Bolivia: Former president Anez faces 'genocide' charges over 2019 protests

Bolivia on Friday charged the ex-interim president Jeanine Anez with "genocide" and other humanitarian crimes linked to the 2019 deadly violence where eight young Bolivians were killed in El Alto amid the country’s political crisis. Citizens lay dead with bodies strewn across pavements, their feet poking from covers or flags, with their heads that exposed gaping bullet wounds after the confrontations broke out allegedly between the troops of the then right-wing Bolivian President Anez and supporters of her predecessor and rival, former president Evo Morales’ loyalists. 

On Aug 20, the Bolivian prosecutor's office told the press that it has filed charges of ‘genocide’ against the conservative President Anez for the brutal death of its 20 opposition protesters. Attorney General Juan Lanchipa handed Bolivia’s Supreme Court of Justice key documents that accused Jeanine Anez of humanitarian crimes and genocide against the casualties. If proven guilty, Anez could face 10 to 20 years imprisonment under the Bolivian penal code.

The latter had fled the country after an independent election audit by the Organization of American States (OAS) found that she had committed election fraud in November 2019 polls that promised her Presidential office. She is now being associated with at least two incidents of violence in November 2019 that claimed the lives of a total of 22 people and left scores of citizens injured. 

[Mourners grieve for Juan Tenorio, killed during clashes between security forces and supporters of former President Evo Morales during 2019 Nov protests. Photograph: Natacha Pisarenko/AP]

OAS described 2019 killings as 'massacres'

Earlier last week, the OAS released a declassified report wherein it described the violence that killed several people as “massacres” directed by Anez’s presidency. Attorney General Juan Lanchipa told the court that the casualties were "provisionally classified as genocide, serious and minor injury and injury followed by death,” according to the agencies. 

Bolivia's opposition condemned the charges, accusing Bolivia’s courts, electoral body, and pubic prosecutor's office of being the loyalists to the leftist President Luis Arce, supporter, and member of the Morales Movement for Socialism (MAS). For the case to go to the supreme court, it needs a two-thirds majority and authorization of the Bolivian Congress which the MAS controls. The party accused Anez’s administration of pulling off a coup in the country. But Anez's administration argued that Bolivia held transparent elections in October 2020 under her presidency and that she is being framed. 

[Bolivia's former interim President Jeanine Anez waves from a window of Miraflores women's jail to her supporters protesting for her release in La Paz, Bolivia. AP Photo]

"First of all, we need to reform the judiciary because it is not independent or autonomous,"  centrist lawmaker Alejandro Reyes said, as translated by RFI. "As long as there is no judicial reform, we cannot do anything,” he was reported as saying.

[Bolivia's former Energy Minister Rodrigo Guzman was detained by authorities in March and is escorted from the Forensic Investigations Institute into a police vehicle in La Paz, Bolivia. AP Photo]