A recent news report alleging that the Venezuelan Intelligence Service (SEBIN) is spying on the nation’s Jewish community is “deeply troubling,” according to Anti-Defamation League (ADL) director Abraham Foxman.
“Venezuela under the regime of Hugo Chavez has a history of harassing the Jewish community in that country. It is chilling to read reports that the SEBIN received instructions to carry out clandestine surveillance operations against members of the Jewish community, as described in detail in documents leaked by the Argentinean website, Analisis24,” Foxman said in a statement.
“In a country where the government and some of its followers have publicly accused the Jewish community of disloyalty and where the community’s institutions and houses of worship have been attacked, reports of this kind of surveillance add fuel to an already incendiary atmosphere inciting prejudice and hate,” Foxman said.
For more than a decade, the Venezuelan government-run media and the so-called “alternative” media controlled by Chavez government supporters have propagated anti-Jewish conspiracy theories and anti-Semitic stereotypes, according to Foxman.
“We strongly condemn these dangerous intimidation tactics and call on the current leadership of the Venezuelan government to immediately cease targeting the Jewish community,” he said.
The Analisis24 report includes several documents with targeted official information about Jewish Venezuelans. Among the documents posted by at least one website in Venezuela, are the official passport information of members of a nongovernmental organization (NGO) related to Holocaust remembrance.
The document includes all entry and exits from the country and where the NGO members traveled.
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