Illegal Census

By Luis Manuel Aguana

The threat made by the official Ricardo Menéndez, Minister of Planning of the regime of Nicolás Maduro, in the sense that "those who do not participate in it (Census) will not have access to any information system" (see news in Spanish in Contrapunto.com, “quienes no participen en el censo no tendrán acceso a sistemas de información”, in  https://contrapunto.com/nacional/ricardo-menendez-quienes-no-participen-en-el-censo-no-tendran-acceso-a-sistemas-de-informacion/) is part of the system of threats with which tyranny seeks to subdue citizens.

They found another front to subdue the population based on the information they have about the citizens. Hence, for example, if you are not registered by an automated system controlled by the regime, you cannot supply yourself with food because they have control and the monopoly of food, having destroyed the country's productive system. For a long time there has been a black market for food and supplies in Venezuela. It is the same type of plague that has existed in Cuba for decades. It's not that there isn't, the problem is that you have to pay for it, typical of communist systems.

But now they're going for something of greater proportions: private property. Which is what you have, to effectively decide according to any criterion castro-communista-chavista-madurista if it should remain yours or not. And they begin by using what in Venezuela is untouchable for any family: your home.

In Venezuela, housing is essentially an institution. Acquiring a home is a historical milestone in the life of every Venezuelan. The Venezuelan family has been built for generations around it. Many families have painfully abandoned the country, leaving their homes closed, waiting for this endless nightmare to end in order to return to their homes, but our official opposition has preferred to first resolve the struggle for power, and who should occupy Miraflores after Maduro, before thinking about solving the problem for the Venezuelans. Sound petty to you? Castro-communism-madurism advances implacably with decisions that affect us all, like advancing the XV National Census of Population and Housing that corresponds to 2021, while our opposition sheds the daisy of whether or not there is a Cessation of Usurpation.

Therefore, due to the defenselessness that we citizens have in the face of this new onslaught of the regime, which has not even awakened a single public declaration in our representatives in the National Assembly, we have to close ranks in an active civic defense of what is ours, protected by the only thing we have: reason, the Constitution and the laws in force.

Minister Ricardo Menéndez violates the law when he informs the country that "...the Bolivarian Militia, the "People's Power" and Somos Venezuela, "...will be the great corps of enumerators that we are going to have deployed in the national territory"" (see in Spanish Gobierno levantará información inmobiliaria en la primera fase del Censo Nacional, in https://talcualdigital.com/index.php/2019/09/06/gobierno-levantara-informacion-inmobiliaria-en-la-primera-fase-del-censo-nacional/). Which law does Menendez violate?

The only legal instrument that mandates the statistical function in Venezuela is the Law of the Public Statistical Function (see the complete law in www.ine.gov.ve/documentos/INE/BasesLegales/pdf/LeydelaFuncionPublicaAct.pdf), that establishes in its Article 8, that only "duly qualified and authorized officials of statistical bodies may request data destined to the generation of statistical information of public interest to all natural and legal persons, private and public, national and foreign, residing in the territory of the Republic or of transit through it".

And even if the National Institute of Statistics, the only state body authorized by law to conduct census in Venezuela, allowed the Bolivarian Militia and the political representatives of the castro-chavista-madurista party Somos Venezuela to recruit them as authorized members of that body, all the information they raise will be protected under the internationally recognized Statistical Secret: “Article 23. Any natural or juridical person, public or private that intervenes in the statistical activity of the National Statistical System or has knowledge of protected data has the obligation to maintain statistical secrecy, even after concluding their professional activities or their link with statistical services..

However, there is something even more serious. According to Article 54 of the Public Statistical Function Law in force, Number 5: "The elaboration of the National Population and Housing Census shall be the competence of the National Statistics Institute and its approval corresponds to the National Assembly”. Where is the approval of the XV Population and Housing Census by the National Assembly, the only legitimate power in Venezuela? Citizens can hardly submit to a process that by law requires approval by the National Assembly, much less give their personal data to a regime that has historically demonstrated political use of them to discriminate and harm the population. Therefore, until such approval is established, that Menéndez Census IS ILLEGAL.

In Venezuela there is no legal framework for the Protection of Citizens' Personal Data. All Latin American countries, with the exception of Cuba, have legislation that strongly regulates the storage, processing, disposition and transmission of personal data in the hands of public and private entities, even though there are provisions for the protection of private life, Habeas Data and personal communications, contained in Articles 28, 48, 60 and 281 of the 1999 Constitution. If that legal system and the corresponding institutional data protection structures had existed in Venezuela, it would have been at least uphill for Luis Tascón to do what he did with his notorious list. There are still no laws and the regime and officials like Ricardo Menéndez are doing what they want with that institutional gap we still have. Thank God there is at least an internationally recognized "statistical secret.

On December 15, 1983 the German Constitutional Court declared the unconstitutionality of the German Census Act of 1982, deciding the following that it subsequently became law throughout the European Community: "The general right of personality...encompasses.... the power of the individual, derived from self-determination, to decide basically for himself when and within what limits it is appropriate to reveal situations concerning his own life...: the free emergence of the personality presupposes in the modern conditions of the elaboration of data protection of the individual against the collection, storage, use and unlimited transmission of data concerning the person...". This is how the international right to "Informative Self-Determination" was established. We Venezuelans have this right, even if we don't know it. And if we don't want to tell the regime's henchmen or anyone else what we possess because it's part of our privacy, Menéndez can proceed to stick his threats and the XV National Census of Illegal Population and Housing into his...pocket.

Caracas, September 23, 2019

Email: luismanuel.aguana@gmail.com
Twitter:@laguana

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