Persecution and Repression Continue in Bolivia During the Covid-19 Pandemic
Adriana Guzmán Arroyo, part of the Bolivian Antipatriarchal Community Feminism organization, said in an interview with Alba Ciudad that the Bolivian coup government continues its racist policy of persecution and repression, despite the situation generated by Covid-19.
“The de facto government intends to consolidate a policy of fear, and takes advantage of the coronavirus pandemic to exercise a militarization coupled with the persecution and repression with which they seek to break the social fabric and set us against each other, against our neighbors, it is a continuity of the coup d’état,” she explained.
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In this sense, she protested that the Bolivian authorities do not implement a health care plan for citizens, but rather abandon them and use the pandemic as a shield to persecute political opponents and persecute indigenous peoples.
“The latest decision has initiated the use of handcuffs and anklets with chips for Covid-19 patients, so that they do not escape. Instead of offering them a treatment, they place a chip that was designed for those deprived of liberty; a whole logic of political persecution and persecution for those who get sick.”
Media blockade
Likewise, she denounced the restrictions that exist to denounce and express himself on other issues of national and international events. “There is a media blockade. You can not talk about anything other than coronavirus and there is no longer talk that in Bolivia there is still a coup, that the murders are unpunished, that the United States tries to intervene Venezuela, that in Colombia they continue to assassinate social leaders. The media blockade is worldwide and in Bolivia it is double or triple,” she said.
“It cannot be that they impose fear on us, paralysis, demobilization. We are certain that organization is the way to curb fear, both the coup and the pandemic, we must maintain political awareness.”
Translated by JRE/EF
