Month: January 2019

Caracas, Venezuela, Jan 10, 2019 / 07:01 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The bishops of Venezuela have said that Nicolas Maduro’s swearing in for a second term as president Thursday is illegitimate.

“The claim to be initiating a new presidential term of office on 10 January 2019 is illegitimate in its origin and opens the door to the nonrecognition of the government, since it lacks democratic support in justice and law,” the Venezuelan bishops’ conference wrote in a Jan. 9 exhortation issued at their plenary assembly.

They recalled their statement of July 11, 2018 that the presidential election held that May “was illegitimate, as is likewise the Constituent National Assembly established by the executive authority. We are faced with arbitrary rule, without respect for the guarantees laid down in the Constitution or the highest principles of the dignity of the people.”

Maduro was sworn in for his second six-year term Jan. 10 before the Supreme Court, instead of the opposition-controlled legislature, the National Assembly. The National Assembly has been superseded by the Constituent Assembly, formed in 2017 after contested elections.

The bishops wrote that “In this present political, social and economic crisis, the National Assembly, elected by the free and democratic vote of the Venezuelan people, is currently the sole organ of public authority with the legitimacy to exercise its powers with sovereignty.”

They recalled that Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican Secretary of State, has called for the restoration of the National Assembly, and they stated: “The vote of confidence that the Venezuelan people has conferred on it should now be recognised in the fulfilment of the duties of its deputies in devising and promulgating the laws which the country needs for the re-establishment of democracy and the return to decency and honesty in the administration of the public purse.”

The May 2018 presidential election was boycotted by the opposition, and faced claims of vote-rigging. Some opposition candidates were barred from running.

The National Assembly, which continues to meet despite its dissolution by the Maduro administration, has said it will not recognize Maduro’s second term. The US and 13 other American countries have said they will no longer recognize Maduro’s government.

Christian Zerpa, a judge of the Venezuelan Supreme Court, fled to the US this week to protest the inauguration, saying the May election “was not free and competitive.”

Among those attending the inauguration were Daniel Ortega and Evo Morales, the presidents of Nicaragua and Bolivia. The governments of El Salvador and Cuba have also expressed support for Maduro.

The bishops said they look forward to 2019 “as a favourable opportunity for the transformation for which the country is crying out – namely the restoration of the Rule of Law, according to the Constitution, and the rebuilding of Venezuelan society in dignity, freedom and justice for all. We wish to nourish the true hope of the people, sustained in the mystery of the Nativity, which celebrates the fact that the Son of God has become human and poor in order to make us more human and greater in mutual solidarity.”

Venezuela is in an “extremely grave situation”, they said, citing “the violations of human dignity, the disrespect of the common good and the manipulation of truth.”

“The Venezuelan people are living through a critical and extremely grave situation on account of the deterioration in respect for their rights and their quality of life, added to a growing poverty and the lack of anyone to whom they can turn. It is a sin crying out to heaven to seek to maintain power at all costs and presume to prolong the chaos and inefficiency of the last few decades. This is morally unacceptable! God does not will that the people should suffer by being subjected to injustices. Hence it is urgently necessary to heed the popular clamour for change, for a united effort to achieve the transition that has been hoped for and sought by the overwhelming majority.”

The majority of Venezuelans, the bishops said, reject “the politics of hunger, political persecution military and political repression, political prisoners, torture, corruption, inefficiency and ineffectiveness in public administration. As citizens and as institutions it is up to us to assume the responsibilities that belong to us to improve the present situation and rescue the country.”

“As Pope Francis says, we need to work together to find paths of ‘concord’ and understanding, of union among the Venezuelan people, of responses to the many problems and defence of human rights that will enable us to overcome the crisis and attend to the needs of the poorest.”

Noting the need to help “the least of our brethren,” the bishops said the Church is committed to helping “the weakest and most defenceless within the country to survive, and also those who have emigrated,” to “working for the defence and promotion of human rights” and to develop “training and organisation programmes that will enable the recovery of the democratic institutions and the rebuilding of the country in a peaceful manner.”

They thanked Pope Francis for “for his constant closeness and concern for our country,” and “the Churches and Governments of many different countries for their solidarity, and their concern for those of our countrymen who, as a result of the crisis, have felt forced to leave the country in search of better conditions of life.”

Since Maduro succeeded Hugo Chávez as president of Venezuela in 2013, the country has been marred by violence and social upheaval.

Poor economic policies, including strict price controls, coupled with high inflation rates, have resulted in a severe lack of basic necessities such as toilet paper, milk, flour, diapers and medicines.

An estimated 3 million people have fled the country since 2014.

Venezuela’s socialist government is widely blamed for the crisis. Since 2003, price controls on some 160 products, including cooking oil, soap and flour, have meant that while they are affordable, they fly off store shelves only to be resold on the black market at much higher rates.

Inflation in Venezuela in 2018 was estimated by the National Assembly at 1.3 million percent.

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San José, Costa Rica, Jan 10, 2019 / 05:01 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Twenty former heads of state and government from Latin America have written a letter to Pope Francis finding fault with the wording of his Christmas blessing for Venezuela and Nicaragua.

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Ottawa, Canada, Jan 10, 2019 / 03:13 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- While many disability groups fought the initial push to legalize assisted suicide in Canada three years ago, they are having to fight again as efforts to expand access to assisted suicide to the disabled in the country continue.

In Canada, only those facing “foreseeable” death are eligible for assisted suicide.

This week, two people from Montreal, Jean Truchon, 49, and Nicole Gladu, 73, started their legal battle in the Quebec Superior Court to expand access to assisted suicide to people with disabilities and severe health problems. Both Truchon and Gladu “suffer from serious health problems that cause persistent and intolerable suffering,” their lawyer, Jean-Pierre Ménard, told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

This court case, along with other efforts to open up access to assisted suicide to the disabled, has many disabled people and disability groups raising serious concerns about the implications of such a move.

“If this criteria of close-to-the-end — of foreseeable, natural end of life — is taken away, then you have put the entire handicapped and chronically ill population in harm’s way,” Gordon Friesen, who uses a wheelchair, told the CBC.

In February 2015, the Canadian Supreme Court ruled that doctors may help patients who have severe and incurable suffering to kill themselves. It ordered Parliament to create a legislative response, and a bill was passed in June 2016 allowing assisted suicide for anyone facing “foreseeable” death due to an illness or condition.

Bruce Uditsky, CEO Emeritus of Inclusion Alberta, a disability rights group in Canada, told CNA that expanding access to assisted suicide to people with disabilities could potentially jeopardize thousands of lives, and would disincentivize initiatives to provide the disabled with the resources and support they need.

“I think it brings pretty serious implications, even frightening ones, that come out of these continuing efforts to expand who would be eligible for assistance in dying,” Uditsky said.

“Our view is that if it continues to be expanded, then it will threaten the lives of those with disabilities because the perception will continue to be made that somehow those are lives that are unworthy of continuing,” Uditsky said.

Some advocacy groups are leading national efforts to intervene, and to offer the “view that the current limitation on access is a necessary, justifiable and reasonable criteria,” Uditsky said.

Uditsky said he and many within the disability rights community have serious concerns about expanded access to assisted suicide, and how that would further disincentivize the government to create or fund supports and resources for people living with disabilities who want to improve their lives.

“It’s particularly troubling because assistance with dying as a health provision, you now have a right to that if you meet the criteria,” he said. “But we don’t have the rights for people with disabilities in Canada to have the supports they require to enjoy a life comparable to those without disabilities.”

“So we’re further along almost in demonstrating a right to be killed than we are in demonstrating the right to supports to live in your own home, to be employed, to be included in school, to have a career … and when we lag behind on those fronts, it’s a little easier to see why people would have lives of quite significant struggle and challenge.”

Amy Hasbrouck, a spokesperson for disability rights group Not Dead Yet Canada, told CNA that the opposition to assisted suicide from many in the disabled community is based on concerns that assisted suicide legislation discriminates against the disabled and puts vulnerable people at risk for coercion.

“People with disabilities who ask to die are considered to be making a ‘rational’ choice, whereas non-disabled people who express a wish to die are labelled as irrational, in need of suicide prevention intervention, and may even be deprived of their liberty to prevent them from killing themselves,” Hasbrouck told CNA in email comments.

“This double standard is based on the widely-held view that life with a disability is a fate worse than death,” she said.

She also shared Uditsky’s concern that offering assisted suicide to a vulnerable population disincentivizes the government and society in providing resources and life supports.

“The reasons most people ask for assisted suicide and euthanasia are associated with the onset of disability and the discriminatory public policies that shunts old, ill and disabled people into institutional settings, where we are deprived of control over every detail of our daily lives,” she said.

“A shift in funding priorities toward consumer-directed in-home personal assistance services, home modifications and community accessibility would go a long way toward dealing with the existential suffering expressed by people who do not want to be forced to live in an institution.”

There are no amount of safeguards that a government can put in place that would prevent people from being coerced into assisted suicide, Hasbrouck added.

Even “the strictest safeguards cannot predict or prevent all eventualities,” Hasbrouck said, and currently “none of the statutes … even comes close to preventing ineligible people from being euthanized, ensuring that doctors report every assisted suicide or euthanasia, protecting against abuse and exploitation by family members, or any number of hazards associated with allowing the state to establish criteria for who lives and who dies.”

Similar concerns were also raised in the recent case of a Canadian man, Roger Foley, who suffers from an incurable disease and claims that despite asking for home care, the medical team at an Ontario hospital would only offer him assisted suicide.

Since Quebec’s assisted death law and the federal legislation came into force two years ago, 3,714 Canadians have died by assisted suicide, according to the CBC.

Besides those with disabilities, the Council of Canadian Academies is also currently reviewing whether assisted suicide should be provided to the mentally ill and to “competent minors.”

The Quebec Supreme Court case is expected to last several weeks.

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