Thomas Becker - The 2019 Senkata and Sacaba Massacres of Bolivia (2023)

Romano: Good morning, everyone, and welcome to this discussion that we are holding within the framework of International Human Rights Day, remembering December 10, 1948, when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was approved by the United Nations General Assembly. in the hope of never again repeating the variety of the recently concluded World War II. However, since then, humanity has witnessed countless violations of human rights in our country. and throughout Latin America, the age of military dictatorships, where at that night, where state regimes violate the human rights of the people who oppose the regimes of terror. In the Southern Con, Plan Condor, This disappear, torture, and murder thousands of people throughout the military of Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay, with the object of establishing without opposition economic policies that caused years of planet misery in our countries, even after the fall of military dictatorships. In Bolivia, In 2019, 30 years after the recovery of the democracy, the military once again pointed their weapons against the people, perpetrating the Sacaba and Sencata massacres that left 37 dead and hundreds injured. That year, the country's constitutional order was broken when the police mutinied and the military pressured to the president-elect to resign taken an unconstitutional oath to send to then-senator Janine Áñez. In this context, and in the face of massive popular demonstrations against de facto governments, Janine Áñez promulgated a decree accepting the military from criminal responsibility in the event of repression, that is, a carte blanche to kill the people, which resulted in Sacaba and Sencata massacres. To talk about these events, We'll have on this occasion the U.S. lawyer Thomas Fekker, who was present in Sacaba and Sencata, and who widely known in Bolivia for his commitment to human rights, having represented the victims of Black October, another episode of military repression, but committed in democracy during the presidency of Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, currently a fugitive from Bolivian justice. However, The victims filmed a civil suit in the United States against Sanchez de Lozada and his minister, Carlos Sanchez Berzain, under the sponsorship of Thomas Becker, and obtained a ruling from the U.S. court that declared them guilty. Seat in history, President. Thomas is a senior clinical supervisor at the University Network for Human Rights. He has spent most over the past two decades working of human rights issues in Bolivia. His book, A History of Violence and Resistance in Bolivia, co-authored with Linda Furtin, was a finalist to Duke University Juan Mendez Book Award for Human Rights. Thomas, thank you for your time. Welcome. The audience is yours.

Thomas Becker: Muchas gracias, Romano. Thank you very much. first to the embassy and to the charge d'affaires for inviting me to talk on such an important day. You know, as you mentioned, it's Human Rights Day, but it's not just Human Rights Day. This also, well, yesterday was Human Rights Day. It also marks the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which specifically, you know, I can't think of incidents in Bolivia or recent times in Bolivia that that represent exactly what the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is supposed to address more than what took place in Saqqab and Sankata. The declaration was created in response to the Holocaust and to widespread atrocities that were carried out against a specific population because of being this population, because they were Jewish, because of their ethnicity. And, you know, if we look at what took place in Sacaba and Tancata, these were massacres that were carried out, at least in part, against people specifically because they were indigenous, because they were Aymara, because they were Quechua, because they criticized the government. And so I think these two cases are very emblematic of what the Universal Declaration both wants to address, the laws that it codifies, the protections it codifies, and the need for accountability for victims. You know, as you mentioned, I'd spent much of the last 20 years working in Bolivia and I was in Bolivia in 2019 for the coup and the subsequent abuses. And it is certainly was the most repressive period I've ever experienced in Bolivia. In fact, I remember. One of the victims of the dictatorships who had lost her husband telling me that she thought that the Anya's regime was more repressive than the dictatorships or more. She felt more fear under Anya's than she did during the dictatorships, because at least during the dictatorships, the international community knew that these were dictatorships, whereas the Anya's regime was very professional in the way that they presented a different narrative to the international community. And so she felt a lot of fear. And I did myself. As you mentioned, I was in Saqqabah the day of the massacre. I remember very vividly what took place. I remember the blood. I remember seeing bullets. I remember mothers crying over the bodies of their sons who had been killed. I remember interviewing people in undisclosed locations who were injured, but who were too scared to go to the hospital because they thought that the government, the illegal de facto regime would disappear them. I remember being in the hospital. In fact, my probably most vivid memory of 2019 is interviewing folks in the hospital right after they were shot. And people had come out of the coma for the first time. They had spoken for the first time. Being there when mothers came and saw their sons dead for the very first time. And one person still, you know, really impacts me to this day because he told me, you're going to see. He explained what happened. He was gunned down by soldiers, by state forces, as he was helping another person who was injured. One of the things that happened in 2019 in Saqqava and Sankata is incredible. State forces, soldiers, and police targeted those who were helping the injured. And this person was helping an injured person, had him in his hand, and a soldier shot him in the eye. And I remember him telling me what happened. He was crying out of the eye that worked. The other eye was bandaged, and he had lost his eye. And he told me, they gunned us down. We were unarmed, and they gunned us down. But you're going to see that tomorrow, they're going to say we did it. They're going to blame us because we're poor, because we're campesinos. Because we are, as they say, Indians. And I remember almost naively thinking, you know, after being in Bolivia for two decades, I'm certainly aware and have seen a lot of the racism against indigenous people. But I've also documented massacres throughout the world, quite literally on almost every continent. You know, I've done human rights work. And so what took place in Sacaba that day was such a clear black and white massacre. There was no confusion. Every victim was poor indigenous protester. The police, the military, none of them received any sort of injuries. No one was killed on the side of the state forces. These were clear massacres. And I almost naively thought, you know, the world can't believe this. This is so black and white. There's no way that anybody would be able to get away with any sort of other narrative. But what happened the following day? The Anya's regime said that the protesters shot themselves to make the government look bad. The press repeated this narrative over and over and over. And even the international community for many, many months repeated this narrative that they shot themselves. They started the fight, that they were responsible. And so today I want to talk about A couple of things. Certainly, I'm going to talk about the Sakaba and Sankata massacres, but I want to contextualize it because I think what this person raised in the hospital is very relevant. Why being indigenous, they were targeted. Why this was an authoritarian regime. These massacres did not happen in a vacuum. These did not just randomly happen. These were part of years of repression, years of attacks on indigenous people and an illegal regime that carried these out. So today I'd like to talk about first the coup that took place in 2019. the human rights violations that the coup regime carried out following the coup. And then I want to focus in and zoom in on Sacaba and Senkata a little bit to talk about these massacres and what took place. You know, I'm going to dive into the weaves. The rest of this conversation, I'm going to treat it very much like a conversation. I don't want to bore you like I bore my poor students when I give them lectures on law. But I am going to be a lawyer just for a moment and one way to talk about the coup. In part because I think there's so much confusion about what took place in 2019. The coup regime was incredibly successful at creating this different narrative of what took place that simply did not happen. And part of this is because they actually hired lobbyists, consulting firms in the United States in particular, to really paint a different picture of what took place. In fact, this is being hosted in Washington, D.C. There's a firm in D.C. called CLS Strategies that was hired by the illegal Agnes regime to, quote, rebrand their image in terms of human rights and democracy. And this organization, CLS Strategies, was the first organization punished by Facebook in the United States for creating fake accounts and spreading disinformation, spreading, as Donald Trump says it, fake news. So they were punished specifically for spreading disinformation about Bolivia by Facebook. But they were wildly successful, and the Añez regime was wildly successful in creating a different narrative of what took place in 2019. So I'm just going to very quickly explain why it was a coup because there is all sorts of debate, and there are still people that don't understand it's a coup. But it's very relevant because this coup is what led to these widespread atrocities, including the massacres in Saqqab and Fincaqa. And I'm going to – one of the distractions is people always end up fighting over whether they like Abel Morales or this government or not, whether he's good or bad. Those are irrelevant. I'm approaching this from a legal perspective of whether the transition in 2019 was a coup, and then I will talk about all the abuses that came out of it. In Bolivia, only four people can become president, the president, the vice president, president of center, and president of Congress. Each of these four people – resigned under duress to protect their lives. They received direct threats, not abstract threats. These were folks who were directly threatened. Abel Morales, people ransacked his home, ransacked his sister's home, threatened to kill him. You don't have to look far. This is not an opinion of mine. You can see videos online of people attacking the president of Congress, sorry, president of the Senate, Adriana Salvatierra. You can see videos online of the president of Congress resigning because Paris state groups kidnapped his brother, tortured his brother, sexually assaulted his niece, and said, if you do not resign, we are going to kill your brother. And so he went on television and said, I'm resigning to protect my brother, to save his life. These are not resignations with any semblance of being legal. And then you have opposition candidates and opposition party members who openly talked about bribing the police and military to force the resignation of Evo Morales. Luis Fernando Camacho, governor of Santa Cruz, openly has said on video, talked about paying the police to mutiny, openly talked about negotiating with the military to force Evo's resignation, and even said that the person in charge of this discussion on the side of the military, Luis Fernando Lopez, was then named minister of defense of the coup regime as a reward for carrying out the coup. So there's no debate. Again, you can love Evo Morales or dislike Evo Morales, the then president who was overthrown, but these are totally illegal. And then finally you have this vacuum of power. Evo Morales resigns on the 10th. Many, many MAS officials resigned because para-state groups were attacking people, torturing them, kidnapping people, officials with the MAS, as well as indigenous people and other folks. And then you have a group of non-elected officials who chose Janine Añez to become the president. So Bolivia, as I mentioned, only four people can become the president. After that, it goes to the Legislative Assembly to decide, okay, what do we do now? The Legislative Assembly was blocked from actually meeting, and opposition party members, opposition candidates, … met with members of the Catholic Church and with the ambassador of Brazil under Bolsonaro. And so you have these unelected officials deciding who's going to be the next president. None of these people, as I said, are elected. Some of them are quite literally international foreign governments, members of the church, and none of them indigenous in the most indigenous country in the Americas. And they decided they were going to name Janine Añez as the president. Añez was relatively unknown. Her party was an extremist right-wing party who had some really problematic views on indigenous people. In fact, the only thing she was really known for was her tweets saying and other social media comments denigrating indigenous people. Stating, for instance, that indigenous rituals were satanic. But Agnes came to power. She entered the palace. She left the palace with a Bible the size of her torso and said the Bible has returned to Bolivia. and instantly carried out a wave of repression that really is unprecedented in terms of democratic history of Bolivia. In her first days alone, her minister of communications, for instance, said, we have a list of seditious people. They started creating a list of seditious journalists that they were to go after. They ended up shutting down indigenous stations, community radio stations, stations that criticize the government. They shut down. They arrested journalists that criticized them. I remember I was in jail interviewing a person who was to even say he was a journalist who was marginally related to journalism. He was the domain owner of a website that published an article criticizing onions. So he didn't even write the article. But he published on – he was the domain owner of a website that published this article, and he was arrested for terrorism, for owning the domain that published an article criticizing Agnes. There's another person, Mauricio Jara, who was arrested. Again, not even a formal journalist. He just had WhatsApp groups in which he said that the Añez regime was illegal, that it was a coup regime, and that what took place in Sacaba and Zancata were massacres. And he was arrested for digital terrorism. Sebastián Moro was killed by para-state groups allied with the government. By the way, these para-state groups, the Santa Cruz Youth Union and the Cochala Youth Resistance, these are para-state groups that even the United States government has designated as para-state groups. Luis Fernando Camacho, who I mentioned, who bribed state forces to overthrow Evo Morales, was a leader in the Santa Cruz Youth Union, this para-state group, again designated by the United States, the International Federation of Human Rights, the United Nations. And you can see videos of these groups doing the Nazi salute. They're openly racist, openly anti-indigenous. And so you have this regime attacking the press, going after human rights defenders. The ombudsperson, she ended up getting precautionary measures from the Inter-American Commission because she was attacked. The minister of interior, Arturo Murillo, had openly told her that he was going to cut her head off. They created a list of people that they believed were seditious for carrying out human rights work. Allegedly, I was put on the list for documenting human rights abuse during these days because human rights work was seditious and terrorist. um and then they went after moss officials uh political opposition they arrested them at historic rates uh unprecedented rates uh since again bolivia became a democracy but they also arrested people just marginally related to moss officials so they didn't just arrest uh you know ministers and congress people they arrested their family members uh they arrested people who were assistants for instance abel morales's personal assistant, not his even administrative assistant in the government. The person who literally picked up his laundry or organized his haircuts or organized his sitas was arrested for terrorism. The babysitter of one of the ministers of the mosque government was arrested for having phone calls with the minister. So this was an incredibly repressive environment. But I would say that arguably the most repressive environment actions by this government were the massacres of Sakaba and Senkata. And these were carried out within days of taking control of the government illegally. Two days after Janine Añez took power, she passed a decree 4078, Supreme Decree 4078, which, as you mentioned, basically immunized state forces, said that they would have immunity if they carried out killings. This was completely illegal. The international community was in uproar. Several former special rapporteurs at the United Nations, former rapporteurs and commissioners from the Inter-American Commission drafted a letter stating this is illegal and condemned this illegal decree. But she put this decree in force two days after she took power. And on the 15th, She mobilized the military, who then carried out massacres in Saqqabah and in Sankatta.

Romano: So I want to talk a little bit about Saqqabah and Sankatta.

Thomas Becker: People have really tried to politicize what took place. But really what happened was protesters from various parts of the Chapari, the tropical, for those of you who are not Bolivian, kind of a jungle-ish region, marched to Cochabamba, the city of Cochabamba. And then we're going to continue on to La Paz in response to the attacks on indigenous people. Again, people really tried to politicize this. But what really most of the people we interviewed said, we were out there because they were attacking people that looked Like me, or looked like my mother. These parastate groups, particularly in Cochabamba, were attacking señores de pollera, indigenous women. So they organized this march with thousands of people that was to enter Cochabamba. When they got to the town of Sacaba, which is kind of on the border of the Tropico, the Chapari, kind of entering into Cochabamba, the military and police had stopped them. The military and police said, we're going to let you pass, but bring all your women up to the front. Lay down your, some were wearing gas masks, assuming that they would be gassed. Lay down your gas masks, lay down your flags, your sticks that have the Wipala, the multicolored flag that represents indigenous communities. Lay those down and bring your women up front. As the protesters did this, the police and the military brought in reinforcements. And then without warning, began shooting at them. And people fled. You saw in the video the thousands of people running as they started gassing and shooting weapons of war at the protesters. The first woman you saw, Doña Gregoria, was there with her son. Her son said, I have to go because I can't allow people to treat my mother like they've been treating indigenous women. So Omar and his mom, Gregoria, went and protested, went on this march. When the military began shooting at people, they were separated, and everyone ran in all directions. Gregoria went and hid in a house, and she and several other people were trying to hide from the military. The military came in, yelled anti-Indigenous things at them, and beat them. One of the soldiers, as he attacked her, called her an animal, called her racist anti-Indigenous language, stepped on her arm, crushed her arm, and broke her arm. She was able to eventually get free and escape to a nearby hospital. When she was at the hospital, she was watching on TV. The news was covering and started listing names of people. And Omar had been killed. So despite her broken arm, she left the hospital. Some nurses gave her booties, slippers, because she had lost her shoes when she was being beaten by the soldiers. And she walked back to the site to be with her son who had just died. I met Gregoria this day. I very vividly remember meeting her. And again, I remember all the blood, the bullets. I began investigating what took place instantly that day to produce for a report for Harvard Law School where I was teaching. It was very clear. These were massacres. As I mentioned, this person in the hospital had told me that he was, nobody's going to believe them. And I almost naively, again, believe that, no, the world will believe this. But the government said, no, they shot themselves. despite the fact that every single person killed that day, every single person injured that day was Indigenous and a protester. There was 11 or so killed, 120 or more injured, certainly actually more, because I can say that of the official count, many of the people I interviewed were in hidden locations and never reported their injuries because they were scared that the government would go after them. But despite this, again, near dozen people killed, over 100 injured, zero police, Zero soldiers were killed or injured, but the government blamed them. Four days later in Senkata, the same thing happened. The military entered the Senkata zone of El Alto and gunned down people. The woman, the second woman in the video, Doña Maria, her son had gone out. He wasn't even participating in the protests. He went out to get food and he was wearing a blue shirt. And a lot of soldiers, we interviewed folks on the ground who saw soldiers targeting people wearing blue because blue is the color of the MAS party. He just happened to be wearing a blue shirt. It wasn't showing support for any political party. His shirt was just blue. So they assumed he was with the MAS. and shot him. His father, Eulogio, went out looking for him and eventually found out that he was shot and was in a hospital. Eulogio went to the hospital to help his son, and they wouldn't give him medical attention because they said, you're with the MAS, you're a protester, you were out there trying to blow up Senkata. All these tropes, these racist tropes that simply didn't happen, but blamed him and refused to give him medical treatment. So his father brought him to another hospital, and from hospital to hospital, hospital brought him around until he was finally able to get him some sort of treatment. But unfortunately, it was too late and he ended up dying. Several months later, I met Eulogio right after. He's an incredible man. Several months later, he ended up passing away. If you talk to Maria, she'll tell you he died because he felt the guilt that he wasn't able to save his son, the guilt that he felt the weight of his son's death. He felt responsible because he wasn't fast enough getting medical attention for his son. Like Sacaba in Sencata, every single person killed or injured was indigenous and a protester or a passerby. Zero police, zero soldiers were killed or injured. Yet the government said the people shot themselves. Luis Fernando Lopez, the defense minister, said we didn't shoot a single bullet that day, despite the fact you can go online and see video after video of soldiers shooting. But this became the dominant narrative. Unfortunately, up until today, those who carried out the massacres have not been held responsible. But I do want to talk briefly about those who were in charge. And where are they at now? You have Janine Añez, who fortunately, after a year of one of the most repressive periods, or arguably the most repressive period in Bolivia's democratic history, the Bolivian people protested. They went into the streets during a pandemic and said, we need elections. It's such mass levels. The government had to call elections and elections were called. So Bolivia recovered democracy in just under a year, which is in nonviolent ways, which is absolutely special. That's not often how that goes for dictatorships. They often stay in power and they're so repressed they can stay in power for a long time. But protesters went to the streets and so many people overwhelmingly wanted democracy that they were able to nonviolently remove this regime by forcing elections. And during the elections, the current government, the Moss, won overwhelmingly, beat the second place candidate, doubled the votes that the second place candidate got. And I think these elections really were not even necessarily about parties, but a condemnation of the rights abuses that this government had done. and a real wish for the recovery of democracy. Those who carried out the massacres, we'll just talk about where they are now. Janine Añez is in Bolivia. She was arrested for her role in the coup and charged with her role in the coup and is in jail. But she has not been held accountable for her role in the massacres. Arturo Murillo, the Minister of Interior, a lot of people think he was kind of the heavy-handed leader of all the rights abuses. He fled Bolivia right around the time of the elections and came to the United States. He was arrested in the United States for his role in money laundering and bribery scheme. to purchase weapons in a money laundering way, in which he used these weapons then against the people during the dictatorship of Janine Yiannis. So he's in jail in the United States. He's in jail for roughly five years for his role in bribery and money laundering. Luis Fernando Lopez, the defense minister, also fled Bolivia. Right around the time of the elections in 2020, He'd actually – you can hear audios that have been released. He tried to hire – he brought – actually, I'm sorry, didn't just try to hire. He brought mercenaries to Bolivia to carry out another coup in case the MAS party won. These audios you can, again, find online. You can hear them. These are the same mercenaries that killed the Haitian president roughly around the same time. So these are folks that were trained in the United States, trained in Colombia, that carried out an assassination of the president of Haiti, and then came to Bolivia to carry out a second coup in 2020. But with the overwhelming victory of the Moss Party, I think ultimately they decided not to carry out this second coup. I don't think they would have had the popular support to do it. Luis Fernando Lopez fled to Brazil and at this point has not returned. I am not sure what's going on behind the scenes politically. I'm not in meetings with the United States government or the Bolivian government. My assumption is both governments are trying to extradite him. He allegedly was involved in the money laundering. with Murillo, Arturo Murillo. So he may be part of the case in the United States for this money laundering and bribery. But I know there's interest by folks in Bolivia on extraditing him back to Bolivia to hold him accountable for his role in the massacres. But unfortunately, as I mentioned up until this day, no one has been held accountable. I feel like I've yapped way too long, so I will end it there with the where are they now But if there are any questions, I'm happy to respond to questions.

Romano: Oh, hermano, no te escucho. Thanks, Thomas. It's very important to reflect, it is hard to reflect, Shelson. One or two questions, please. It's important to reflect and make these human rights violations known for the collective memory of the people. In that sense, how do you think a collective memory process should be

Thomas Becker: will in order for the fight for justice becomes unpopular fight and not only a victim of fight um so i'm going to be a lawyer for a moment i'm going to put on lawyer hat just uh and i want to talk in practical terms about memorial memory and justice and the need for it um both from a legal perspective but a non-legal just a very practical perspective um You know, unfortunately, as I mentioned, the victims at this point have not received justice. There's been a lot of opposition. You know, one of the things that still is very pervasive is this notion that the victims are responsible. This notion, this narrative created by the illegal de facto regime of Janine Añez still is very alive and well in Bolivia. I'd say there's a good quarter of the population that doesn't believe this. If you look at the The tweets – I tweeted that I'd be doing this talk, and just the horrifically racist things that folks say about the victims, accuse them of being animals and savages, that we're going to blow up the Senkata gas plant, that shot themselves, et cetera. These racist narratives still are very much alive and well, and they really are a form of re-victivizing victims. Part of human rights law is victims deserve reparations. There must be accountability, not because – and again, I'll get to the practical reasons – but legally, there must be accountability for victims. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which I mentioned, it explicitly says that victims of gross violations of international human rights – shall receive access to an effective judicial remedy. They need judicial remedies. They need reparations. Legally, they are entitled to them from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, through the inter-American systems jurisprudence. They are entitled to this. If not, they will be re-victimized. But unfortunately, there has been stalls, particularly from many of the people that were involved in the coup, that carried out these violations blocking advances for justice for the victims. Forgive me if I sound cliche when I say this, but justice breeds justice, impunity breeds impunity. And I think we need accountability to preserve the memory of those who were killed but also to stop this from ever happening again uh these don't as i mentioned these don't just happen in a vacuum this did not just happen in a vacuum um you you had mentioned earlier 2003 i i may go back to that for a moment because the two most deadly periods in bolivia's democratic history were black october in 2003 and black november in 2019 and i believe at least in part Part of the reason 2019 happened is because there was not sufficient accountability for what took place in 2003. Goni and Sanchez-Brosé had not yet been held accountable. And so the regime of Añas believed they could get away with it. It's this simple. Victims or victimizers, if there's not accountability, they continue to do this. There are countless examples throughout the Americas, in the United States as well. When I say the Americas, I'm also referring to the United States and the human rights abuses the United States government carries out. but Argentina, Chile, I mean, the lack of accountability really creates more human rights abuses. I think Bolivia is actually an exceptional example because Bolivia has had more coups than any country on the planet. 191 coups or non-democratic transitions since it became a democracy nearly 200 years ago. That's almost one coup or undemocratic transition each year. And part of this is because for so many years, there was never accountability for what took place. And I think 2003 and 2019 are really good examples because not only just from a practical perspective of when people don't see that they will be held accountable and they continue to do these abuses, Many of the same players that took place in the 2003 massacres took place in the 2019 coup and the massacres then. Since we're talking about Washington, or this is based in Washington, D.C., I will raise one example. The ambassador to the OAS for Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, his government, as they carried out the massacres in 2003, was a man named Jaime Aparicio, who's still in D.C., This person blamed the victims, said that they were going to blow up the Sankata gas plant, said that they shot themselves. Same discourse we heard in 2019. This was the same OAS ambassador for Añez in 2019. What did he say about the victims in Sacaba and Sankata? They shot each other, and Sankata, they were going to blow up the gas plant. The discourse was identical. These are the same players carrying out the same actions and making the same pretext for the human rights abuses they carried out. One of the things I think that I've suffered with most, it's just atrocious meeting with victims and hearing their stories. And one of the things that really was hard for me was going to Senkata. This is a place I spent a lot of years documenting and investigating the massacre that took place there in 2003. Literally the same doors I knocked on in 2003 to get information about the massacres, I had to knock on those same doors in 2019 because the massacres were carried out in the same location. History repeats itself. And if there is not accountability, we will see this again. If there's not a real conscious effort to build memory, to remember these things, we are going to see them again. We saw it in 2003. We saw it again in 2019. And this is why it's imperative that the families get access to justice. And those who carry out these abuses are finally held to account.

Romano: Oh, sorry, Tom. Thanks, Thomas. Finally, one question, please. We know that legal processes to obtain justice are slow, complex and full of difficulties. What words, encouragement or advice would you give to victims seeking justice?

Thomas Becker: Justice is slow, hermano. I wish it wasn't the case. It's too slow. It's unfair. I think dragging victims through these processes can be really, really hard. We, you know, I mentioned 2003 and then 2019 and I said 2019 I think in some ways repeated itself, or happened again because there was not accountability for 2003. Just a few months ago finally the victims of Black October had resolve in their legal matter in the United States, and finally secured with finality. a verdict against Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada and Carlos Sanchez-Brosain, his defense minister, who were held responsible for extrajudicial killings. This happened in a U.S. courtroom, found them responsible for extrajudicial killing. And finally, there is finality. But that took years. I mean, quite literally two decades. And so I think it's a mixture of things. I think governments have a responsibility to step up their efforts to uh to hold people accountable i think victims unfortunately need to have a realistic uh maybe i'm a little jaded but but but these processes do take a while and and it's not fair But I think maintaining solidarity amongst victims groups gives you the best chance of actually winning a case or holding people accountable. There are moments where it's really challenging. And I think if you have the solidarity of other victims, but also solidarity of civil society, I think this needs to be collective solidarity. I think what's special about Bolivia, more than any place I've ever seen in the world, is that popular struggles in Bolivia are these collective struggles. It's not one person who does anything. It is social movements. It is people from the bases that really advance politics. um political agendas advanced political causes and i think can advance justice in this case and i think um bolivian society civil society i think the bolivian government and when i say the government i mean not just the government that's currently in power but opposition i think I don't care. Massacres, bullets don't have a political party. It's not left. It's not right. And I think that people on all sides of the spectrum need to support the victims and not re-victimize them and make sure that they get justice. And I think the international community has a responsibility to hold folks accountable. I do want to add one thing that – because, again, so much disinformation has spread that has really, I think, impeded justice for the victims, this narrative that they shot themselves. This is silliness. It just simply didn't happen. And, again, this is not my opinion, but I do want to point out that this has been widely, widely documented by – Quite literally every major international human rights institution that looked into Saqqab and Sankata have said that these are either massacres or summary executions. So I'm talking about Harvard Law School, the University Network for Human Rights, the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights, the United Nations, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International. There was an expert group, a HIAE, created by the Inter-American Commission to specifically look into this. CELS, Andean Information Network, the Ombudsperson's Office, literally every single one of these institutions found massacres in Saqqab and Senkata. There must be accountability. And so part of this rests on us. It rests on me as a human rights lawyer, as a member of the international community. Part of it rests on you, hermano, as a representative of the Bolivian government. And part of it rests on all the folks involved in this charla here today who are part of civil society. We need to support victims. We're going to see this again if we don't and if they don't get justice.

Romano: Thanks, Thomas. Thank you, Germano. One more question, please, from Salinas. It would like to know when and how do you think the victims will be able to achieve justice through memory and no repetition? Our best option will be to go to the ICC chair.

Thomas Becker: So I think that there are several legal avenues. I think the most important, I think it's important that it's done in Bolivia. I think this is where the massacres took place. I think it's really important to send a message in Bolivia that you cannot do this again. You know, one of the things I've struggled with the case in the United States against Goni is it feels a little colonialist to me that that folks have to go to the global north to achieve justice. They can achieve justice in their own country. I think that justice is slow in Bolivia. And I think we've seen a lot of obstacles. But I think there needs to be a case in Bolivia to hold folks accountable. But if there is not, there are other avenues. There is the inter-American system. I think you can submit a petition to the inter-American system, the commission, that may eventually end up in the inter-American courts. I think the ICC is challenging. I mean, one of the things with international bodies is that you need to exhaust your efforts inside the country where this took place. So either you have to try in Bolivia or it has to be so impossible and you have to show that you cannot actually get access to justice in Bolivia, then you can go to international institutions. I think one of the interesting things spaces that I, you know, and I'll be honest, you know, full disclosure, I'm in touch with the victims. In fact, I just received a message from the head of the Sankata Victims Association just about 20 minutes before this started. You know, I am working with them and to help them try to advance justice and one of the things that has been explored is a case in the united states uh just like the case against gonzalo sanchez and carlos sanchez prosain um arturo murillo is located in the united states he can be held accountable in the united states in a civil suit it cannot be a criminal criminal suit uh we do not have that option in the united states but they can bring a civil suit against murillo in the united states for his role in the massacres and other human rights violations that took place so i think that um again i think starting with bolivia i think that is is is really the home of where this took place and i think the first i would say that the most important space for justice but i would say that if not the inter-american system provides some opportunities the icc uh And it is incredibly challenging. And there have been really no cases of where people have been held accountable from Latin America, the ICC. It's just very much a one, I think, kind of a very high bar. But to just, you know, just in real talk, much of the ICC stuff, their kind of jurisdiction tends to be more Africa, Europe. kind of more that side of the Atlantic Ocean, whereas the inter-American system tends to have a lot more involvement in actions that take place in the Americas or in the Western Hemisphere.

Romano: Thank you so much, Thomas. These types of activities are fundamental for construction of a process of memory, trust, and justice. So that would never again allow the violation of human rights. Thank you, Thomas, for your time. and for your work in defending human rights in our country. And thanks to everyone that joining us today for this conversation. We will continue this path of human rights defense. Thank you so much, Thomas Becker.

Thomas Becker: Thank you, Hermano. And I may add one thing, if it's okay, because as I mentioned, one of the victims had reached out to me this morning, Gloria, and she had asked simply, please don't forget her and her brother. One of the things that she said is that nothing will bring her brother back, nothing will bring the victims back. But she and her family and her compañeras and compañeros will not have peace until there's justice for the murders of their family members. So her big request is that people stand with them in solidarity and support them in their struggle for justice.