IACHR report implicates Bolivia’s ex-president Morales in Human Rights violations

At a time when the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) could not find a way to achieve unity around Evo Morales or Luis Arce, someone leaked a report from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) on a series of serious human rights violations in Bolivia during the government of Evo Morales.

This report speaks specifically about the events of the Hotel Las Americas operation in 2009, where five mercenaries (three foreigners and two Bolivians) were surprised while sleeping in the early hours of the morning, detained, tortured, and extrajudicially executed by State forces, and under orders of Morales himself, head of “the culture of peace”.

The so-called “terrorism case” pointed to the existence of an irregular armed group that allegedly intended to lead the department of Santa Cruz to secession and attempt against the then President Evo Morales on behalf of opposition political leaders, who were later also illegally detained and prosecuted, and extorted for that purpose.

However, following the petition filed in September 2009 by the mother of Irishman Michael Dwyer, one of the foreigners killed in the police operation of April 2009, and lawyer Gerardo Prado Herrera, which was admitted only in 2018, the IACHR concludes that “The Bolivian State is responsible for the violation of the rights to life, personal integrity, personal liberty, judicial guarantees, protection of honor and dignity, and judicial protection of the American Convention on Human Rights.”

In addition, the IACHR makes recommendations in its report, including:

• Reparations for the victims: provide the appropriate physical and mental health measures for their rehabilitation.
• Adopt the necessary measures so that these events do not happen again.
• Initiate a criminal investigation to fully clarify the facts, identify all possible responsibilities and impose the corresponding sanctions.
• Since these are serious human rights violations, the State cannot invoke the statute of limitations or other exonerations of criminal responsibility to fail to comply with this recommendation.

ARCE CATACORA, AT A CROSSROADS

Among other important aspects to highlight in the IACHR report is the fact that the report was issued in December 2021.

Still, Wilfredo Chavez, a former personal lawyer of Morales and current Attorney General of the State, kept it hidden for at least nine months until it was leaked to the local press in recent days, probably by a supporter of Arce, presumably to further deteriorate the figure of Morales.

Likewise, Luis Arce would have a trial against Evo Morales, implying the definitive end of his political career and his freedom.

But if he does not accept his responsibility, it would allow the commission to accuse the Bolivian State, taking the case to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.

However, not only Morales, García Linera, and the members of his cabinet, as well as more than 20 members of the police force, are implicated in the staging of the case, but also the Contingency Unit of the Venezuelan Embassy in Bolivia, which, among other aspects, would have paid for the mercenaries’ tickets and whose soldiers would have been staying at the Hotel Las Américas hours before the execution operation.

Thus, having placed the Bolivian Police under the command of a foreign force, in this case, the Venezuelan one may be part of a new cause among many others against Morales, in this case, for having committed an act of treason.

A JAIL CELL AWAITS EVO MORALES

The reactions of both Morales and some of his supporters – 48 of his former ministers among them – have been to demand “his correction,” if not outright rejection.

For example, the president of the Chamber of Senators, Andrónico Rodríguez, said: “Brother Evo Morales, at the time, like any patriotic president, did the right thing to defend the integrity, sovereignty, and territorial unity of the country”.

In the same line, Evo Morales affirmed from his social networks: “It is necessary to resume that trial so that never again anyone ventures to try to divide our Homeland. Not to do so would be to be an accomplice of the coup plotters who sought impunity for the separatists”.

And he added: “In due time, we will reveal to our people how and who promoted the use of this case to try to politically defenestrate us”.

The truth is that Evo Morales is now so lonely and desperate in the situation that he does not know who else to crash against and throws phrases into the air and in all directions, such as “from the front, they kiss me, from the back, they kick you”, or “some of us are of conviction, others are of occasion or ambition”.

The case was closed in 2020 with the acquittal of all the defendants who were still being prosecuted after Arturo Murillo, then minister of the government of Jeanine Áñez, and the Bolivian Prosecutor’s Office withdrew their accusations.

It means that, even though it was always known that this was a case built by Evo Morales and his government and that he made the greatest effort to build a lying narrative, carry out permanent political persecutions, and invade the Judicial Power, the truth has finally come to light in the best possible way and at the best possible moment, and the only thing left for Morales and his accomplices, sooner or later, is a jail cell for grave crimes committed throughout his government.

A NEW CABILDO IN SANTA CRUZ

In the meantime, as the Arce government weakens in the face of so many urgent problems to attend to, the purpose of freedom and democracy through a regime of autonomous public administration in Santa Cruz, which precisely the Morales government tried to silence in 2009, today gains strength with the celebration of a new peaceful and historic protest cabildo this Friday, September 30.

This Friday, the people of Santa Cruz are meeting with the great national expectation to demand the completion of a population and housing census, more than ten years behind schedule, which will allow the reordering of the allocation of public resources for a department that has grown with a notable difference compared to the rest of the country, due to the migratory flow and the favorable climate of its people to generate wealth, and even more so in an environment of growing economic crisis.

With information from Gaceta