2019 Bolivian Coup Regime Leadership Could Face Trial for Genocide

The leadership of Bolivia's year-long regime could soon face arrest and trial on charges of genocide over massacres of protesters following the 2019 coup.

Meanwhile, the new government of Evo Morales' successor Luís Arce faces another challenge to its authority after striking doctors extended their walkout for another 15 days.

Last week Jeanine Áñez, who ruled as interim president from November 2019 to October 2020, refused a summons to meet the state prosecutor in northern Beni department on pain of arrest. 

Añez rejected the charges against her and 11 members of her cabinet as "political persecution", calling the case against her "baseless".

​On Friday, Añez said she had been asked to attend a new hearing with the prosecutor.

She claimed the ruling Movement for Socialism (MAS) "has decided to persecute me for political reasons" and had called her to "testify in a manipulated trial" — and insisted "I will not surrender".

​Both chambers of the Plurinational Legislative Assembly voted late last year in favour of report into the  "massacres of Senkata, Sacaba and Yapacani, which recommends a judgment of responsibility against Jeanine Añez for genocide and other offenses”. 11 former ministers in her government were also implicated.

At least six people were killed and 115 injured by gunfire in Senkata, in El Alto outside the capital La Paz. The new government has recognised a total of 37 deaths in five incidents around the country in that period, 27 of those from gunshot wounds.

At the launch of an immunisation campaign in La Paz with the Russian Sputnik V vaccine on Monday, Arce slammed doctors who have walked out during the coronavirus pandemic over the Sanitary Emergency Law — which outlaws actions to shut down health services.

"We repudiate and exhort the doctors who insistently want to enter into absolutely political mobilizations because the arguments they have raised are outdated," the president said. "The people need doctors committed to their people instead of doctors committed to their pockets."