Bolivian court convicts former military officers

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Associated Press

Bolivian court convicts former military officers
Published 02:35 p.m., Tuesday, August 30, 2011

LA PAZ, Bolivia (AP) — Bolivia's highest court has convicted five former top military commanders of genocide in a 2003 crackdown on protesters that claimed at least 64 civilian lives. It gave them prison sentences ranging from 10-15 years.

The court also convicted two former Cabinet ministers of complicity in the killings and sentenced them each to three years.

Popular anger over the crackdown forced then-President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada into U.S. exile. The protesters had been demanding he halt plans to export natural gas to Chile.

Since being elected in 2005, President Evo Morales has tried to bring Sanchez de Lozada and members of his government to trial.

Read more: http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/article/Bolivian-court-convicts-former-military-officers-2147744.php

[arcane1]

1. Hell yes!!

:toast:

[Judi Lynn]

2. Bolivia: Senior officials jailed over 2003 protests

30 August 2011 Last updated at 17:36 ET
Bolivia: Senior officials jailed over 2003 protests

Bolivia's Supreme Court has convicted five senior military officers in connection with the killings of 64 people during protests in 2003.

Four former generals and an admiral were sentenced to between 10 and 15 years in prison. Two former ministers were jailed for three years each for complicity in what was described as a "genocide".

~snip~
The Bolivian government has been seeking the extradition of at least eight former officials - the then President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, and seven former ministers. They are living abroad or have gone into exile in the US, Peru and Spain.

President Sanchez de Lozada left the country before the end of his second term in office after the killings. He has been living in the US ever since.

More:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-14725689

[Judi Lynn]

3. Here's information on this massacre you may want to scan:

Black October
Victims of a Bolivian massacre seek justice in Miami.
By Tim Elfrink
published: December 18, 2008

~snip~
In the Eighties, foreign companies discovered huge natural gas deposits, and Bolivia seemed poised to transform from the redheaded stepchild of South America into a thriving and prosperous energy hub. President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, or Goni, was the man Washington entrusted to push for privatization of gas lines, promising his people that foreign investment would mean more schools and economic development for poor villages outside the capital.

In the early days of his first term, Goni, a son of privilege who had grown up in the States, earned plaudits from the West for his comprehensive economic reforms, which privatized many businesses and invited in global corporations — including, prominently, Enron. For the young Clinton administration, Goni's policies represented the heart of what the United States hoped to accomplish across sluggish Latin American markets. But those same initiatives only deepened divisions between the mostly white ruling class of Bolivia and the impoverished Aymaras and Quechuas in the western highlands. Indian leaders in desperately poor mountain villages had never forgotten the Spanish who raped the land for silver, and Goni's promises of trickle-down wealth from foreign investment had so far failed to materialize.

Goni left executive office in 1997 after one term, with the nation's economy still in turmoil. Five years later, he pulled off a stunning comeback in the 2002 elections, with the help of some expensive hired guns out of Washington: James Carville's political team — Greenberg Carville Shrum — which had helped Clinton win the presidency five years beforehand. In the final tally, Goni picked up 22.46 percent of the votes — just enough to win, but not enough to ensure popular support.

~snip~
Accounts vary on exactly what happened next, but everyone agrees the negotiations quickly fell apart. The confrontation soon became physical, some said. Others reported Berzaín throwing out an ethnic slur — "indios!" — at the natives.

"One of the campesinos threw a punch and hit Berzaín in the face," says Jim Shultz, an American who lives in Bolivia and has run the nonprofit Democracy Center in Cochabamba for more than a decade. Shultz interviewed dozens of witnesses and village leaders after the incident. "After , he walked away and told his military commanders: 'Just kill them,'" Shultz says.

More:
http://www.miaminewtimes.com/content/printVersion/1280808/

http://www.elmundo.com.bo.nyud.net:8090/imagenes/1%20p%2011el%20zorro.jpg

Defense Minister Carlos Sánchez Berzaín

http://www.opinion.com.bo.nyud.net:8090/opinion/articulos/2011/0829/fotos/100706_600.jpg

http://wiki.chadblack.net.nyud.net:8090/images/5/5c/G_1.jpg

Gonzalo “Goni” Sánchez de Lozada.

After he was tucked safely away in the comfort of the loving arms of his new country, Carlos Sánchez Berzaín was moved to try to drag in Hugo Chavez' name and accuse him of being behind the indigenous anger at the US-educated and supported clown, "Goni."

Tuesday September 25 , 2007
Bolivia denies Chávez' role in 2003 uprising

- Claims that Chávez funded overturn of Sánchez de Lozada

The government of Bolivia Monday described as "cowardice" the claims that Venezuelan ruler Hugo Chávez financed in 2003 the revolt that overthrew then Bolivian President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada. The accusation was made in the United States by Carlos Sánchez Berzaín, the former Minister of Defense and former strongman under Sánchez de Lozada (1993-1997 and 2002-2003), in an interview published last Sunday in Cochabamba newspaper Los Tiempos.

"Evo Morales brought to Bolivia in August and September 2003 an amount of money that Hugo Chávez gave him in Venezuela to destabilize and overthrow the government of Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, and there are other elements and I am going to make available" about this issue, Sánchez Berzaín said.

The former official also accused Morales of receiving significant support from Cuba and the rebel Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC) to unseat Sánchez de Lozada, currently in exile in Washington.

According to Morales' spokesman Alex Contreras, Sánchez Berzaín' statements are "a synonym of cowardice," as he and Sánchez de Lozada "should be here, facing the Bolivian justice" in connection with the 63 people who were killed during the crackdown of a number of social protests in 2003.

More:
http://english.eluniversal.com/2007/09/25/en_pol_art_bolivia-denies-chave_25A1064677.shtml
(Venezuelan opposition newspaper)

(The proof for that asinine claim has never materialized, of course.)

[Judi Lynn]

4. Gone, But Not Forgotten:Why Bolivians want the United States to extradite their exiled ex-president

May 2, 2007
Gone, But Not Forgotten
Why Bolivians want the United States to extradite their exiled ex-president
By Wes Enzinna

When, on Oct. 15, 2003, Filomena León was shot in the back by military soldiers in the Bolivian town of Patacamaya, near El Alto, she had no reason to believe hers would be anything other than an anonymous death in the Andes.

“I was in front of the soldiers and the bullet entered me from behind, into my spine,” León, an indigenous miner and mother of six, told Verónica Auza and Claudia Espinoza, editors of Gas War Memorial Testimony. The shot left her paralyzed, and she told Auza and Espinoza on April 20, 2004, “(After being shot) I wanted to die. … I still feel the same.” She died 10 days later from a lethal infection. But three years later, as the country struggles to rebuild its economy and empower its large indigenous population, Bolivians are rallying to remember—and vindicate—the death of León as well as 66 others who were slain.

In October 2003, protests erupted in the impoverished and largely Aymara Indian city of El Alto over a government plan to export natural gas to the United States via Chile under economic terms protesters said would not benefit most Bolivians. The demonstrators filled El Alto and organized strategic blockades to stop gas from reaching the nearby capital of La Paz and later being exported. They also demanded nationalization of the country’s gas reserves.

President Gonzalo “Goni” Sánchez de Lozada, widely recognized as the architect of Bolivia’s neoliberal “shock therapy,” had orchestrated the gas deal, and on Oct. 11 he ordered the military into El Alto to quell the protests and break the blockades. By the end of October, more than 60 demonstrators were dead and 400 wounded—the result of soldiers firing “large-caliber weapons, including heavy machine guns,” into the crowd, as the Catholic Church testified in a public statement. León, stopped by troops along with four others, was unarmed when she was shot. Among the others killed were small children and a pregnant woman. In the wake of the massacres, Sánchez de Lozada fled the country for the United States, where he remains today.

More:
http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3136/gone_but_not_forgotten/