Above Photo: carol smiljan/Flickr
The Network of Intellectuals, Artists and Social Movements in Defense of Humanity reiterates its most emphatic rejection of the coup d’état against President Evo Morales, his government and the democratic institutions of the Plurinational State of Bolivia, which has submerged the country into an escalation of violence against the people, its historical project and even against other countries.
We denounce the systematic persecution being carried out against political, social, indigenous and peasant organizations and against any initiative or mobilization to demand the return to democratic institutions. Using operations of massive repression and the selective identification of objectives to be completed, the civilian and military strategy of the coup has left, in five days, the death of 24 people, hundreds injured and mass arrests without respect for any procedure of rights.
The Bolivian people have taken to the streets to defend a process of change that not only raised the country’s economic social indexes to show it as an international example, but also, thanks to its redistributive public policies, managed to guarantee unprecedented standards of living and universal rights, such as education, health, housing, and more. Moreover, Bolivia undertook an accelerated process of equality, inherent in its plurinational refoundation, which recognizes the existence of the 36 indigenous groups who share the constitutional project of ‘Living Well’.
We denounce to the world the racist and sexist character of the coup that is being imposed in Bolivia, with its targeted violent attacks against native peoples, in particular against indigenous women — who for the first time were recognized as involved political subjects in the process of change — and against political women such as the President of the Senate, the President of the Electoral Tribunal, the Minister of Health and others.
The coup d’état, driven by the economic elites, seeks to impose neoliberalism and with it the relinquishing of sovereignty, for the benefit of greedy foreign projects to plunder the country’s abundant minerals and other resources. Likewise, they aspire to benefit from the privatization of important infrastructures and other favorable conditions created in the process of change.
We warn about the regional extensions of the violation of democracy, which is expressed in the onslaught against sovereign bodies of integration such as UNASUR and ALBA, which inhibits the action and project capacities of Bolivia and all the countries of the region. The coup d’état in the Plurinational State of Bolivia is a coup against Latin America and the Caribbean, against its future project as a region.
We denounce that the systematic attacks against the countries with their own projects, especially Cuba and Venezuela, is framed as part of a deliberate strategy to form the alignment of all the countries of the region to that of the U.S. hemispheric geo-economic project and to the interests of their corporations.
The persecution and criminalization of solidarity projects between peoples, as expressed in the violation of the rights and guarantees of Cuban doctors, as well as against the diplomatic representations of Venezuela and Cuba itself, are in violation of international law and the principles of peaceful coexistence among peoples.
We call on the defenders of human rights and equality throughout the world to raise their voices in defense of the Bolivian people, against ethnocide and covert genocide that currently advances with impunity in the Plurinational State of Bolivia.
We appeal to the communicational solidarity of the world to publicly reveal by all possible means the truth about the coup d’état and to denounce the attacks on the free exercise of communication and journalism imposed by the de facto government.
We urge international organizations, such as the UN, the Non-Aligned Movement, other groups of nations and countries, Pope Francisco, Nobel Peace Prize laureates and other personalities and entities of good will to support the proposal for dialogue being promoted by President Evo Morales, so that peace returns to Bolivia and the country returns to its democratic and sovereign course.