Bolivian prosecution accuses ex-president Jeanine ñez of genocide

The Bolivian Attorney General’s office said on Friday that presented a charge of “genocide” and other crimes against former transitional president Jeanine Áñez, for the death of twenty opposition protesters in 2019 after the resignation of Evo Morales.

The Attorney General, Juan Lanchipa, indicated that presented “before the Supreme Court of Justice an accusatory petition against the citizen Jeanine ñez”, which includes charges of “genocide”, punished with a prison sentence of 10 to 20 years, according to the Bolivian Penal Code.

The conservative Áñez was proclaimed interim president on November 12, 2019, two days after his predecessor, leftist Evo Morales, resigned after weeks of protests against his controversial re-election to a fourth term.

Morales fled the country after an OAS report found evidence of fraud.

After the elections, some 37 people were killed in clashes between supporters and opponents of Morales, as well as between demonstrators and security forces.

The accusation against ñez comes from the complaint of relatives of the victims of the repression on November 15, 2019 in the city of Sacaba, near the central city of Cochabamba, and on November 19 at the Senkata gas plant in the town of El Alto, neighboring La Paz, the prosecutor said.

In a report released this week the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (GIEI), claimed a total of 22 deaths in the two incidents, which he describes as “massacres”.

On your side, Lanchipa counts “20 dead” in Sacaba and Senkata.

These facts were “provisionally classified as genocide, serious and minor injuries and injuries followed by death”, stressed the prosecutor.

Áñez left power in November after the election of Luis Arce, an ally of Morales, and in March, she was arrested.

The former president did not comment on the accusation, but posted on Twitter on Tuesday: “We demand respect for the Constitution, guarantees with due process and equal conditions.”

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ñez, several of his ministers and former military and police chiefs are singled out by the current government and the ruling party for carrying out a coup against Morales in 2019, with the support of the Catholic Church, the European Union, right and center Bolivian politicians, as well as other governments in the region.

For a trial to be conducted against the former president, in preventive detention since March, the highest court must seek approval from Congress.

Approval only possible with two thirds of Congress members present, and although Morales’ ruling Movimiento Al Socialismo (MAS) controls parliament, he does not have a sufficient majority.

The opposition, which denounces a lack of independence of powers, He called for preventing a trial against ñez from being a political instrument.

“We must first reform the justice, because it is not independent and autonomous, As long as there is no judicial reform, nothing can be done ”, said MP Alejandro Reyes, from the centrist Citizen Community party.

His calls for judicial reform were supported by the influential Catholic Archbishop Jesús Juárez. But MAS Senator Adolfo Flores said “it is wrong” that the opposition “demands judicial reform”.

Justice Minister Iván Lima predicted that the process against Áñez will be slow and could happen with a new Supreme Court of Justice, because its current members their functions are completed in two years.

In Bolivian justice there are two other processes running against ñez: one for the alleged crimes of sedition, terrorism and conspiracy, and the other for alleged breach of duty.

(With information from AFP)

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