GIEI Report Confirms Human Rights Violations in the 2019 U.S.-Backed Coup in Bolivia by Ms Ramona Wadi!
(2021-08-23 at 23:21:40 )

GIEI Report Confirms Human Rights Violations in the 2019 U.S.-Backed Coup in Bolivia by Ms Ramona Wadi!

Bolivias victims are victims of a United States-backed coup, and United States-funded political violence should equally share the spotlight now highlighting Anezs short-lived legacy of human rights violations in Bolivia.

A 471-page report by the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts for Bolivia (GIEI-Bolivia) recently presented to Bolivian President Luis Arce in La Paz on Tuesday this week confirms the United States-backed coups persecution of opponents, including "systematic torture and summary executions" in 2019. The report is based on interviews with 400 victims of the Anez regime and other witnesses, as well as 120,000 files related to abuses between September 1 and December 31, 2019.

The findings prompted Bolivian prosecutors to charge the self-styled "interim leader" Jeanine Anez with genocide. Anez faces charges over the massacres in Sacaba and Senkata, where 20 protestors were killed by the security forces.

At the announcement of her arrest in March this year, Anez tweeted, "They are sending me to detention for four months to await a trial for a "coup" that never happened."

Yet the United States was swift to recognize Anez as interim president as well as to endorse the Organization of American States (OAS) report in 2019, which alleged electoral fraud in Bolivia with the intent to keep Evo Morales in power.

The former United States Secretary of State Mike Pompeos address to the OAS office in Washington,D.C. gives quite a succinct summary of United States interference in Latin America - a twisted narrative of alleged democratic intent trickling down from the United States, when the facts speak otherwise.

Mr. Pompeo spoke of the United States role in recognizing Juan Guaido as Venezuelas interim president and how members of the OAS followed suit, as well as a historical overview which attempted to disfigure the leftist movements in Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s as "producing repression for their own kind at home."

Mr. Pompeo also described Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela as the countries through which "we face stains of tyranny on a great canvas of freedom in our hemisphere," before moving on to praise the OAS for its role in ousting Morales. And as is typical of the United States, with its long history of supporting military coups in the region, not a word was uttered about Ms Anezs persecution of the indigenous in Bolivia.

Yet the OAS report was denounced by the New York Times as having "relied on incorrect data and inappropriate statistical techniques." The Center for Economic and Policy Researchs Co-Director Mark Weisbrot declared, "If the OAS and Secretary General Luis Almagro are allowed to get away with such politically driven falsification of their electoral observation results again, this threatens not only Bolivian democracy but the democracy of any country where the OAS may be involved in elections in the future."

The GIEI report has established that the Anez regime committed summary executions, torture and sexual violence against indigenous people. Through the report, the Sacaba and Senkata massacres were revisited and will once again form part of Bolivias most recent memory of United States-backed violence. Just a day prior to the Sacaba massacres, on November 14, 2019, Ms Anez signed a decree which established impunity for Bolivias armed forces.

Contrary to the rushed way in which the Donald Trump Administration had recognised Ms Anez as Bolivias legitimate leader, the United States is reluctant to comment on the GIEI report findings which established the United States-backed regime as having committed human rights violations. In March this year, however, the U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken issued a statement in March after Ms Anezs arrest, stating he was "deeply concerned by growing signs of anti-democratic behavior and politicization" with regard to Bolivias quest for justice.

Of Bolivias quest for justice now, the United States can hardly be expected to voice support. Yet the report goes a long way in overturning the United States intervention narrative. Bolivias victims are victims of a United States-backed coup, and United States-funded political violence should equally share the spotlight now highlighting Ms Anezs short-lived legacy of human rights violations in Bolivia.

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