La Paz, January 24th The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) began its visit to Bolivia on Tuesday with the aim of assessing the progress of the recommendations made by the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (GIEI) on the events related to the political and social crisis submitted by Bolivia in 2019.
This visit, scheduled to take place from the 24th to the 26th of this month, is part of the Follow-up Table on the Recommendations of the GIEI Report (Meseg) and will be chaired by the Rapporteur Commissioner for Bolivia, Joel Hernández , the informed Bolivian Justice Minister Iván Lima.
Lima mentioned that the information received from the commission “will help to improve and implement all the recommendations” made by the GIEI in the August 2021 report to President Luis Arce’s government.
The minister reminded that this report contains about 36 recommendations divided into “three levels”, such as attention to victims of human rights violations, adjustments in the Bolivian judicial system and public order measures.
He assures that there is “progress” in complying with the GIEI recommendations, although he avoids giving a percentage of the completion of these tasks, which he sees as “medium and long-term” issues that need to be met.
Lima highlighted progress in “judicial reform”, the adjustment of Bolivian regulations and the unconstitutionality of the crime of sedition and the nearly twenty “indicted persons” or those in “preventive detention” accused of “grave human rights violations”. Right”.
However, some of these steps have been criticized by the opposition, such as the failure of judicial reform, which has had at least three attempts to implement it, and the so-called “political prisoners” due to the political crisis, such as interim President Jeanine Áñez and Santa Cruz Governor Luis Fernando Camacho before them , both imprisoned.
WORK SCHEDULE
The representation of the IACHR began its work this Tuesday in La Paz with a meeting with the Minister of Justice and the Ombudsman, whose head Pedro Callisaya described as a “deficit” the compliance with the recommendations of this institution due to the events of October and December 2019.
Minister Lima also mentioned that this Wednesday the representation of the IACHR will visit Sucre, the constitutional capital of Bolivia and seat of the judiciary, to meet the heads of the prosecutor’s office, the Supreme Court and the Constitutional Court, in addition to the “victims” in the south of the country”.
The IACHR mission plans to return to La Paz on Thursday to hold talks with opposition MPs and with the victims of the so-called Sacaba and Senkata massacres, among other things.
The events in Sacaba, in the department of Cochabamba, and Senkata, a neighborhood in El Alto, a city neighboring La Paz, are linked to the deaths of at least twenty civilians in clashes between protesters and the armed forces in the first days of former interim President Jeanine Áñez’s government.
Lima said the Meseg reports have to be presented “regularly” for two years, like this “mid-term” report, which has to be presented in March 2023, when a year has passed since the work plan was signed between that body and the government Bolivian.