BOLIVIA: Military Protests Legal Ruling

By Franz Chávez Reprint | | Print |

Franz Chávez

LA PAZ, May 10 2004 (IPS) - Bolivia’s top military brass and President Carlos Mesa met Monday to discuss a Constitutional Court ruling that overturned a military justice decision that acquitted four soldiers in the shooting deaths of two civilians during street protests in February 2003.

The meeting was held in the army officers’ club, next to the military school in Irpavi, a suburb of La Paz.

Over the weekend, troops were ordered to remain in the barracks to protest the May 6 Constitutional Court verdict that annulled an October military court decision which found the four officers not guilty in connection with the Feb. 13, 2003 deaths of Red Cross nurse Ana Colque and worker Ronald Collanqui, and ordered that they be tried by a civilian court.

Although the troops have now been allowed to leave the barracks, they remain on a ”state of alert” as the top military commanders seek a solution to their concerns regarding the Constitutional Court decision.

Lieutenant-Colonel Gróver Monroy Aliaga and lieutenants José Enrique Costas, Rafael Enrique Mendieta and Yamil Edgar Rocabado are accused by the Permanent Human Rights Assemby of Bolivia (APDHB) of shooting Colque when she went to the help of Collanqui, an assistant janitor who had been shot by the officers.

They had purportedly taken him for a sniper.

The APDHB complaint is based on video footage filmed during the Feb. 12-13, 2003 protests against a tax on wages.

The demonstrations and a police rebellion forced then-president Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada (2002-2003) to cancel the new tax.

After the police rebelled, the armed forces were called into the streets, and the crackdown left 35 dead and 100 injured, according to human rights groups.

Constitutionalist lawyer Benjamín Miguel said troops who were responsible for human rights abuses during the Feb. 12-13, 2003 protests should be tried by a military court because their actions took place in the exercise of their functions.

They should only be tried in a civilian court, he said, in the case of crimes committed outside of the framework of their specific functions.

The tension in the military has compounded the strained social environment in Bolivia, where rural activists in the western part of the country have threatened to stage roadblocks to demand that the government address their grievances, while some of the country’s teachers have adhered to the call for a general strike issued by the Central Obrera Boliviana (COB) central trade union.

For weeks, human rights groups and the Roman Catholic Church have been warning of the danger of a coup d’etat.

Miguel criticised the pressure on the president by the military brass, who visited Mesa in campaign uniform last Friday to protest the Constitutional Court decision.

”It’s wrong for them to dress in campaign uniform, that just alarms and threatens public opinion. And the troops should not be made to remain in the barracks,” the lawyer said.

A source with the government told IPS that Mesa and the military commanders are seeking a mechanism to challenge the Constitutional Court ruling. But the Court’s verdicts cannot be appealed.

The unease in the military has created a touchy institutional environment, coming on top of the rumours of a coup, political analyst Maria Teresa Zegada commented to IPS.

The attitude of the armed forces ”is a threat to the democratic system. The tension between the government and the military could heighten the risk of a rupture of the institutional order,” she said.

The February 2003 protests were the prologue to the massive October demonstrations that ended up toppling Sánchez de Lozada.

The October social protests were triggered by a plan to run a pipeline through a Chilean port to export Bolivia’s natural gas to the United States and Mexico, and were led by trade unions and local residents of El Alto, a poor suburb of La Paz.

Sánchez de Lozada was replaced by his vice-president, Mesa.