Pending legislation calling for U.S. President Barack Obama to impose sanctions against key Venezuelan officials is unlikely to defuse the ongoing crisis there and could prove counter-productive, according to both the administration and independent experts here.

A bill approved overwhelmingly Tuesday by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee would authorise Obama to freeze any financial assets in U.S. institutions and cancel U.S. visas for Venezuelan officials deemed responsible for “directing significant acts of violence or serious human rights abuses against persons associated with the anti-government protests in Venezuela.”

The bill, a similar version of which was approved by the House Foreign Affairs Committee earlier this month, would also authorise sanctions against anyone who has provided assistance to government security forces and commit 15 million dollars in support for “pro-democracy” groups and independent media in the South American nation.

“Today we took an important step forward to punish human rights abusers in (President) Nicolas Maduro’s regime,” declared Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, who co-sponsored the bill with the Committee chair, Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez.

“The U.S. has tried hard not to become the centre of the debate, realising [...] that it would only help the Maduro government point to Washington as the source of the protests [...]." -- John Walsh, Venezuela specialist at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA)
“(N)ow that thousands of innocent Venezuelans have protested courageously and peacefully against the failure that is this chavista government, we can’t allow the government’s repression, violence and murders to go unpunished,” he said in a statement after the 13-2 vote.

On a visit to Mexico Wednesday, Secretary of State John Kerry noted Congressional support for sanctions and hinted that the administration may feel compelled to impose them.

“Our hope is that the leaders, that President Maduro and others, will make decisions that will make it unnecessary for them to be implemented. But all options remain on the table at this time, with the hopes that we can move the (dialogue) process forward,” he said.

A number of experts, as well as senior administration officials, however, warned that the legislation, however well-intended, could make matters worse in the deeply polarised oil-rich country.

“I think people are really frustrated about what’s happening in Venezuela,” said Michael Shifter, president of the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington-based hemispheric think tank here.

“But the U.S. doesn’t have a lot of leverage, and, while sanctions make people feel good, I can’t imagine them accomplishing much except to give Maduro another reason to attack the United States.

“It also risks alienating Latin American governments,” which, with the Vatican and under the auspices of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), have taken the lead in trying to mediate Venezuela’s divisions through dialogue between Maduro and moderate opposition forces.

“I just can’t imagine any Latin American governments seeing this as a good idea or helpful under present circumstances,” he told IPS.

“The U.S. has tried hard not to become the centre of the debate, realising – correctly, in my opinion – that it would only help the Maduro government point to Washington as the source of the protests and distract attention from the genuine and legitimate grievances that have given rise to the protests,” added John Walsh, a Venezuela specialist at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA).

“One of the tacks that has been available to (Maduro) to get out of the dialogue and major compromises that it might force him to take is the ability to reframe the protest movement and the opposition as people in thrall to or actually taking orders from the ‘Empire’ as part of an international conspiracy to de-stabilise the government and push Chavismo out of power.”

Indeed, this has been the position taken by the Obama administration throughout the most recent crisis, which began in late February with student demonstrators demanding that Maduro step down.

In hearings before the Foreign Relations Committee two weeks ago, Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Roberta Jacobson stressed Washington’s support for the UNASUR-led initiative.

“This is not a U.S.-Venezuela issue; it is an internal Venezuelan issue,” she told the senators. “…We have strongly resisted attempts to be used as a distraction from Venezuela’s real problems.”

The Senate bill, which is considered almost certain to pass if Majority Leader Harry Reid permits it to go to the floor, comes after the government-opposition dialogue – in which the foreign ministers of Brazil, Colombia and Ecuador have acted as UNASUR’s representatives – broke down last week over, among other issues, opposition demands that all political prisoners be freed.

In a report entitled ‘Venezuela: Tipping Point’ and released Wednesday, the International Crisis Group (ICG) warned that failure to resolve the stand-off could plunge the country into yet more violence, “leaving it unable to address soaring criminality and economic decline and exposing the inability of regional inter-governmental bodies to manage the continent’s conflicts.”

Since February, at least 42 people have died in confrontations between security forces and pro-government gangs known as “colectivos” and opposition forces.

While some opposition sectors have reportedly used violence, independent human rights groups have blamed most of the casualties on the government and its allies. In a harsh report issued earlier this month, Human Rights Watch (HRW) accused security forces of severely beating and, in some cases, shooting at point-blank range, peaceful protesters, subjecting detainees to severe abuse sometimes amounting to torture, and, in some cases collaborating with the colectivos in their attacks on protestors and bystanders.

The increased repression, as well as the impasse in the dialogue, has intensified concern here about the likelihood of further polarisation that will strengthen hard-liners on both sides.

In its report, the ICG called for all sides to consider the appointment of an international facilitator, possibly from the U.N. system, to join the UNASUR-Vatican effort, as well as the deployment of a U.N. technical mission to support it.

While the administration opposes sanctions at this point, one senior State Department official said it hoped to intensify discussions with regional governments, beginning with Kerry’s visit to Mexico, about what more can be done to get the dialogue back on track.

“The real question is for them to sort of compare notes on what they’re hearing out of Venezuela, whether we think the efforts that UNASUR and the Vatican are making are working, and what more can we do from outside that process to either help it along or to be ready to do something more,” the official said.

“(T)he last thing we want to do is torpedo any dialogue that might lead to action, but we’re just as frustrated as the Senate is that nothing has happened yet.”

Kerry reflected that frustration Wednesday, accusing the government of a “total failure …to demonstrate good-faith actions to implement those things that they agreed to do approximately a month ago.”

“I think more high-level consultations with other governments about how they see the situation and to work with them could be helpful,” said IAD’s Shifter.

“But the critical country is Brazil, and, unfortunately, (U.S.) relations with Brazil aren’t good because of the Snowden affair that led to the postponement of (President Dilma) Rousseff’s state visit that was supposed to take place late last year.”

(END)

Pope Francis in St. Peter's Square. The Vatican will have until Nov. 1 to respond to the list of demands by the Geneva-based U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC). Credit: Edgar Jiménez/cc by 2.0

By Lydia Lim
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 18 2013 (IPS)

Mary Caplan was just 14 years old, and her father was dying of cancer. When she went to the local priest in her hometown of Jersey City to ask for prayers and help, he sexually abused her, and went on to do so for the next two and a half years.

“[The priest] told me there was a way that I could have a miracle for my father,” Caplan told IPS. “If I did certain things to him, because he represented Jesus, my father would have a miracle.”“For me, what’s worse than the original abuse is to know that it is still happening. That’s re-traumatising, and just tragic for society." -- Abuse survivor Mary Caplan

The priest continued to abuse her until her father passed away.

“When my father died, I went to the priest and asked, ‘What did I do wrong?’ I reported [the abuse] to the pastor, and he said, ‘That couldn’t be – I must be in deep grief’,” Caplan said.

The Vatican has largely kept mum about cases of child sexual abuse committed by members of the clergy, despite its signing of the 1989 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

In what was a historic moment for survivors like Caplan, last week, the Geneva-based U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) publicly called for the Vatican’s disclosure of cases of child sexual abuse committed by members of the clergy.

The Vatican will have until Nov. 1 to respond to the list of demands, and representatives are expected to meet with the Committee in January to answer further questions.

Caplan, who is now a regional director at the U.S.-based Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), one of the non-profits that works with the U.N. panel to speak out against this sexual abuse, applauded the action.

“We hope that this will prod other secular international organisations to do to the same,” she told IPS.

Katherine Gallagher, a senior staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), which represents SNAP, noted that the list of questions brought forth by the U.N. Committee regarding the systematic practices of the Church were both “necessary” and “most welcome”.

“After hearing the voices of survivors, the Committee came out with such a strong list of questions for the Vatican on the policies that we see at the Church, [such as] shifting priests from one country to another to evade accountability and pressuring survivors to stay quiet,” Gallagher said at a press conference in New York Tuesday.

Megan Peterson, an active member of SNAP, directly witnessed this practice of “priest-shifting”. In 2004 and 2005, she was abused by a priest from India at her church in Minnesota when she was barely a teen – yet the priest fled and the Church stayed silent when she revealed his offences.

“I came forward when he was still abusing me, but was shut down by the church,” Peterson told IPS. “He fled the country when I came forward, and we’re still in the middle of an extradition process.”

Last October, the Vatican, which had long been called to report on the abuses, finally released a report on the U.N. Committee website.

“The Holy See is a sovereign subject of international law having an original, non-derived legal personality independent of any authority or jurisdiction,” the report stated.

“Many bishops believe that the Church is above the law,” said Sally Butler, a nun who works at Catholic Whistleblowers. The U.S.-based group of priests and nuns banded together in May to speak out against the Church’s past and current handling of sexual abuses.

“The [bishops] feel they have to protect the Church, and they’ve taken an oath to that effect,” Butler told IPS. “They take their oath very seriously.”

In response to the Vatican’s report, SNAP and the CCR filed an additional report, “putting in a whole set of facts that the Vatican simply left out” and prompting a more complete list of issues raised by the U.N. panel, Gallagher said.

SNAP’s report noted that experts have estimated that there were as many as 100,000 victims of clergy sexual abuse between the years 1981 and 2005 in the United States alone.

Caplan said that although she is hopeful about the results of the U.N. demands, she is somewhat sceptical because the Church has withheld information on this ongoing problem for decades.

“For me, what’s worse than the original abuse is to know that it is still happening. That’s re-traumatising, and just tragic for society,” Caplan said.

No one would expect a Pope elected by an extremely conservative conclave to implement revolutionary reforms within the Catholic Church. Still, many see in the newly elected Pope Francis some signs of change.

Jorge Mario Bergoglio (76), cardinal and archbishop of Buenos Aires, was elected Wednesday by an assembly of Roman Catholic cardinals, and became the successor to Pope Benedict XVI, who abdicated unexpectedly in February.

This is the first time in the history of the papacy that a non-European from the Jesuit order has been elected as pontiff.

The reaction among hundreds of people gathered Wednesday night in St. Peter’s Square in the Vatican City awaiting the announcement was positive. Some feel this is because the new Pope chose the name Francis, a symbol of poverty and interreligious dialogue, and because of the non-conventional attitude he struck with his first few words.

“Signs are important,” Tonio dell’Olio, an Italian priest and head of the international section of Libera, a leading anti-corruption association, told IPS. “The choice of the name (and) his very simple and humble way of addressing the people is already a promise of change.”

“Perhaps it is the kind of change that does not reflect our common parametres and expectations, and won’t necessarily (fit into) the category ‘progress’, which we normally use for our evaluation. But what is certain is that we are facing a change that will need to be fully understood” in time.

Certainly, Cardinal Bergoglio is a theological conservative with a clear stand on “non negotiable values” like abortion, gay marriage and the adoption of children by gay couples,  some of the main causes for clashes with Argentina’s left-leaning government.

Bergoglio also has a history of ambiguous relationships with Argentina’s 1976-1983 military dictatorship – during which the country was torn apart by the conflict known as the Dirty War — which were made public through extensive reports that have appeared over the last few years.

Yet Christians have seen in his symbolic, unconventional actions some signs of hope for a humbler Church, closer to the people.

To the eyes of more progressive churches, the challenge of responding to civil rights issues is something the new Pope cannot delay further, nor the necessary, renewed, interreligious dialogue.

“We want to congratulate him and express best wishes to him (in the hopes) that he can be a leader of the Catholic Church who can build a real, strong and sincere ecumenical and interreligious dialogue, (together) with modern Western culture,” Pastor Eugenio Bernardini, moderator of the Waldensian Church, told IPS.

The 58-year-old father of three recently succeeded former moderator Maria Bonafede, the first woman to hold such position.

In cultural, political and social arenas, Bernardini said, leaders of the Catholic Church tend to deliver “monologues” rather than “engage in frank dialogues”.

This is also true for the ecumenical relation with different Christian confessions, which has been on hold since the time of John Paul II, he said. “Yes, we do meet regularly and have fraternal relationships but no concrete steps have been taken on ecumenism.”

The same is true from the point of view of rights. Much of the international community now recognises values such as personal responsibility, democracy, and transparency, which the Catholic Church fails to recognise, Bernardini said. “But the Catholics are now asking the Church to move on these lines.”

While no particular progressive steps are expected from Bergoglio from a doctrinal point of view, his devotion to Francis, the saint of the poor, and his personal lifestyle, which has been described as “simple and close to the poor”, might lead to a different style of handling the controversial relationship between power and money within the Church.

In a phone interview with IPS, Bernd Nilles, secretary-general of CIDSE, a Brussels-based international alliance of Catholic development agencies, said he expects the new Pope to pay particular attention to the poor.

“We do hope that Pope Francis, in his reflections and guidance, will go beyond the encyclical from former Pope Benedict XVII, where he already spoke of human dignity, charity and global injustice,” Nilles told IPS.

“Maybe this new Pope who comes from the global South, has worked with the poor and understands the daily struggles of poor people and communities, can give new perspective on what exactly human dignity means and how we can overcome the suffering of so many people.”

According to Nilles, Bergoglio is also well placed to understand “the potential and the creativity of the contribution that poor communities can make to a world that is in crisis.

“Let’s take the issue of sustainability and respect for nature: the modern world we have created is reaching planetary boundaries with our (current rate of) resource consumption. Pope Francis, by choosing this name, indicates already that we need a fundamental change in the way we live, in terms of how we deal with natural resources but also how we deal with people.”

Given that the Catholic Church has made the fight against poverty and social justice a high priority, many organisations build their daily advocacy and lobby work for global justice on the key pillars of this teaching, he said.

But much of how these teachings are translated into action depends on the Pope and the presence of the Church’s commitment “in the field”.

“We hope for a leadership that will strengthen our efforts for a more just world,” Nilles added.

For Pastor Benardini, it will be hard for the new Pope to introduce deep changes, being an expression of Catholic conservatism.

“This Pope was very close to John Paul who had a very conservative approach. He is leading an institution with a very traditional – and non transparent – selection method,” he stressed.

The change in such rigid institutions will come about primarily through a bottom-up push, he said, from a request raised by society.

“If the pope is able to listen to the people and can bring about a progressive change of direction” that will be a good result in and of itself, he added.

“He is the third consecutive non-Italian pope. But if the Roman Curia and the Vatican remain attached to tradition, even a Pope who comes from another continent will have to struggle a lot to reproduce in Rome the more open, informal and lively approach of faith in non-European countries.”