Bolivia denies Israel accusations of hosting Iran, Hezbollah bases
MEMO | October 23, 2024
Bolivia has denied accusations that it is hosting Iranian and Hezbollah bases within its borders, urging South American nations not to fall for such allegations and become divided.
In a virtual press conference on Monday, Israel’s Ambassador to Costa Rica, Mijal Gur Aryeh, stated that there are “other countries in the region that have Iranian and Hezbollah bases, particularly Venezuela and Bolivia”, without providing evidence or specific details on such an allegation.
Bolivia’s Foreign Ministry yesterday denied those accusations, however, saying in a statement that “Bolivia is a pacifist state that promotes the culture of peace, which is why it has constitutionally assumed the prohibition of installing foreign military bases in its territory.”
Calling Aryeh’s words “irresponsible, unfounded, and self-serving”, the Ministry called on other South American countries “not to fall into these provocations that seek to affect the relations of brotherhood between states and peoples of the region.”
It asserted that the Ambassador’s comments ”seek to generate confrontation between Latin American states, governments and peoples, against the objective outlined in the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) of consolidating Latin America and the Caribbean as a zone of peace”.
Russia comments on coup attempt in Bolivia
RT | June 27, 2024
Moscow has pledged its “unwavering support” for Bolivian President Luis Arce after his government faced an attempted military coup on Wednesday.
The failed putsch was led by the commander of the Armed Forces, General Juan Jose Zuniga. His troops occupied Plaza Murillo, the central square in the Bolivian capital La Paz, and broke into the presidential palace, but faced resistance at home and rebukes internationally.
Russia has condemned the attempted coup and considers it imperative that internal political disputes be settled within the framework of constitutional law, the Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Thursday.
”We warn against attempts at destructive foreign interference in the domestic affairs of Bolivia and other nations. Such actions have previously led to tragic consequences for a number of countries and peoples, including in the Latin American region,” the ministry added.
The statement called Bolivia a “strategic partner.” Arce reiterated in late May his country’s intention to join BRICS, a group of not-Western economies that includes Russia among its founding members.
Bolivia fell prey to a coup in 2019, which ousted then-President Evo Morales and put into power the government of Senator Jeanine Anez. She is now serving a prison term for crimes that her regime committed during its deadly crackdown on mass protests.
Arce, who assumed office in 2020, and his mentor Morales, have been at odds over the future of their political force, the Movement for Socialism. However, Morales has unequivocally condemned the attempt to oust his former ally and urged the public to mobilize against General Zuniga. The coup leader was arrested hours after he tried to usurp power.
Countries Begin Downgrading Ties with Israel Over Relentless Bombing of Gaza
By Kyle Anzalone | The Libertarian Institute | November 1, 2023
A trio of South American countries, along with Jordan, have cut ties with Israel over the onslaught in Gaza. According to Palestinian sources, the Israeli military operations in Gaza have killed nearly 9,000 people, half of which are women and children.
On Tuesday, Bolivia took the most extreme step and cut all ties with Israel. Deputy Foreign Minister Freddy Mamani explained that Bolivia “decided to break diplomatic relations with the Israeli state in repudiation and condemnation of the aggressive and disproportionate Israeli military offensive taking place in the Gaza Strip.”
The next day, Tel Aviv responded by saying Sucre’s move was “capitulation to terrorism and to the ayatollah regime in Iran.”
Colombia and Chile announced they would recall their ambassadors to Israel. Colombian President Gustavo Petro posted on X, “I have decided to call our ambassador in Israel for consultation. If Israel does not stop the massacre of the Palestinian people we cannot be there.”
Chile posted a press release saying Santiago would also recall its diplomat.
“Given the unacceptable violations of International Humanitarian Law that Israel has incurred in the Gaza Strip, the Government of Chile has decided to recall the Chilean ambassador to Israel, Jorge Carvajal, to Santiago for consultations. …”
“Chile strongly condemns and observes with great concern that these military operations – which at this point in their development entail collective punishment of the Palestinian civilian population in Gaza – do not respect fundamental norms of International Law, as demonstrated by the more than eight thousand civilian victims, mostly women and children.”
Jordan joined the South American nations in downgrading ties with Israel. The Foreign Ministry announced it was recalling its ambassador. “Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi decided to immediately recall Jordan’s ambassador to Israel,” a statement said. The move is to reflect Amman’s condemnation of the “Israeli war that is killing innocent people in Gaza.”
While Tel Aviv receives near unconditional backing from Washington, Israel lacks the international community’s support for its war. On Monday, the UN General Assembly voted 120-14 for a ceasefire in Gaza.
After a Hamas attack in southern Israel on October 7, Tel Aviv launched a military operation. The bombing campaign and ground invasion have killed thousands of Palestinian civilians, including over 3,600 children.
US allies on alert after lithium-rich Bolivia inks defense deal with Iran
The Cradle | July 25, 2023
Members of Bolivia’s far-right opposition and the Argentinian government are demanding that La Paz disclose the details of a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on defense and security affairs signed between Defense Ministers Edmundo Novillo y Mohamad Reza Ashtiani in Tehran last week.
“They say that [Iran] will give us drones. Others say they will give us missiles. All of this sounds strange, even more so considering it involves Iran … I can’t understand why Bolivia is getting involved in such a complex and difficult relationship,” said lawmaker Gustavo Aliaga, who belongs to the Comunidad Ciudadana (CC) party.
In 2019, CC leader Carlos Mesa supported the US-orchestrated coup that forced socialist leader Evo Morales to flee Bolivia, leaving it under the control of a far-right dictatorship that conducted multiple massacres of Morales supporters and sought to surrender the country’s massive lithium deposits to western transnationals.
The Argentinian foreign ministry also demanded explanations from La Paz on Monday under pressure from the Delegation of Argentinian Israeli Associations (DAIA), who said the MoU “risks for the security of Argentina and the region” due to Tehran’s ties with Lebanese resistance group Hezbollah.
In a press release, DAIA called on the Argentinian government “to condemn this agreement and demand Bolivia reconsider its decision.”
Buenos Aires blames Hezbollah and Iran for the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center that left 85 dead. Both Tehran and Hezbollah deny the accusation.
The statements by the CC and DAIA came on the heels of a report by the neoconservative Institute for the Study of War (ISW), which claims that the deal between Tehran and La Paz includes the delivery of Iranian drones for the South American nation.
Last week, Iran agreed to help Bolivia combat drug trafficking along its borders and boost cooperation with the Bolivian army.
“[Due to] Bolivia’s critical needs in terms of border defense and the fight against drug trafficking, we will establish collaboration in equipment and specialized knowledge,” Ashtiani said following his meeting with the Bolivian defense minister last week.
For his part, Novillo said Iran is a “role model” for nations that seek freedom, highlighting the Islamic Republic’s “remarkable progress in science and technology, security, and the defense industry despite sanctions.”
Bolivia is the latest Latin American nation to ink a security agreement with the Persian nation, following in the footsteps of Nicaragua and Venezuela. Over the past year, the Islamic Republic has also made significant inroads with Brazil.
Iran and Bolivia also hold two of the largest lithium deposits in the world, with the Islamic Republic earlier this year announcing the discovery of a massive deposit holding a reported 8.5 million tons of the rare element. On the other hand, Bolivia has the richest known lithium deposits in the world, with an estimated 21 million tons.
Ex-Bolivian president Jeanine Anez sentenced to 10 years in prison
Press TV – June 11, 2022
Former Bolivian interim president Jeanine Anez has been sentenced to a 10-year prison term more than a year after being arrested on charges of leading a US-backed plot in 2019 to oust re-elected socialist president Evo Morales.
Anez will serve 10 years in a women’s prison in La Paz, the administrative capital’s First Sentencing Court announced on Friday in a ruling that came three months after her trial began.
Convicted of crimes “contrary to the constitution and a dereliction of duties,” the former right-wing television presenter was sentenced to “a punishment of 10 years” over charges stemming from when she was a senator, before becoming president.
Government prosecutors, however, had asked for a 15-year jail term for Anez, who has been held in pre-trial detention since March 2021 while dismissing her trial as “political persecution.”
Also sentenced to 10 years were the former chief of Bolivia’s armed forces, William Kaliman, and the country’s ex-police chief Yuri Calderon — both of whom have reportedly fled the country and remain on the run.
This is while Anez still faces a separate, pending court case for sedition and other charges related to her short presidential tenure.
At the start of her presidency, the US-sponsored rightist politician had called in the police and military to restore order. The post-election unrest left 22 people dead, according to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR).
For that, Anez also further faces genocide charges, which carry prison sentences of between 10 and 20 years.
The IACHR described the 22 deaths that occurred at the beginning of Anez’s presidential stint as “massacres,” and found they indicated “serious violations of human rights.”
Unlike the other accusations against Anez, the case will be dealt with by congress, which will decide whether or not to hold a trial.
The ex-president had already declared she would appeal if convicted, claiming, “We will not stop there. We will go before the international justice system.”
Anez became Bolivia’s interim president in November 2019 after Morales, who had won a fourth consecutive term as president, fled the country in the face of what was widely viewed as a US-sponsored unrest purportedly against alleged electoral fraud.
The US-led and Washington-based Organization of American States (OAS) claimed at the time that it had found “clear evidence” of voting irregularities in favor of Morales, a popular, anti-US president who was re-elected into office for 14 years.
Many potential successors to Morales — all members of his MAS party – were also forced to resign or flee, leaving right-wing opposition member Anez, then vice-president of the Senate, next in line.
Virtually unknown, the lawyer and former TV personality proclaimed herself interim president of the Andean nation on November 12, 2019, two days after Morales’ forced resignation.
The Constitutional Court recognized Anez’s mandate as interim, caretaker president, but MAS members disputed her legitimacy.
Elections were held a year later, and won by Luis Arce – a close ally of Morales.
With the presidency and congress both firmly in MAS control, Morales returned to Bolivia in November 2020.
After handing over the presidential reins to Arce, Anez was detained in March 2021, charged with illegitimate assumption of power.
“I denounce before Bolivia and the world that in an act of abuse and political persecution, the MAS government has ordered my arrest,” she proclaimed in a Twitter post at the time.
Bolivian Coup Regime Sought to Assassinate Luis Arce
Bolivia’s Interior Minister Eduardo Del Castillo informs of an assassination attempt against Luis Arce in 2020 at a press conference on October 18, 2021. Photo: Ministerio De Gobierno
Kawsachan News | October 18, 2021
Bolivia’s Interior Ministry has revealed that Colombian mercenaries, who participated in the assassination of President Jovenel Moise in Haiti, entered Bolivia days before the 2020 election. Fernando Lopez, Defense Minister under Jeanine Añez, was in contact with mercenary groups, with whom he intended to carry out a second coup.
In a press conference, Interior Minister Eduardo del Castillo named Germán Alejandro Rivera García, a Colombian citizen who entered Bolivia on October 16, 2020 and who was later arrested for the assassination of Jovenel Moise. He was followed by Colombian citizen Arcángel Pretel Ortiz and Venezuelan citizen Antonio Intriago, who run the Miami-based ‘security firm’ Counter Terrorist Unit Security (CTU), which hired the mercenaries who murdered Moise.
The mercenaries stayed at the high-end Hotel Presidente in La Paz, just two blocks away from the presidential palace. The purpose of their meeting was to pursue leads with then Defense Minister Fernando Lopez for lucrative contracts for a hit on Luis Arce.
Castillo said, “Days before the elections, the paramilitaries who would go on to kill the President of Haiti, as well as mercenary contractors such as Mr. Arcángel Pretel and Mr. Antonio Intriago were in the country. According to the information we obtained, their intention was to end the life of President Luis Arce”.
Earlier in the year, leaked audios published by The Intercept revealed that Lopez was in contact with other Miami-based mercenaries to coordinate a second coup. In one audio, Lopez said, “The military high command is already in preliminary talks… the struggle, the rallying cry, is that [the MAS] wants to replace the Bolivian armed forces and the police with militias, Cubans, and Venezuelans. That is the key point. They (the police and armed forces) are going to allow Bolivia to rise up again and block an Arce administration. That’s the reality.”
President Luis Arce addressed the revelations today at a summit with social movement in La Paz, saying, “Our Interior Minister revealed this information at an opportune time, brothers; They wanted to make an attempt on my life. To those right-wing murderers, we are going to respond with a phrase from (historic Bolivian socialist leader) Marcelo Quiroga Santa Cruz: We know that sooner or later they will make us pay for what we are doing, we are willing to pay that price, we were always willing. We will never shy away from danger because there is something more fearsome than that enemy who is looking for a way to kill us. A guilty conscience is much worse, we would not bear ourselves if we did not fulfill our duty.”
Bolivia: General Montero Arrested for Senkata Massacre
teleSUR | September 8, 2021
Former Commander-General of the Bolivian Police Rodolfo Montero was arrested on Tuesday after giving his statement about the episodes of violence which occurred in the Senkata massacre on Nov. 19, 2019.
“The Public Prosecutor’s Office has determined the arrest of the former Commander of the Bolivian Police, Rodolfo Montero, for the crimes of genocide, homicide, and serious injuries in relation to the Senkata massacre” Interior Minister Carlos Del Castillo tweeted.
The resolution of the Prosecutor’s Office is part of a judicial process that will continue through a precautionary hearing, in which the judges may or may not ratify the imprisonment of Montero.
In Nov. 2019, the United States supported a coup against President Evo Morales which was executed on the pretext that the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) had committed fraud in the presidential elections. The breakdown of the constitutional order was led by Jeanine Añez, a senator who proclaimed herself “Interim President.”
Workers, farmers, students, and MAS supporters took the streets to repudiate the coup. After being inaugurated as Commander-General, Montero spearheaded repressive actions that were brutal, disproportionate, and unjustified.
On Nov. 15, the Bolivian security forces repressed a demonstration in Sacaba, leaving ten people dead from gunfire. The same happened only four days later, when citizens protesting against the Añez regime blocked the Bolivian Oilfields plant in Senkata, where 11 citizens were killed and 78 wounded.
Currently, some military and police chiefs have been prosecuted for Sacaba and Senkata massacres, while others have left the country. This week, relatives of the victims, activists and public officials held a march in La Paz to demand results from the Prosecutor’s Office and the judiciary.
The Añez Regime Tried To Assassinate Morales, Mexico Reveals
teleSUR | September 1, 2021
On Tuesday, Mexican Air Force (FAM) pilot Miguel Hernandez disclosed that a projectile could have been fired at the aircraft in which he rescued former President Evo Morales after the 2019 coup in Bolivia.
“Upon taking off from Cochabamba airport in Bolivia, the pilot observed a rocket-like trail of light from the left side of the cockpit when he nearly reached 1,500 feet over the ground,” FAM stated.
To avoid the projectile, Hernandez made a turn to the opposite side of its trajectory and increased the ascent speed. While making this maneuver, he observed that the projectile returned to the ground in a parabola-shaped trace without reaching much height.
The pilot did not communicate the incident to his crew so as not to increase tension during a diplomatic mission whose purpose was to lead Morales to Mexico as a political asylee. The aircraft was chased by a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) while taking off from Cochabamba airport. Therefore, he suspects that the rocket could have come from this launcher.
“I got a lump in my throat when I thought what could have happened in our country if Morales had been murdered. The shadows of terror sown over the Bolivian people cannot go unpunished,” Gabriela Montaño, Health Ministry during the Morales administration, tweeted.
In a plenary meeting of the Bolivian Congress, President Luis Arce affirmed that he would not rest until Jeanine Añez’s facto government is punished for torture, persecution, illegal detentions, and murders that it committed during the coup d’état.
On Aug. 19, the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (GIEI) confirmed that 38 citizens were killed and over 100 were injured during the protests against the Añez regime, which allowed Armed Forces and the Police to act with impunity during their repressive operations against Bolivians.
Report Confirms Human Rights Violations in the 2019 U.S.-Backed Coup in Bolivia
By Ramona Wadi | Strategic Culture Foundation | August 23, 2021
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 U.S.-backed coup’s 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 U.S. was swift to recognize Anez as interim president as well as to endorse the Organization of American State’s (OAS) report in 2019, which alleged electoral fraud in Bolivia with the intent to keep Evo Morales in power.
The former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s address to the OAS office in Washington gives quite a succinct summary of U.S. interference in Latin America – a twisted narrative of alleged democratic intent trickling down from the U.S., when the facts speak otherwise. Pompeo spoke of the U.S. role in recognizing Juan Guaido as Venezuela’s 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.”
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 U.S., with its long history of supporting military coups in the region, not a word was uttered about Anez’s 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 Research’s 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 Bolivia’s most recent memory of U.S.-backed violence. Just a day prior to the Sacaba massacres, on November 14, 2019, Anez signed a decree which established impunity for Bolivia’s armed forces.
Contrary to the rushed way in which the Trump Administration had recognised Anez as Bolivia’s legitimate leader, the U.S. is reluctant to comment on the GIEI report findings which established the U.S.-backed regime as having committed human rights violations. This year, however, the U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken issued a statement in March after Anez’s arrest, stating he was “deeply concerned by growing signs of anti-democratic behavior and politicization” with regard to Bolivia’s quest for justice.
Of Bolivia’s quest for justice now, the U.S. can hardly be expected to voice support. Yet the report goes a long way in overturning the U.S. intervention narrative. Bolivia’s victims are victims of a U.S.-backed coup, and U.S.-funded political violence should equally share the spotlight now highlighting Anez’s short-lived legacy of human rights violations in Bolivia.