by Countercurrents Collective
With armored vehicles and helicopters, Bolivian military forces and police used tear gas to crack down on protesters blocking access to a major gas plant, operated by state-run YPFB, in El Alto city on Tuesday.
Helicopters flew above roads around the Senkata gas plant while heavily armed police dispersed protesters with tear gas and bullets.
The number of dead was 2 while many were injured. Another report said that four protesters were killed. The information could not be confirmed.
Mounting violence in Bolivia has seen over 20 people killed.
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) expressed “concern about the actions of the armed forces in the operations carried out in Bolivia since the beginning of the week.”
On Saturday the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet warned about the dangerous path after the deaths in Sacaba, as the situation could ”spin out of control” in Bolivia
President Evo Morales was forced to resign on Nov. 10 after senior army and police chiefs called on him to do so following weeks of right-wing unrest and violence against his October 20 elections victory, in what his government and world leaders have called a coup by opposition forces in the country.
Witch-hunt intensifies
Bolivia’s coup-born government on Monday intensified its attack campaign against the Movement to Socialism (MAS) supporters. They are protesting the coup.
Interior Minister Arturo Murillo of the government-not-legitimized announced the creation of a “special apparatus at the Prosecutor’s Office” to arrest MAS lawmakers for promoting “subversion and sedition”.
Upon hearing this announcement, President-in-exile Evo Morales announced that Murillo’s decision would increase political persecution against those citizens who are fighting the regime headed by the self-proclaimed interim president Jeanine Anez.
An example of the sort of violence that the Anez government is encouraging occurred early on Tuesday when Mario Chore was arrested by the military who wanted him to confess he was a MAS militant.
He was arrested at the request of Maria Alvarez, a right-wing politician who felt upset because she thought Chore was filming her at a square where a demonstration was taking place.
Police raid homes
On Tuesday morning, the Bolivian student group GEA denounced that the police were raiding homes in search of evidence to link students with marches carried out on Monday.
“At this time two more raids on homes of People’s Congress militants are also taking place,” the GEA group reported.
Farmers and kids attacked
Last night, police attacked a peaceful vigil by farmers, kids and elderly people in Cochabamba.
“They began to repress us by throwing tear gas but the people are united,” National Confederation of Indigenous Female Farmers spokesperson Maribel Avalos said and added that “Anez is racist.”
La Resistencia reported: The vigil was intervened by the police, following orders from the Interior Minister Murillo, who said he would have a hard hand with the seditious alternative media.
“Let them start running, we are going to grab them. We will not allow even one person to continue encouraging sedition,” Murillo said when he took office on November 14.
As part of her witch-hunt against the Left, self-proclaimed president Anez said that the MAS does not have guaranteed participation in the next elections, for the Supreme Electoral Tribunal “will have to decide whether or not MAS will participate again.”
Anez signed a decree whereby the Armed Forces cannot be criminally prosecuted for the actions they deploy to control citizens.
“Personnel of the Armed Forces, who participate in operations for restoring order and public stability, will be exempt from criminal responsibility when, in fulfillment of their constitutional functions, they act in legitimate defense or state of necessity,” the coup-based government’s decree states.
“What does this mean? The new Bolivian government is being overtaken by protests… it has increased its authoritarianism and eliminated guarantees to which citizens are entitled by the rule of law,” alternative outlet Sin Linea explained.
“In practice, the decree means giving the military a license to kill.”
68,000 fake twitter accounts
A recent study by Julián Macías Tovar, head of social networks for the Spanish party Podemos, found more than 68,000 fake Twitter accounts have been created to support the coup d’état in Bolivia,.
The specialist found that these false accounts used several labels to work to legitimize the departure of Evo Morales from power and justify violence and repression against demonstrators who reject the coup.
The accounts in this social network have also served to increase the number of followers of the main actors who participated in the anti-democratic outrage, such as the head of the Santa Cruz Civic Committee, Luis Fernando Camacho, and Senator Jeanine Anez, the self-proclaimed interim president.
Analyzing the Twitter conversation about the coup in Bolivia promoted by @LuisFerCamachoV, I can affirm that it is also behind the fraudulent coup in networks with the creation of more than 60,000 false accounts to influence and spread fake news.
Macías Tovar pointed out that Camacho’s account went from 2,000 followers to 130,000 in 15 days, 50,000 of them created in November 2019.
The same thing happened with Anez, who, in that period, went from having 8,000 followers to 150,000, of which 40,000 are newly created accounts.
When analyzing the false accounts of both politicians, Macías Tovar counted more than 68,000 different false accounts, which have not been detected by Twitter. These are still operating, although the social network prohibits the use of robots to amplify messages.
Another study, released on November 13, noted that in just two days 4,000 fake Twitter accounts were created and attempted to position the tag #BoliviaNoHayGolpe. Countercurrents have already used this – 4,000 – news.
After the coup in #Bolivia, in 2 days nearly 4,000 Twitter accounts were created to position the #BoliviaNoHayGolpe tag.
The research was carried out by the political communication specialist Luciano Galup http://bit.ly/2CBVeCH
Although the platform has an anti-spam system and has dedicated itself to closing Chavista and Cuban accounts, it has not reacted to these thousands of false anti-democratic accounts that support the end of Morales’ constitutional government.
