HRW says ‘coup’ occurred in Bolivia

Human Rights Watch (HRW) says the series of developments that led to the resignation of Bolivia’s former president Evo Morales constituted a coup, raising the alarm about human rights abuses by the country’s military at the time.

Jose Miguel Vivanco, the director of HRW’s Americas division, denounced on Wednesday the Bolivian military’s withdrawal of support for the 60-year-old Morales.

“Protesters have increased, and the head of the army had nothing better to do than to suggest that Evo Morales resign. In my opinion, that is a coup. For the head of the army, a subordinate who has no say on deciding who stays and who goes, to suggest that a standing president should resign, [that amounts to a coup],” Vivanco said.

Morales, who had been in power for nearly 14 years, was granted asylum in Mexico after his resignation but vowed not to back down and continue fighting from abroad. The country’s first indigenous president later left Mexico for Argentina, where leftist leader Alberto Fernandez took office in December 2019.

Bolivian prosecutors have issued an arrest warrant for Morales over allegations of sedition and terrorism, leveled by the government of Jeanine Anez, Bolivia’s right-wing interim president. Morales has denied the charges.

The new Bolivian regime has also threatened to imprison Morales for the rest of his life.

Meanwhile, Vivanco also lashed out at the “passivity” of Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s government and its failure to pacify the country after more than a decade of runaway gang violence.

“The human rights problem in Mexico is a debacle. Here there are criminals that are less than human. This is a debacle from the point of view of human rights, from the point of view of the principles of human rights, and what hurts and which really annoys people is the passivity, the normality of authorities in this debacle,” he said.

SS