December 6, 2022, 4:00 AM
December 6, 2022, 4:00 AM
The main accusation is for the crime of terrorismeither. The unions are five and all of them are part of the Inter-institutional Committee that led the protest for the census with the 36-day strike. From the Government and the Civic Committee they see a “revanchist” desire.
The information was revealed yesterday from the State Attorney General’s Office and It was done after the position established by the Government to prosecute the Santa Cruz leaders who commanded the mobilization. For this reason, there are more than a dozen criminal types and at least three lawsuits that were activated in La Paz to prosecute crimes that could have been committed in Santa Cruz, such as discrimination, attack against the freedom of work, attack against public services and undue use of influenceamong others, in addition to the greater cause that has to do with “terrorism”.
The attorney general, Juan Lanchipa, announced that These demands, which were born in La Paz, will be unified in a single cause. Of course, it still remains for a judge to hear these complaints formally and formally begin the investigations.
In this “unified” lawsuit, the governor of Santa Cruz, Luis Fernando Camacho; the president of the Civic Committee, Rómulo Calvo, and the legal adviser of the Inter-institutional Committee, José Luis Santistevan, in addition to the rector and vice-rector of the Gabriel René Moreno Autonomous University (Uagrm), Vicente Cuéllar and Reinerio Vargas. The main accuser is Juan Marcelo Mayta, Executive Secretary of the Central Obrera Regional (COR) of El Alto.
“Due to the connection of cases, the accumulation of all the complaints that have been filed against Mr. Camacho, Calvo and others. These cases have been accumulated in a single one that is located in the Departmental Prosecutor’s Office of La Paz”, said Lanchipa.
For his part, the Santa Cruz prosecutor, Roger Mariaca, explained that a La Paz judge declined jurisdiction for the crimes to be investigated so that the case falls to an anti-corruption judge. “There was a declination of jurisdiction in the city of La Paz, but on a material basis because it was expanded for the crime of terrorism. This complaint is from November 11, 2022. This case continues in La Paz. Those five people are being accused in La Paz. What has been done is to accumulate and, based on the new crimes, pass the case to an anti-corruption judge, ”he specified.
Of course, the prosecutor Mariaca reported that there is another complaint that originated in Sucre and was sent to Santa Cruz, this time only against Camacho and Calvo, for incitement to commit a crime, a crime that could have been committed in the burning of the departmental headquarters of the peasants. This case was referred to prosecutor Osvaldo Tejerina to continue the corresponding process.
The Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (GIEI), in its report on the 2019 crisis, called for the elimination of the criminal offenses of sedition and terrorism.
“The urgent need to review criminal legislation regarding ambiguous criminal offenses, such as terrorism, is noted., sedition and non-compliance with duties, to avoid using them arbitrarily”, the international report states. The Constitutional Court eliminated only the crime of “sedition”.
Efraín Suárez, Management Advisor for the Government of Santa Cruz, said that “The Government has activated a persecution operation against the people of Santa Cruz because of the civic strike, this operation —he added— is being carried out with the Prosecutor’s Office and with the Judiciary”.
“Santa Cruz has shown Bolivia that there is another vision of the country, a vision that does not accept going against the rights of citizens and that the country is managed at the whim of the president, but rather that it has to be managed based on the laws, a country that does not want to be repressed by the Police and that the Police rather protect them and take care of their family,” said Suárez , who specified that Camacho was not notified of this process.
The Committee for Santa Cruz pointed out that the Government “is with the desire for revenge and hatred” and “using justice as its repressive arm”, it is initiating criminal proceedings “to punish”.
“We are in a position to present two million witnesses by the time we are notified. and for this we are going to open notarized books”, stated earlier Vicente Cuéllar, who considered that they want to “prosecute everyone’s right to protest”.
“The ones who have induced the violence are those shock groups that tried to break the peaceful strike that we were carrying out. Those who generated violence were the ones who surrounded Santa Cruz. Surely the minister is referring to those two specific facts,” Cuéllar remarked.
“Suddenly, the people who have armed shock groups will be identified, suddenly those who organized the sieges will be identified and it will be known who they were and what they were looking for. Suddenly, we are going to see police officers summoned and investigated”, added the rector. “Yes indeed, If there is a person to blame for the origin of these protests, it is the INE”, he insisted.
Given this, Mariaca said that during On the days of the strike, some 3,000 complaints were received.
The second vice president of the Civic Committee, Stello Cochamanidis, announced a board meeting of the and another meeting with the Inter-institutional Committee to evaluate the legal scenariohe. “We maintain the state of emergency.”
Earlier, the president Luis Arce, who had supported the legal causes for the strike, yesterday questioned the Santa Cruz leaders who announced a “review of the relationship with the State”. He did so in the context of the tensions facing the MAS.
“Who today, due to circumstantial political interests, insist on reviewing the relationship with the Bolivian State, to put it in their own words, They must understand that the Bolivian people will never allow a new loss of territory under any pretext,” he said.
