REMARKS BY LEOPOLDO LÓPEZ

Oslo, Norway
May 19, 2009

It is an honor for me to be here addressing the issues that are

concerning Venezuelans among great leaders from different parts of
the world and historic leaders that have fought for freedom
successfully and their personal strife and commitment to freedom has
given positive consequences to their countries and to their people.
Venezuela unfortunately is going through what many of the
testimonies have presented yesterday and today as a thing of the
past is currently happening in our country. Venezuela, like Norway,
is a country that has immense opportunities to develop the
possibilities for all Venezuelans. It is an oil country, but
unfortunately we are still living under extreme poverty— 67% percent
of the population of Venezuela is living under poverty and 23% of
the entire population is living under extreme poverty. That
contrasts with the immense possibilities of taking our country out
of poverty through policies that could address the issues of all
Venezuelans.

For the past ten years Venezuela has had a regime that has gradually
taken the freedom of the Venezuelan people on the possibility of
overcoming poverty in peace and democracy. Gradually I say because
many in Venezuela and outside Venezuela have thought that who is
governing today in Venezuela is democratic leader and respectful of
the rights of the people. Unfortunately for the Venezuelan people,
we have been seeing how the rights of the Venezuelan people have
been taken away in many aspects: freedom of speech, the rule of law;
the possibility of having free elections in Venezuela; even
religious freedom in Venezuela is seriously threatened at this
moment.

The most important problem facing Venezuelans at this moment is its

personal insecurity. The institutions in Venezuela instead of
addressing the main concern for Venezuelans, which is violence, have
been concerned with political issues. As I present here we can see
how over the past ten years Venezuela has become a very dangerous
and violent society. In the year 2007, the rate of homicides for
100,000 in habitants in Venezuela was 69 per 100,000 inhabitants.
Just to give you a comparison, the average rate for Latin America is
30 murders per 100,000 inhabitants. Caracas, the city of which I
was the mayor of a part, central Caracas, became the most dangerous
city in the American continent during the year 2003.

And unfortunately for Venezuelans, we continue to be the most

dangerous city in the American continent. The rate of murders in
Venezuela per day is 52 murders occur in Venezuela every day.
Ninety-three percent of these murders are in impunity. This is a
study that we made in the year 2004 and 2005 at the Central
University of Venezuela of which we took the number of homicides and
we analyzed what happened with those homicides. Of 9,700 homicides
that occurred in the year 2004, only 7% was tired and prosecuted.
That gives a rate of 93% of impunity.

Why am I showing these figures in a human rights conference?

Because the right for living is the most important right that should
thought and that should be followed by institutions. Unfortunately
for Venezuelans, the police, the judiciary is concerned with
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political issues and not concerned with the lives of Venezuelan
people.

This is a comparison of Latin American countries in terms of murder

rates per year, and it shows how Venezuela has become almost double
in terms of the violence rate than Colombia, which was the most
violent country in the Latin American continent during the 90s.
Venezuela has not only a problem of violence in the streets, but it
has the most violent prison system in the American continent and
maybe one of the most violent in the world. In the year 2007, there
were 498 people murdered in the Venezuelan prison system. How would
that compare to some other countries? If we take the population, the
prison population of Colombia, Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico
together, there would be 500,000 people in prison system of those
four countries. Of those 500,000 people in the year 2005, 310
murders occurred. In Venezuela, with a population in prison of less
than 20,000, 420 murders occurred, and that gives you a comparison
of the rate of murders that occur in Venezuelan prisons. Not only
are they violent, they are a clear violation of the human rights of
the people that are under the supervision of the state.

Not only are we seeing the rights of the people being violated in
terms of personal security, but there has been a clear violation of
political rights, and I just want to take some examples. In
Venezuela we have more than 40 political prisoners in the Venezuelan
prison system. They are treated like common prisoners and they have
been tried for supposed common crimes which makes them not political
prisoner that have to share with murders and rapists and other in
the Venezuelan prison system that I showed before has become one of
the most dangerous in the entire Latin America community. For all
of those that think differently than the government are exposed to
persecution, and exposed to exile, and the possibility of being

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tried against themselves, and political disqualifications, which I
will go into more detail in a few moments.

Political prisoners in Venezuela have become a reality over the

pasted years. These three gentlemen that you can see are three
police officers that were brought into prison five years ago, and
they were sentence to 30 years in prison only a month and a half ago
with absolutely no proof for supposed crimes that they committed in
the year 2002 when there was a civic uprising against the president
Hugo Chavez. With absolutely no proof that links these people to
supposed murders that occurred that day, they have been put in
prison for five years during the longest trial in Venezuelan
history, and finally they were condemned to the highest penal
sentence in Venezuela which is thirty years.

Manuel Gonzalez is an example of politicians being persecuted. He

was the presidential candidate against Hugo Chavez in the year 2006.
He got 40% of the vote, and recently he was forced into exile
because he was being tried for alleged corruption charges with
absolutely no possibility of having a fair trial. In October of
last year, the President, in a national speech seen on all the TV
and radio stations, he said that Manuel Gonzalez was going to go to
prison and that he was going to be in charge of the mission to put
him in prison. Well, weeks after that a trial started, and weeks
after that the judiciary system and the Attorney General’s office
began his trial, and he was forced into exile only weeks ago.

Another case of political rights being violated is my own case. I

was the mayor of the city of Chacao, which is at the heart of
Caracas, for eight years. I was elected mayor in the year 2000 with
50% of the vote. I was re-elected with more than 80% of the vote in
the year 2004, and I was to become the mayor of the metropolitan
area of the city of Caracas. I was running for office with very
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successful possibility of winning. We had 70% of support of the
people of Caracas; that is, seven out of eight people that lived in
Caracas were going to vote for us. That means that most of the poor
population, the people with the main support of the President of
Venezuela were going to vote for us. We had possibilities of
transforming the city of Caracas as we did in the municipality of
Chacao. However, last year, along with 276 other Venezuelans, I was
disqualified to run for office. I was disqualified on bogus charges
and administrative charges in a case that the government presented
the allegation of mismanagement of payment for teachers, police
officers, and firemen. There was no trial, and there was no
criminal sentence for this disqualification. The Venezuelan
constitution and the Inter-American Human Rights Commission are very
clear in terms of the way that somebody can be disqualified to run
for office. There needs to be a criminal sentence by a criminal
court. Neither myself nor the 275 other candidates that were
disqualified were tried, much less condemned. We were disqualified
because we were going to win, because we were going to show not only
good governance, but we were going to show the support of the
majority of the people in the city of Caracas. Being disqualified
we decided to continue our campaign, and we supported another
candidate who actually won for a surprised to government and all of
the Venezuelan people. He won with 51% of the vote in the election
on the 23rd of November of last year. However, after winning the
metropolitan municipality, that is the municipality of the city of
Caracas that has five million in population, he was taken away all
of the competencies and funds of the municipality. Today, the mayor
of the city of Caracas has been taken away the possibilities of
transforming the city after having the peoples’ will and the
peoples’ support in a democratic process of elections. In
Venezuela, unfortunately, it is not enough to be a majority. We
have become a clear majority in the city of Caracas and in other
places. It is not enough to be a majority in the electoral
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processes. We need to organize as a majority that has the capacity
to overcome the power of the state.

As many of the cases that were presented today and yesterday, this
is a case of citizens against the state, citizens against a very
powerful state with absolutely no limits to the type of investment
that the government is doing to politics, campaigning, and the
mismanagement of those funds for political reasons. What are we
doing in order to continue our fight? We are organizing ourselves.
As I said before, we have proven to be a majority, but it has been
proven in Venezuela that it is not enough to be a majority. We need
to be an organized majority. So we need to organize hundreds,
hopefully millions of Venezuelans in order to overcome the power of
the state that controls absolutely all of the Venezuelan government
and the Venezuelan institutions.

What are we doing? We are working with social leaders in the

poorest communities in Caracas and of Venezuela; leaders that can be
the focus of change in their own communities, leaders that we can
help become better leaders, to become leaders that can be the
promoters of small change. Working with the elderly, working with
children, working with projects that can bring about hope and change
in their communities. So far we have organized thousands of women
and men in what we call the redes populares, or popular networks.
And we are putting together a massive volunteer project so we can
incorporate students, professionals, and all of those that can help
us to organize that new majority in Venezuela in order to bring
change about. We know that we will overcome. We know that change
will come about in Venezuela.

We are guided by the truth and the hope of overcoming poverty in

peace and democracy. We will contrast our proposal with a
government that talks about poverty but has done nothing to overcome
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poverty, a government that uses the poor in order to put together an
authoritarian regime to bring about class conflict and confrontation
in all aspects of Venezuelan life. We will promote the overcoming
of poverty with peace and democracy by telling Venezuelans that all
rights can be for all the people with no disqualifications, with no
exclusions, and with no privileges. That hopeful Venezuela, that
future Venezuela is what guides us every day to organize thousands,
and as I said before, hopefully millions of Venezuelans to overcome
the reality that we are living under at this moment. What we can do
in Venezuela is to organize. What we can do outside Venezuela is to
bring about consciousness of what’s happening. Our fight is David
against Goliath. We are fighting against a very powerful state that
has sold to the rest of the world that in Venezuela a democratic
process is taking place that has presented to the rest of the world
using millions of dollars from the money of all Venezuelan people
that the government cares about the poor and cares about all
Venezuelan people.

The reality is that we can no longer talk about democracy in

Venezuela. The reality is that today the rights are only for those
that are close to the government and have the privileges of being
close to the government bureaucracy. We will overcome. We will
overcome by working together inside Venezuela and outside Venezuela
bringing consciousness and bringing an organized majority that will
hope, democracy, peace, and change to Venezuela. Thank you very
much.

END