VISAS DONKEY -- TASCON GUTIERREZ, LUIS

C O N F I D E N T I A L CARACAS 001639

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

STATE FOR CA/VO/L/C; L/CA (PCHABORA); AND WHA/AND
NSC FOR DFISK AND DTOMLINSON

E.O. 12958: DECL: 06/05/2031
TAGS: CVIS PGOV PREL PHUM ELAB KDEM PTER VE
SUBJECT: VISAS DONKEY -- TASCON GUTIERREZ, LUIS

REF: A. 03 CARACAS 03066


B. 04 CARACAS 00407

C. 04 CARACAS 00945

D. 04 CARACAS 01188

E. 05 CARACAS 01522

F. CARACAS 01207

Classified By: Kevin Whitaker, CDA, for Reasons 1.4(b) and (d).

Summary
--------------


1. (C) Post requests SAO on the prudential revocation of
the B1/B2 visa of Venezuelan citizen Luis Tascon (DPOB:
27AUG1968, Venezuela) on Foreign Policy grounds under INA
212(A)(3)(C). Post believes that his entry in the United
States would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy
consequences for the United States because he has engaged in
the harassment, intimidation, and punishment of ordinary
Venezuelan citizens for their political beliefs and for
exercising their lawful rights to petition for a change in
government, violated their privacy rights, and seriously
undermined democratic electoral processes in Venezuela. In
particular, Tascon conceived and implemented a technique for
identifying and punishing regime opponents, and encouraged
and facilitated its use for that end. In conversations with
emboffs, Tascon admitted that he compiled and disseminating
the list. Permitting such an individual to enter the United
States would undercut our policy goals with respect to human
rights generally, and with respect to our policy goals of
encouraging respect for human rights in Venezuela in
particular. It would also be contrary to our policy of
encouraging democratic reform in Venezuela, call into
question our commitment to that goal, and discourage
Venezuelan democratic forces. Taking this action now is of
particular import because Venezuela is facing a presidential
election; we need to discourage harassment of the opposition
and at the same time make democratic opposition forces aware
that the United States supports their right to express
themselves and change their government through constitutional
means. End summary.

The Tascon List: The Facts
--------------


2. (U) Luis TASCON Gutierrez (DPOB: 27 Aug 1968, San
Cristobal, Venezuela),a National Assembly Deputy for the
ruling Fifth Republic Movement (MVR),created and facilitated
the Venezuelan government's insidious use of a list of names
and identity numbers of nearly four million Venezuelans who
signed petitions in favor of holding a legally authorized
recall referendum against President Hugo Chavez. The
so-called "Tascon List" has become a reference document used
by the government to take an array of punitive actions
against petition signers because of their opposition to the
government. These actions include firing from and denial of
government employment; denial of government benefits,
including educational, health and social services, to signers
and their family members, both minors and adults; discipline
or discharge of military officers; and denial of identity
documents, including national identity documents and
passports.


3. (U) In 2002, after two years of political crisis the
democratic opposition to President Chavez moved to call a
referendum forcing Chavez' ouster. Article 72 of the
Bolivarian Constitution establishes the right of citizens to
demand a recall referendum on the president, provided that
they submit petitions signed by 20 percent of the electoral
registry. With an electoral registry of 12 million at the
time, a referendum could be called with 2.4 million votes.
The opposition eventually collected some 3.4 million
signatures, amounting to nearly 30% of the electoral
registry. The petitions were submitted, according to
procedures established by law, to the National Electoral
Council (CNE).

Creation of Tascon List in Searchable Formats
--------------


4. (C) While this political-electoral process was underway,
allegations surfaced in the press, confirmed by Tascon's
direct, admission at that time to emboffs, that Tascon had
accessed CNE records to collect the names and identity
numbers of the signers of the recall referendum petition.
Tascon posted the list on his National Assembly-sponsored
website, which is available to the public. He also
downloaded the information onto thousands of CD-ROMs, and
then distributed them, free of charge, to departments and
agencies of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela (BRV). In
contemporaneous statements to Embassy officers, Tascon made
clear that the BRV considered the signers of the petition to
be disloyal to the "Bolivarian revolution," that there should
be consequences for their "counterrevolutionary" activity.
Tascon told us that it was his intention that the list he
created and disseminated should be used for that purpose.


5. (U) Tascon's concept was quickly endorsed by President
Chavez, who in October 2003 publicly vowed that those who
signed against him "would be remembered for 100 generations,"
explicitly threatening to punish those Venezuelans who took
advantage of this constitutionally-authorized mechanism to
remove him from office. Chavez made these threats on a
number of occasions, particularly in public addresses, and
made specific reference to the existence of the list of
petition signers prepared and distributed by Tascon. As
further evidence of the complicity between Tascon and the BRV
and Tascon's critical role in the operation, in January 2004,
Tascon got access to additional databases of petition
signatures based on a letter signed by Chavez to the CNE.

List Used to Punish Regime Opponents
--------------


6. (C) The practical effect of what by this point (and
still) is called the "Tascon List" was to permit BRV
officials throughout the government to check the list to see
whether government employees or any potential beneficiary of
BRV services -- in effect, the entire population -- had
signed the referendum petition. Reports surfaced quickly in
the press and were alleged to emboffs in conversations with
individuals who had signed the petition.

Methods of Retaliation
--------------


7. (U) A number of organizations have documented the
insidious use of the Tascon List to punish Venezuelans whose
crime was exercising their constitutional right to urge the
removal of the president. All manner of government benefits
were denied to many of these individuals, and their family
members, both adults and minors. Benefit denial included
firing from or denial of government employment; denial of
scholarships to attend public universities; denial of
internships in BRV agencies and parastatal institutions, like
the state oil company, PDVSA; discipline and discharge of
military officers; denial of passports or identity cards for
themselves and their relatives. In addition, none of the
Venezuelans who appear on the Tascon List, and as a general
rule their close relatives, are permitted to participate in
the BRV's many social "missions," populist programs designed
principally to redistribute income to poor sectors of
society. Since 2002, the BRV has spent roughly $12 billion
on these missions. In April 2005, Tascon bragged to poloff
that his list was being used to "vet" new judges, arguing
that it would ensure their loyalty to the Chavez government.


8. (U) The BRV also exerts pressure on private businesses
holding contracts with the government to shed employees who
signed the recall petition. Embassy has reliable information
that private companies that do business with the government
are forced to present a list of employees, so that those
names can be checked against the Tascon list; based on that
information cross, the BRV can determine whether the
companies would continue receiving government contracts.

Documentation of Official Retaliation
--------------


9. (SBU) The fact of official harassment and punishment of
signers of the recall referendum petition based on the Tascon
List is an accepted fact in Venezuelan society. The
Department noted official BRV retaliation against signers of
the referendum petitions in the 2003 Human Rights Report, and
described the existence and nefarious use of the Tascon List
in the 2004 and 2005 Human Rights Reports. Embassy contacts
regularly detail credible, specific allegations of punitive
action against signers. In addition, a number of complaints
have been filed in response to these unfair actions, and NGOs
have been created to document the scope of harassment:

-- The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights noted in its
annual report for 2005 that an opposition public sector labor
federation, FEDEUNEP, had presented documentation for 780
cases of public servants who had been fired, coerced, or
transferred for having signed.

-- In February 2006, a new documentary on the Tascon List was
produced by the NGO Ciudadania Activa ("Active Citizenry")
that documented several dozen cases of persons persecuted as
a result of the Tascon List.

-- One particularly well-documented case is that of Rocio San
Miguel, an employee of the National Border Council, chaired
by Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel. San Miguel claims she
was dismissed without cause after Rangel's office checked the
payroll records against the Tascon List. San Miguel recorded
the telephone conversation in which her supervisor
specifically admits that he was dismissing her because she
signed the recall petition. For the same reason, San Miguel
lost her job teaching at the Venezuela Air War College and
her husband, an active duty Air Force colonel, was relieved
of command and not given an onward assignment. San Miguel
took her case to the IACHR, which will rule on the
admissibility of the case in October 2006.

-- The human rights NGO "Incluyendonos Sin Fronteras" (ISF -
Including Us without Borders) has been established with the
express mission of finding and cataloging punitive BRV
actions against individuals whose names appear on the Tascon
List. ISF encourages individuals to send emails to an
electronic in-box ("yofirme" @ hotmail.com, which means "I
signed," i.e., "I signed the recall petition.") ISF provided
Embassy with hundreds of emails from persons alleging
discrimination. Many complain of having been fired or denied
employment for government or government-related positions for
having signed. Below are two illustrative non-employment
cases:

-- Angelo Teles (protect) reported that he stopped receiving
payments from a government program to compensate depositors
for bank failures (FOGADE) after FOGADE authorities checked
his name against the Tascon List.

-- Pedro Elias Carrasco (protect) reported that his
96-year-old aunt, Juana Bautista, was cut off from essential
medicines in 2003 from the Sucre Municipality's medical fund
with this message: "Unfortunately, the medicine donations
for Mrs. Juana Bautista will no longer take place because the
above-mentioned citizen is listed in the List of Luis Tascon
as having signed against President Hugo Chavez in the recall
referendum."

-- Another well-documented case is that of former judge Juan
Carlos Aptiz, who was dismissed in 2003 from his position as
president of the five-judge First Court of Administrative
Matters (Corte Primera de lo Contencioso Administrativo)
after signing the recall referendum. The First Court was
well known for issuing rulings which did not favor the Chavez
administration, so the BRV was particularly interested in
ridding itself of Aptiz. Aptiz has also submitted his case
to the Interamerican Commission for Human Rights.

Potentially Serious Adverse Foreign Policy Consequence:
a) Undermining our human rights goals generally and within
Venezuela in particular
-------------- --------------


10. (C) As has been demonstrated, Tascon conceived a unique
method for identifying regime opponents, using
state-controlled data bases of political activity, then
facilitated the widespread dissemination of this information
and urged its use to punish such individuals. Such
retribution did in fact take place. The use of the Tascon
list to harass individuals for their political beliefs was
widespread, encouraged by Tascon, and sanctioned by the BRV.
To permit the author of the individual who conceived,
organized, implemented, and encouraged widespread use of this
21st century tool of political repression to travel to the
United States is directly contrary to our global policy goals
with respect to human rights. The Tascon list is used to
impinge on freedom of expression and the right of Venezuelans
to change their government. Permitting democratic
Venezuelans' inquisitor freely to visit the United States is
corrosive of our foreign policy goals with respect to human
rights. Moreover, as regime opponents are selectively
harassed and intimidated, the very individuals most likely to
confront BRV abuses are silenced. In the first event, it is
the responsibility of Venezuelans to advocate for proper
human rights observance in their nation, and it is these
individuals who are being singled out and punished through
the use of Mr. Tascon's list.

Potentially Serious Adverse Foreign Policy Consequence:
b) Undercutting Policy of Supporting Remaining Democratic
Institutions
-------------- --------------


11. (C) The Tascon List was used by BRV officials with
Tascon's knowledge and support to discriminate systematically
against millions of Venezuelans (and their families) who used
legal, constitutional mechanisms to express the desire for a
peaceful, democratic solution to Venezuela's political
crisis. As these individuals were punished for their
political views, the institutions of democratic government in
which they participated
-- unions, NGOs, and political parties -- withered in the
face of official repression. A central element on our policy
in Venezuela is to maintain democratic institutions and
sensibilities in the face of a variety of assaults by
President Chavez' increasingly repressive regime. Permitting
the individual who conceived and implemented a new technique
to take retribution against individuals who are seeking to
assert their fundamental freedoms, and whose activities are
explicitly endorsed by the United States as a matter of
policy, to enter the United States would be contrary to
policy as it would discourage our democratic allies here and
call into question our commitment to that policy goal.

Potentially Serious Adverse Foreign Policy Consequence:
c) Timing of Upcoming Presidential Elections
-------------- --------------


12. (C) Implementing our policy of support for the
independent institutions of democratic government is of
cardinal importance now. Venezuela faces another
presidential election this year, the fourth in seven years
(counting the 2004 recall referendum as a no-confidence vote
on Chavez' tenure). The result of these political processes,
and the growing tendency by the BRV not merely to harass the
opposition, but also to criminalize dissent, has been to
undercut the democratic opposition's appetite for
confrontation with the regime. All indications are that the
opposition is not united and is highly unlikely to present a
credible electoral challenge to Chavez in the December 2006
elections. At this time, it is of critical importance that
the United States be seen as the champion of independent
democratic development here. Taking a forthright stand
opposing the entry of the inquisitor Luis Tascon -- whose
actions led to the harassment of thousands of Venezuelans,
and the creation of a climate of fear which has repressed
normal opposition activity -- would send just that signal.
Viewed in the negative, our failure to take action against
Tascon would have the serious negative foreign policy
consequence of further discouraging the political opposition
during this critical election year.


13. (C) In addition, if there are no consequences for such
behavior, other and perhaps worse abuses could be encouraged
in the future. It is worth noting that the Tascon List
database has now been merged into the "Maisanta List,"
recently updated to Maisanta List 2.0. The Maisanta List is
used to capture a vast array of data about Venezuelan
citizens, starting with whether they signed the recall
petition, but also including whether they enjoy any
government benefits, whether they or family members
participate in government "missions" (see para 7, above),
whether they voted in recent elections, all foreign travel,
tax records -- in the end, a complete listing of every
individual's interaction with the BRV. As it has been
established that the BRV used the Tascon List to punish its
perceived opponents, it stands to reason that the much more
comprehensive Maisanta List would permit a much deeper
uprooting of independent thought and action in Venezuela.
Our action now with respect to Tascon can serve in some
measure to dissuade such use by making clear to others that
there are consequences for denying Venezuelans their
fundamental freedoms.

Tascon's Current Visa and Travels
--------------


14. (SBU) Post records indicate Tascon received a B1/B2
multiple entry visa valid for 12 months on November 16, 2005.
The one-year validity corresponds with current policy for
issuing visas to BRV deputies. A TECS inquiry shows that
Tascon made one trip to the United States in 2006 and two in

2004.

FBI Person of Interest
--------------


15. (C) In the course of our research to prepare this SAO,
Embassy discovered that Tascon is a person of interest in an
FBI counterterrorism case in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
According to LEGATT, Tascon has in the past traveled to San
Juan to meet with the Venezuelan Consul General, Vinicio
Romero. During these visits, according to the FBI, Tascon
reportedly has meet with members of the Puerto Rican domestic
terrorist organization known as the Macheteros. Based on
consultations among the Embassy, LEGATT, and the FBI Field
Office in Puerto Rico, LEGATT and FBI Field Office San Juan
concluded that Tascon's visa revocation would not have any
substantial effect on the FBI's inquiries with respect to the
Macheteros. LEGATT cleared this cable.

WHITAKER