Amnesty International Talks About the January Violence

A two-person delegation from the UK chapter of Amnesty International has spent the past week and a half in Bolivia, on a pre-scheduled fact-finding visit to look at the state of human rights in the country. Not surprisingly, AI focused a good deal of its attention on the street violence that rocked Cochabamba on January 11th, leaving three men dead.

Today's Los Tiempos carries a short article covering AI's news conference in La Paz, following its meeting with Vice President Alvaro Garcia Linera.

"There either hasn't been any investigation or what investigation has taken place hasn't come to any conclusion," said AI's Esteban Beltran. "That leaves the impression that one can act with impunity."

Amnesty's point is well taken. Three men are dead (and more than a 160 other people were injured) and political authorities from all sides seem like that fellow in the soda ad from a few years ago, who accidentally knocks out the lights in an entire city and than slinks away to pretend like nothing happened.

To be sure, the key political actors involved have gone through elaborate public motions to place the blame on everyone else.

The Morales administration, whose backers occupied the city and blocked roads in and out, sought to blame Manfred Reyes Villa for not being present in Cochabamba. Tuto Quiroga and PODEMOS, finding itself being replaced by Reyes Villa as the leading opposition voice, also tried to pin blame on the Cochabamba Governor.

UN party deputies blamed MAS and called for prosecution of MAS Senator Omar Fernandez and other party leaders. Reyes Villa went on a world tour to try to put full blame on Morales. The Governor also announced with great fanfare in January that Human Rights Watch had committed to sending an investigative team to Cochabamba by the end of February, but to my knowledge no HRW team has been sent.

None of this is the same as an actual investigation to uncover the facts, carried out competently and by officials who's political neutrality is above suspicion.

Who murdered the three dead men – one city youth and two campesinos – and under what specific circumstances? Who had guns and where did they come from? How did a collision of protests turn into violent confrontation? What role did all of the various officials play in either sparking the violence or trying to prevent it?

If and when the truth comes out there will likely be ample blame to spread around. When blood is spilled, as it was here in January, truth needs to trump political loyalty and the blame game. Bolivian officials, at every level, should be capable of seeking out that truth, without relying on foreigners who drop in for a week to have a look.