Bolivia, Human Rights Industry November 20, 2019
Human Rights Watch supports US-backed far-right coup in Bolivia, whitewashes
massacre of indigenous protesters
Human Rights Watch refused to called the US-backed military overthrow of
Bolvivas President Evo Morales a coup, and director Ken Roth praised the
transitional moment against the elected strongman
By Alan MacLeod / MintPress News
Bolivia is in turmoil after President Evo Morales was deposed in a
U.S.-supported coup détat on November 10.
The new coup government forced Morales into exile, arrested left-wing
politicians and journalists, and then pre-exonerated security services of
all crimes committed during the re-establishment of order, effectively
giving soldiers a license to kill all resistance to the military juntas
rule.
Dozens have been killed. Indigenous protesters were massacred in the city of
Cochabamba and the small town of Senkata.
In confusing and alarming situations such as these, millions of people
around the world look to international human rights organizations for
leadership and guidance.
However, far from standing up for the oppressed, Human Rights Watch (HRW)
has effectively endorsed the events. In its official communiqué, HRW
refrained from using the word coup, insisting Morales resigned.
HRW Americas director José Miguel Vivanco claimed President Morales stepped
down after weeks of civil unrest and violent clashes, and did not even
mention opposition violence against his party or the role of the military in
demanding, at gunpoint, that he resign.
Therefore, Morales mysteriously traveled to Mexico, in the organizations
words, rather than fleeing there to escape arrest. HRW tacitly endorsed the
coup government, advising it to prioritize rights.
Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth went further, presenting
the elected head of state fleeing the country at gunpoint as a refreshing
step forward for democracy.
Roth wrote that Morales was the casualty of a counter-revolution aimed at
defending democracy
against electoral fraud and his own illegal candidacy,
claiming that Morales had ordered the army to shoot protesters.
Roth also described the coup approvingly as an uprising and a
transitional moment for Bolivia, while presenting President Morales as an
out-of-touch strongman.
New self-declared President Jeanine Añez, whose party received just 4
percent of the vote share in the October elections, has already expelled
hundreds of Cuban doctors, broken off ties with Venezuela, and pulled
Bolivia out of multiple international and intercontinental organizations and
treaties.
Añez describes the indigenous majority of Bolivians as satanic and insists
they should not be allowed to live in cities, instead, being sent to the
desert or the sparsely populated highlands.
Añez also declared that she is committed to taking all measures necessary
to pacify the population.
Human Rights Watch described the law giving Bolivian security forces
complete impunity to kill dissenters as a problematic decree, as if Añez
had used racially insensitive language, rather than ordering a massacre.
In its statement, HRW noted that nine people died and 122 were wounded
during the Cochabamba demonstration, leaving its readers completely in the
dark about who died and who was responsible for the killing.
A long history of human rights double standards
Human Rights Watch was originally established in 1978 as Helsinki Watch, an
American organization dedicated to exposing the crimes of socialist Eastern
Bloc countries and monitoring their compliance with the Helsinki Accords.
Since its establishment, HRW has consistently been criticized for acting as
a de facto vehicle for U.S. foreign policy, employing former U.S. government
officials in key positions, and displaying bias against leftist governments
unfriendly to the United States.
A 2008 report on human rights violations in Venezuela authored by Jose
Vivanco, for example, was immediately panned by hundreds of academics and
Latin American scholars, who said the grossly flawed document did not
meet even the most minimal standards of scholarship, impartiality, accuracy,
or credibility.
Indeed, Vivanco openly stated his biases, revealing that he wrote the report
because we wanted to demonstrate to the world that Venezuela is not a model
for anyone.
In contrast, Human Rights Watch was relatively silent on the Honduran coup
détat that deposed leftist President Manuel Zelaya, and the repression that
came after, effectively carrying water for U.S.-backed regime change.
As writer Keane Bhatt, who now works as Bernie Sanders communications
director, argued in 2013, Human Rights Watchs deep ties to U.S. corporate
and state sectors should disqualify the institution from any public pretense
of independence.
Likewise, Amnesty Internationals image as a defender of human rights hides
a dark past of being effectively a front organization for Western
governments.
As MintPress News revealed earlier this year, a co-founder of the
organization, Peter Benenson, was an avowed anti-communist with deep ties to
the British Foreign and Colonial Offices, propping up the apartheid regime
of South Africa at the UK governments request.
Another Amnesty International co-founder, Luis Kutner, was an FBI asset who
was linked to the U.S. governments assassination of Black Panther leader
Fred Hampton. Kutner went on to form an organization called Friends of the
FBI, dedicated to countering and combating criticism of the bureau.
While some may be surprised by Human Rights Watchs response to the Bolivia
crisis, the organizations applause for the U.S.-backed right-wing coup
against a democratically elected socialist head of state is not an
aberration or a mistake.
HRW is performing its duty in reinforcing U.S. hegemony by condemning any
leftist challengers in Americas backyard.
This article was first published at Mintpress News.
