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Patent Lawyer Petitions Human Rights Commission for Investigation of Anti-Semitic Attacks in Venezuela
The National Law Journal
May 01, 2009
A patent lawyer and a patent boutique are the nonobvious choices for legal representation before an international human rights body. But from the perspectives of rabbis from New York and Washington, Steven Lieberman and Washington's Rothwell, Figg, Ernst & Manbeck were the obvious choices to turn an international spotlight on alleged violent religious discrimination by Venezuela President Hugo Chavez.
Lieberman, a member, and Matthew Stephens, an associate at Rothwell Figg, filed a petition on April 23 with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, citing an "immediate need" for an investigation into the role of the Chavez government in instigating and condoning attacks on the Jewish community in Venezuela. In re Request for a General Hearing into Government Instigated Anti-Semitism in Venezuela.
The commission was created in 1959 and is expressly authorized to investigate allegations of human rights violations by members of the Organization of American States, which includes the United States.
The commission's seven members are elected in their individual capacity by the General Assembly of the OAS. Every country has the right to put up one candidate.
"It's an organization that has had an enormous amount of credibility in the Americas for over 50 years," said international law scholar and former commission member Robert Goldman of American University Washington College of Law. "Its jurisdiction is the broadest of any human rights body in the world."
If the commission agrees to open a case and conduct an investigation, it ultimately prepares a report, which includes its conclusions and also generally provides recommendations to the state concerned. This report is not public. The commission gives the state a period of time to resolve the situation and to comply with the recommendations of the commission. If the state does not resolve the situation, the commission may prepare a second report for publication or take the case to the Inter-American Court on Human Rights, which can order both monetary and nonmonetary reparations.
In their pro bono effort before the commission, Lieberman and Stephens told the commission: "President Hugo Chavez and his regime have instigated, with state support and state actors, a scheme of escalating violence and hostility towards the Jewish community of Venezuela -- a scheme designed to isolate, terrify and ostracize that community. Chavez and his regime have targeted the Jewish community and, through their public statements, have given comfort and aid to those, mainly in the government controlled media, who attack this small and vulnerable religious minority."
Lieberman said the Jewish community in Caracas has shrunk in the past several years from 20,000 to 12,000 residents, and attendance at the Hebraica Community School has dropped from 2,300 students to 1,200 students.
"Any Jew who can leave without abandoning a business or relatives is doing so," said Lieberman, adding that violence is escalating. A grenade was recently thrown at a synagogue where students study late into the night, he said, and community leaders are afraid to travel without bodyguards.
Lieberman's regular "day job" involves patent litigation, and he has handled a variety of lawsuits in the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, veterinary and medical products fields in both the district courts (and on appeal) and before the International Trade Commission. He also regularly represents clients on intellectual property matters relating to electronic commerce. His clients in this area include both Fortune 500 companies and Internet startup entities.
Lieberman said that "literally since the first day I started practicing law 25 years ago," he has done pro bono work for New York Rabbi Avi Weiss, founder and president of YCT Rabbinical School and senior rabbi of the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale.
Weiss and Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld of the National Synagogue in Washington went to Venezuela in March to investigate the Chavez government's role in anti-semitic attacks, said Lieberman.
"They asked me if we were willing to take on this project, and the firm enthusiastically said yes," he recalled.
Lieberman, who is making his first appearance before the commission, said he is seeking a general hearing into whether Chavez and his regime have violated Article 12 of the American Convention on Human Rights, which provides for the right of freedom of conscience and religion, and Article 13, which provides for the right to freedom of thought and expression.
"We seek a finding from the commission that Chavez's government has been involved in perpetrating these attacks," said Lieberman. "If there is such a finding, we hope policymakers in the United States and other countries that have influence with Venezuela will let that government know they are watching it closely and that international scrutiny will provide a deterrent."
If the world had let Adolf Hitler know in the 1930s that it was watching him closely and what the Nazis were doing in Germany, he added, Hitler would never have felt free to go forward with extermination of Jews.
"We now have an opportunity to stop what could become genocide," he said.
