As the press continues to lionize and never dare criticize Comrade Chavez of Venezuela, let us remember the latest of his victims, Franklin Brito.
This from today's Economist:
FRANKLIN BRITO is not well-known outside Venezuela, and the country’s government would like it to stay that way. Late on Monday night, the 50-year-old farmer and biologist died from a hunger strike in the military hospital in Caracas, the capital, where he had been held against his will, virtually incommunicado, since December.
Mr Brito’s sad saga started seven years ago, when his 250-acre fruit and vegetable farm in the south-eastern state of Bolívar was taken over by neighbours. He later discovered that INTI, the government’s land-reform agency, had granted them rights to occupy his land, in what he saw as an act of revenge by a corrupt local mayor.
He then began an extraordinary, and often lonely, fight to regain sole title to his farm. To raise awareness of his case, he staged six separate hunger strikes, amputated his little finger and had his lips sewn together. The government sometimes said it would meet his demands if he ended the hunger strikes, but inevitably reneged once he did. It also offered him $230,000 in compensation. But he turned down almost all of it, saying the payment was illegal and that he could be accused of corruption if he accepted it. Although the people occupying his farm left last year, their legal right to return at any time was never revoked.
In 2009 Mr Brito transferred his hunger strike to the pavement outside the offices of the Organisation of American States (OAS) in Caracas. This step, which led an OAS delegation to attempt to mediate, drew too much attention to the case for the government’s taste. In December it sent police to transfer him to the military hospital by force.
Despite pressure from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the courts, which mainly do Mr Chávez’s bidding, refused to order his release. Government spokesmen said Mr Brito was mentally ill and needed to be detained for his own protection. But they never provided any evidence to support this claim. The authorities themselves undermined it when they filmed him without his permission, and then presented a crudely edited video that suggested he was trying to blackmail the government for money.
Mr Brito sealed his fate when he began refusing even liquids. In a statement issued shortly after his death, his family insisted that he would “live on in the struggle of the Venezuelan people for property rights, justice, freedom and human rights.” His widow, Elena, has vowed to continue the fight. “This is our only project in life,” she said last year, “and my four children depend on it.”
The government clearly could have stopped Mr Brito from taking his life by restoring his exclusive title to his land. But Hugo Chávez, the leftist president, seems to have calculated that standing firm against his demands would be more politically advantageous. Human-rights organisations in Venezuela say that around 2,500 people are currently subject to criminal proceedings for engaging in peaceful dissent. The space to do so is shrinking every day.
The right to private property is essential to a free society. This is my land, and you can't have it unless I freely transfer it to you on terms agreeable to me. This is my house, my business, my copyright, my money, my body. It belongs to me, not to the state or the state's designated favorites.
OS is seeing this right beginning to erode here in the US. A friend and her husband resisted a state 'economic development commission' attempt to seize their farm for an industrial plant a few years ago, standing against massive arm-twisting by government at all levels. They just found out that it has all started again, via a zoning proposal that will effectively lower the value of their land to near zero, unless they buckle under at the next 'offer' to purchase. OS finds it hard to believe that this is an isolated occurrence.
Mr. Brito's refusal to buckle was extraordinary, some would say excessive. OS is not certain at all that he would show the same courage. He also hopes he is never put in position to have to make those kinds of choice.
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