Foreign Minister Maduro: The expulsion of Vivanco was mandated as a defense of Venezuela's sovereignty

The Minister of People’s Power for Foreign Affairs, Nicolás Maduro, stressed that Venezuela’s expulsion of José Miguel Vivanco is in full compliance with the law and and  the Constitution, which establishes a duty to defend the sovereignty of the country, as well as the dignity of Venezuela’s institutions and people.

The Ministry of People’s Power for Foreign Affairs issued an official statement on Thursday night, informing that José Miguel Vivanco disrespected the norms of the Constitution and the institutions of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela in issuing a report that has “violated the Constitutions and the laws of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, assaulting Venezuelan institutions, and illegally interfering in the domestic affairs of our country.”

The statement directly expresses that Vivanco, Executive Director of the Americas Divison of Human Rights Watch (HRW), has “the obligation to immediately leave the homeland of the Liberator, Simón Bolívar.”  This expulsion was also applied to his U.S. colleague, Daniel Wilkinson.

According to the statement, with this decision “the Bolivarian Government enforces national sovereignty and guarantees the defense of its institutions and people in the face of aggressions from international factors protecting the interests linked to and funded by agencies of the government of the United States of America, which under the veil of defending human rights, are mounting a strategy of aggression that is unacceptable to our people.”

Bolivarian News Agency, Press Department of the Embassy of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela / September 19, 2008