Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has let Mr José Miguel Vivanco, the Director of Human Rights Watch for the Americas, know how highly appreciated by the Venezuelan Government is Vivanco’s work denouncing human rights violations and monitoring the Chavez government’s mistreatment of human rights activists, the political opposition and the judiciary in Venezuela.  While Mr Vivanco and his fellow staff person Mr. Daniel Wilkinson, the Deputy Director of Human Rights Watch for the Americas, were in Venezuela in connection with the release of a report by Human Rights Watch of abuses of civil liberties and human rights in Venezuela, they were intercepted by about twenty armed men in military uniforms that proceeded to arrest them and searched and seized their personal belongings at the hotel they had checked into, deprived Mr. Vivanco of his mobile phone in order to prevent him from sending a message to the media or to any embassy personnel as to the circumstances of his seizure and then forcefully sent both Human Rights Watch officials back to the airport under the charge that Vivanco had violated the terms of his tourist visa because he was on a work related trip and not in Venezuela only and exclusively for leisure.  Once at the Caracas airport Vivanco and Wilkinson were both shipped out to Brazil, on their way back to the United States.

The Human Rights Watch report was critical of the Chavez government because of the steps it had taken to consolidate power in Chavez’ hands by weakening the other branches of government, the judicial and the legislative branches, and by discriminating against political opposition.

“The report also discussed the government’s intimidation of local human rights defenders and nongovernmental organizations, documenting the use of state television to carry out attacks on advocates doing work that criticized Mr. Chávez’s creation of a military reserve under his command.” http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/20/world/americas/20venez.html 

I guess President Chavez wanted to make sure that everyone in the world, and in Venezuela, understood that what was alleged in the report was true, and if there were any doubts as to the claims in the Human Rights Watch report, here comes Chavez with his abuse of power and authority to dissipate them.  The whole scene about the intervention with Vivanco and Wilkinson was covered by Venezuelan journalists working for the Venezuelan government TV station.   What a learning experience for the local TV viewers, if Chavez is doing this to these two “prominent” foreigners, what would he likely do to you Joe Blow if you decide to publicly criticize the regime if you are not very well known and not under the ready scrutiny of any independent members of the press corp?