Now UN reveals savage face of Corbyn’s utopia
JEREMY Corbyn was last night under growing pressure to stop backing Venezuela’s regime after the UN blamed its president for brutal attacks on civilians.
The Labour leader, who has long been a cheerleader for socialist Nicolas Maduro, has refused to specifically criticise him following a crackdown on his opponents.
But yesterday the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights laid the responsibility for the violence squarely at Maduro’s door.
Officials found security forces in the South American country had wielded excessive force. They have killing dozens of civilians and have arbitrarily detained 5,000 people since April – including 1,000 still in custody.
Witnesses told how officers fired marbles, and nuts and bolts at protesters. Those arrested said they had faced elec- tric shocks, beatings, suffocation with gas and the threat of sexual violence against their families.
The UN said the security services and armed groups that support Maduro were responsible for at least 73 deaths.
Its human rights spokesman Ravina Shamdasani said: ‘ Responsibility for human rights violations we are reporting lies at the highest level of government.’
The UN’s damning report warned of ‘widespread and systematic use of excessive force and arbitrary detentions against demonstrators’. It also described ‘violent house raids, torture and illtreatment of those detained’.
Witness accounts suggested the police and national guard had ‘systematically used disproportionate force to instil fear, crush dissent, and to prevent demonstrators from assembling, rallying and reaching public institutions to present petitions’.
Mr Corbyn, who has previously supported Venezuela’s left-wing governments, remained silent in recent weeks as Maduro cracked down on his enemies following a widely disputed vote that gave his ruling party nearly unlimited powers. Labour MPs have criticised their leader’s failure to directly condemn Maduro and his insistence that the violence has been inflicted by ‘all sides’.
Last night a senior member of the country’s opposition accused him of not fully understanding the cri- sis. Juan Andres Mejia, of the Popular Will party, told BBC Newsnight: ‘What I would say to Jeremy Corbyn is that he really has to know what’s going on in our country to be able to make a statement.
‘Violence has not been done by both sides. Violence has been pro- moted by the government.’ An ally of Mr Corbyn yesterday launched an astonishing defence of Maduro, blaming reports of his brutal crackdown on the ‘hysterical media’.
Labour’s fire and emergency services spokesman Chris Williamson claimed the allegations of violence were simply part of a ‘proxy war against Jeremy Corbyn’. In an article for the Leftwing Morning Star newspaper, the Derby North MP said Mr Corbyn was ‘completely correct to commend the achievements in Venezuela’.
Corbyn dodges calls to condemn brutal Venezuela regime From yesterday’s Mail