Bolivia
14 nations with greater population than US and EU combined co-sponsor ICJ Gaza genocide case
Nations covering over a billion people back prosecution while UK shamefully fails to back case – despite backing Myanmar genocide case at ICJ just six weeks ago
Fourteen nations with a population of over a billion people – more than the combined populations of the US and EU – have formally co-sponsored South Africa’s case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) accusing Israel of genocide. The nations are:
Turkey
Indonesia
Malaysia
Bolivia
Nicaragua
Maldives
Venezuela
Namibia
Morocco
Bangladesh
Pakistan
Saudi Arabia
Iran
Jordan
Despite co-signing a genocide case against Myanmar only six weeks ago – specifically because of Myanmar’s crimes against Rohingya children – the UK continues to refuse to back South Africa’s ICJ case against Israel, which has murdered more than thirty thousand people, including around thirteen thousand children.
Yet again, the UK and US are backing the oppressors against the oppressed – and the world knows it.
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Silence reigns on the US-backed coup against Evo Morales in Bolivia | Mark Weisbrot
The Organization of American States had a key role in the destruction of the country’s democracy last November
Bolivia has descended into a nightmare of political repression and racist state violence since the democratically elected government of Evo Morales was overthrown by the military on 10 November last year. That month was the second-deadliest in terms of civilian deaths caused by state forces since Bolivia became a democracy nearly 40 years ago, according to a study by Harvard Law School’s (HLS) International Human Rights Clinic and the University Network for Human Rights (UNHR) released a month ago.
Morales was the first indigenous president of Bolivia, which has the largest percentage of indigenous population of any country in the Americas. His government was able to reduce poverty by 42% and extreme poverty by 60%, which disproportionately benefited indigenous Bolivians. The November coup was led by a white and mestizo elite with a history of racism, seeking to revert state power to the people who had monopolised it before Morales’ election in 2005. The racist nature of the state violence is emphasised in the HLS/UNHR report, including eyewitness accounts of security forces using “racist and anti-indigenous language” as they attacked protesters; it is also clear from the fact that all of the victims of the two biggest massacres committed by state forces after the coup were indigenous.
The OAS has to answer for its role in the Bolivian coup
We call upon the Organization of American States to retract its misleading statements about the election, which have contributed to the political conflict
We the undersigned call for Bolivia’s democratic institutions and processes to be respected.
The Trump administration has openly and strongly supported the military coup of 10 November that overthrew the government of President Evo Morales. Everyone agrees that Morales was democratically elected in 2014, and that his term does not end until 22 January; yet many outside of the Trump administration seem to accept the Trump-supported military coup.
Ha-Joon Chang, director of the Centre of Development Studies, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge
James Galbraith, The University of Texas at Austin
Thea Lee is the president of the Economic Policy Institute
Mark Weisbrot, co-founder, co-director, Center for Economic and Policy Research
Oscar Ugarteche is an economist at the Instituto de Investigaciones Económicas at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM)
Jayati Ghosh is an Indian development economist. She is the chairperson of the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi
Stephanie Kelton is a professor of Public Policy and Economics at Stony Brook University