RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Although there is more than ample scientific evidence that the mRNA injections do not protect against infection and vaccinated persons keep spreading the SARS-CoV-2 virus, the far-left government of Bolivia threatens to take measures that should serve as a clear warning to all about the kind of world Latin America is fast approaching.
On Monday, the Bolivian government threatened penalties of up to ten years in prison, which will take effect on January 1, for not carrying a Covid-19 vaccination certificate to attend social events or enter certain establishments.
This comes just days after Guillermo Lasso’s Ecuador became the first country on the continent to introduce mandatory vaccination, following the controversial example of Austria and Germany.
Read also: Opinion – None of democracy’s basic elements survive in Bolivia and Nicaragua
Deputy Minister of Consumer Protection Jorge Silva stressed that the measure is “not a joke,” pointing out that people who do not carry the document and test positive for Covid-19 could be punished based on a public health offense.
“If I don’t carry these documents, and if they test me and I have Covid-19, I am violating the health of other users. Therefore, they can prosecute me,” he told Bolivian public television, as reported by El Deber newspaper.
In light of scientific research, this statement must be considered biased. More than 20 international studies prove that Jorge Silva is wrong. The latest information flow from Denmark further underlines this evidence, indicating that 90% of ‘Omicron’ cases in that country are vaccinated individuals.
“It’s not a joke, it’s not something that came out and (…) those who want to comply and those who don’t want to comply don’t,” he stressed.
Decree 4640 requires the presence of a vaccination certificate or a negative PCR to access certain areas – such as public facilities, financial institutions, religious institutions, or shopping centers – and to travel between departments.
According to the Bolivian Ministry of Health, more than 3.5 million people in Bolivia have been fully vaccinated to date, with nearly half a million citizens receiving the booster dose.
NONE OF THE DEMOCRACY’S BASIC ELEMENTS SURVIVE IN BOLIVIA
Governments, democratic leaders, the international community, and some media continue to describe Bolivia as a struggling democracy, highlighting the “justice crisis” in Bolivia to disguise symptoms of what is, in fact, a Cuban and Venezuelan type dictatorship.
“None of the “basic elements of democracy” survive in Bolivia; as Nicaragua, it is a country with many political prisoners, hundreds or even thousands of exiles, and totalitarian rulers. They are not democracies in crisis, they are dictatorships, and it is time they were described and addressed as such,” wrote in August Carlos Sánchez Berzain, attorney and political scientist and Director of the Interamerican Institute for Democracy.
The arbitrary threat to criminalize its citizens to an unprecedented extent because they do not want to take experimental injections that are only in circulation due to an emergency approval and have not gone through the usual approval process is a sign that Bolivia has already crossed the red line.
The “iter criminis” or criminal path to the imposition of dictatorships had as its leading player’s opponents who, negotiating their fears, crimes, and power spaces, surrendered their countries’ institutions in exchange for pardons, amnesties, perks, and interests.
Great traitors to the homeland who remain as “active opponents,” lending the appearance of democracy to dictatorships, while democratic leaders were prosecuted, imprisoned, and exiled, victims of “reputational assassination,” says Sánchez Berzain
In Bolivia, there is no respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. The country has over 45 political prisoners, including former president Jeanine Añez, ex-ministers, military, police, youths, and citizens who were part of or victims of the failed attempt to end the leftist dictatorship between October 2019 and October 2020.
The “rule of law” is not in force because through constitutional provisions and infamous legislation violating human rights: the law is the will of the dictator and the regime, as in Cuba and Venezuela, with “gag” laws, “retroactive” laws, laws to “fight corruption,” or “protection of sovereignty,” or simply “anti-imperialist” laws.
The justice system has been converted into an instrument of political persecution and the imposition of terror on the population. The “prosecutors and judges are executioners and proceedings are lynchings.”
The “judicialization of political persecution and repression” has been institutionalized as a Castro-Chavist method and is the most unmistakable evidence of the absence of “separation and independence of the public power bodies.”
With no respect for human rights or fundamental freedoms, without the rule of law and separation and independence of public powers, but with the opposite, Bolivia and Nicaragua cannot have, have not had in the past 15 years, and will not have “free and fair elections based on universal and confidential suffrage as an expression of popular sovereignty” nor “free political organization.”
In the October 2019 elections, what happened in Bolivia was criminal fraud confirmed by the OAS (Organization of American States) and the European Union, among others, fraud that was repeated with the collaboration of those who are now prisoners of the regime in October 2020. What happened in Nicaragua is identical.
The difference between democracy and dictatorship is not semantics, it is about abysmal oppositions that structure two completely antagonistic forms of life and government.
“Dictatorial regimes as violators of human rights should be excluded from the multilateral economic system, but in order not to suffer these and other consequences, they continue to pretend that Bolivia is a democracy in crisis, when in fact it is are pure and solid dictatorship that has been in place for years,” added the Director of the Interamerican Institute for Democracy.