Interior & Justice Minister's attempt to revamp the state intelligence apparatus continues to come under fire

Caracas Daily Journal (Jeremy Morgan): Interior & Justice Minister Ramon Rodriguez Chacin's attempt to revamp the state intelligence apparatus continues to come under fire. Critics focused on what they saw as a barely-disguised plan to suppress the civil rights of citizens in general -- and of those who don't agree with the government in particular.

Talk of an 'Orwellian Thought Police' was in the air -- a vision of an Orwellian 1984 very nearly a quarter of a century after when it was supposed to have happened.

Academics and specialists in penal law warned that what could be in prospect was a country in a perpetual "state of emergency" -- the drastic curtailment of civil rights and due process applied under a state of siege in a country with severe internal difficulties. Rocio San Miguel of Control Ciudadano, a pressure group, said Rodriguez Chacin's plan "modified" the principle of presumption of innocence. It might even become possible to punish somebody for their thoughts were it proven that these constituted an attack on the security of the state, she said.

Under the new law, people could be detained and legal procedures brought against them -- and only then would court documents become available to the defense, San Miguel argued. Defense lawyers say this sometimes already happens in practice under the existing judiciary system.

There was also concern about the implications for law enforcement. Alberto Arteaga of the Academia de Ciencas Politicas y Sociales warned that police officers and counter-intelligence agents could collect proof against an individual, and put these on one side to blackmail the person in question. This, Arteaga said, would be a "clear violation" of the Organic Code of Penal Process. But, again, this sort of thing is said to happen all the time anyway.

At the institutional level, Carlos Armando Figueredo of the postgraduate center of human rights at the Universidad Central de Venezuela (UCV) worried that the relationship between prosecutors and policemen could be stood on its head. At present, police investigators work -- at least in theory -- under the supervision of prosecutors. But, Figueredo warned, prosecutors could become "subordinate" to the police under the new law, which was decreed into effect last week by President Hugo Chavez using his special powers under the Enabling Act.