El Salvador, Venezuela, Guatemala, and even Canada and the United States."

In Venezuela, 620 murders were committed by state forces in 2023 alone. “The Bolivarian National Police (PNB) is the agency with the highest number of alleged extrajudicial killings. A total of 185 people were killed under its command; in other words, the PNB is responsible for 30 percent of these murders. The Bolivarian National Armed Force (FANB) was responsible for 99 deaths, or 16 percent” – the report said.

The highest figure is chilling: "Since Nicolás Maduro came to power, 9,995 violations of the right to life have been recorded," or 10,000 people killed by the state in a decade. In parallel, Provea denounces the government for "high levels of abuse against the population; a deliberate and arbitrary use of lethality by the police; and for turning young people in popular areas into targets. These policies have been led by the Ministry of Interior and Justice, where most of the ministers have been military, a situation that has led to greater involvement of the Armed Forces in security tasks, which, by constitutional mandate, correspond to the police force."

Why does the international community care so much about the "murder" of voter rolls and leave in the shadows the mass murders of poor young people in the urban suburbs of Venezuela? Again, there is a double standard here.

Venezuela has the largest conventional oil reserves in the world. Saudi Arabia is in second place. Venezuela is characterized as a dictatorship and its electoral processes are monitored. There are no elections in Saudi Arabia, and reports of human rights violations would make even Maduro's toughest opponent pale. Human Rights Watch reported that "Saudi border guards killed at least hundreds of Ethiopian migrants and asylum seekers who attempted to cross the Yemen-Saudi border between March 2022 and June 2023."

However, the mainstream media speak of dictatorship when they talk about Venezuela and monarchy when they refer to the regime in Riyadh. Readers can read the headlines in Clarín, Infobae or La Nación to verify the propaganda manipulation.

Between 2013 and July 2024, U.S. police killed 13,091 people, according to the Mapping Police Violence project. An absolute number slightly higher than Venezuela's, although the United States has a population ten times larger. But Maduro's dictatorship and Washington's democracy share another aspect: most of the people killed are black and young.

The Washington Post's Fatal Force database states that "more than half of the people killed by police are between the ages of 20 and 40." "African Americans are about 12 percent of the population, but between 2015 and 2019 they accounted for 26.4 percent of all such deaths," summarizes the BBC based on this database (3-VI-20).

"Compared to other countries, U.S. police killed people at three times the rate of Canadian police and 60 times the rate of British police," reads the report Mapping Police Violence. New Mexico has the highest rate of police fatalities. The reader unfamiliar with maps should know that it is a border state with Mexico.

Geopolitics, a cursed discipline, is organizing international relations. No one in Uruguay would dare to sanction or disrupt relations with China, even though it is clearly not a democracy. Perhaps because it is the main market for our exports?

We are navigating turbulent waters in which self-interest and advantage are the dominant values. Speaking the truth seems ridiculous to more than a few, on both sides of the barricade. Maduro is a dictator, but so is Xi Jinping, is not something governments and parliament members are willing to say, each minding their own business.