By Maayke Vossen
Amnesty International defines the right to academic freedom as the right to freely conduct scientific research, and to distribute the results of this research. Academic freedom is threatened by censure on publications or the expansion of knowledge via the internet, threatening or arresting academics and students, or closing schools and universities. Even though the constitution of Venezuela states in Article 57 that freedom of expression and press freedom are protected, and that everyone has a right to timely, truthful and impartial information without censorship, the current reality shows us that this is not the case. In 2019, Venezuela was ranked 148th of 180 countries by Reporters Without Borders in the World Press Freedom Index, which measured the degree of freedom that journalists and news organisations enjoy in these countries, including the efforts made by authorities to respect this freedom.
In an article called ‘Threats to Academic Freedom in Venezuela: Legislative Impositions and Patterns of Discrimination Towards University Teachers and Students’, University professors and researchers Mayda Gabriela Hocevar, David Augusto Gomez and Nelson Jose Rivas state that there is an increasing threat to academic freedom and autonomy for Venezuelan universities. This is a result of the weakening economic and social conditions. The legally recognized academic freedom is undermined by public policies and ‘new legislation’. Students and teachers are subjected to discrimination based on political reasons, and military and paramilitary forces repress protests. Following these protests, students are interrogated about their ‘plans to destabilize the government’.
Two Venezuelan professors explained the current academic situation in Venezuela to the Scholars at Risk Network. With the executive branch taking direct control of student admissions and establishing new, government-controlled non-autonomous universities with a military-oriented program, as well as trying to enforce university curricula in all the universities and privileging military institutions by granting them preferred funding support, there is less and less room for autonomy in the academic field. Furthermore, the government interferes with the governance of universities by interrupting the election of authorities and student bodies, promoting government-sponsored task forces and paramilitary groups instead, which has caused multiple universities to stop their academic and administrative activity.
The Prosecutor’s Office keeps a close eye on the Human Right Centres in universities, and students are being submitted to judicial procedures, which even results in their imprisonment. Hocevar, Gomez and Rivas state that the Venezuelan constitutional framework recognizes the right to protest peacefully, and prevents the unnecessary, inappropriate or excessive use of firearms and toxic substances in the control of peaceful demonstrations. However, Venezuelan security forces systematically make use of indiscriminate and disproportionate force against student-demonstrators, criminalize student protest, and enforce arbitrary student detentions. Repressive actions by police forces and the Bolivarian National Guard (GNB) towards university students take the form of physical attacks as well as psychological pressure through interrogations, labelling peacefully demonstrating students as terrorists.
Hocevar, Gomez and Rivas define Academic freedom as “the statutory principle of autonomy and the right of every person to participate in the higher education system, in which all currents of thought are respected and full development of the personality is allowed without subjection to prescribed doctrines”. Even though the law states that Venezuelan academics enjoy academic freedom, students and professors are systematically subjected to political discrimination. Professors and students from autonomous universities are forced to submit to government-ruled universities under threat of being expelled. Political propaganda and slogans fill the offices and classrooms, promoting socialism and military activity, while simultaneously condemning critical, free thinking. Students and professors who express their dissent on political or economic issues are arrested, which violates the human rights standards issued by the United Nations and the Inter-American Systems, as well as Venezuelan Constitutional and Criminal Law.
The lack of sufficient funding has had a massive influence on the universities. The government spends about sixty dollars per student per year in public schools, and 0.68 cents per researcher per year. Professors earn a very low salary of officially forty dollars per month, which often turns out to be even less. Because of these economic constraints, Venezuela’s scientific productivity has dropped sharply compared to other Latin-American countries. There is barely any interaction with academics from other countries, since there is no money to attend international meetings or to participate in exchange-programs. The insecure environment for students and professors in Venezuela does not make it safe to invite foreign academics into the country either.
All these impositions placed by the government have resulted in a massive drop of students and professors in universities. Generally, the most qualified professors leave first, and due to the lack of funding, universities tend to hold off on replacing them. The number of students that are putting their studies on hold to emigrate keeps on growing. Unfortunately, these students have a very low chance to continue their studies elsewhere, as access to foreign currency to study abroad has been cut off.
While universities are being forced to shut down because of financial problems and shortage of staff and students, it becomes easier for the government to replace them with financially more attractive military institutions and non-autonomous universities with a military-oriented program, making impartial scientific research and information less and less accessible for the civilians of Venezuela. This problem is reinforced with more than half of the television channels under government control. The National Union of Press Workers of Venezuela reported one hundred fifteen media outlets being shut down between 2013 and 2018, and the Press and Society Institute of Venezuela uncovered at least three hundred fifteen cases of violations of freedom of expression during the first seven months of 2019. The remaining private media outlets are encouraged towards ‘systematic self-censorship’ due to pressure by the Venezuelan government.
This inevitably results into the Venezuelan society lacking access to impartial information. There are only few opportunities to do research, and the life of students and professors is made more difficult because of actions taken by the government. The little independent and impartial research that is conducted is kept from Venezuelan civilians because the government has the majority of the media outlets under its control, and supresses media outlets that are not under their control to self-censorship. Furthermore, it is not possible for scholars to conduct research on an international level due to financial and governmental restrictions. Not only are academics prevented from freely conducting research, they also endure severe political discrimination, resulting in many students and professors being either arrested and imprisoned, or emigrating to a different country.
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