The Hemispheric Front for Freedom (FHL) forum, made up of parliamentarians, academics, political leaders and human rights defenders from several Latin American countries, expressed this Monday (13) its “deepest rejection of the political persecution suffered by the former President of Bolivia Jeanine Áñez by the hands of the government led by the Movement to Socialism in the South American country”.
The FHL, created in Miami in 2020, considers the trial against Áñez and the sentence of more than ten years in prison “closer to being an act of political revenge than an act marked by due process, respect for human rights and adherence to Bolivian laws”.
The former Bolivian president, who took office on an interim basis after Evo Morales resigned amid nationwide protests, was arrested on March 13, 2021 and faced a trial “plagued by irregularities”, the statement reads.
According to the FHL, the “evident political vocation” of the trial against Jeanine Áñez was manifested in the “suspicious speed with which the Bolivian judicial system acted, in the prohibition of the accused to defend himself personally and in the right to health”.
“We reject the act of political lynching, the use of the judiciary as an organ of persecution at the service of the Executive and its official party, and we alert the international community to the systematic violation of human rights that Jeanine Áñez has suffered at the hands of the Bolivian State” , he added.
The Front also urged political and democratic leaders, parliamentarians, human rights defenders and representatives of democratic countries in multilateral organizations in the region to join forces and actively raise their voices against “this regrettable case of political persecution in Bolivia”.
Áñez was sentenced on Friday to ten years in prison for the events that took place between November 10, 2019, the day when Evo Morales resigned from the Bolivian presidency, and November 12, when the then senator provisionally assumed power.
Arce’s government and the ruling Movement for Socialism (MAS) have insisted that Morales’ resignation was the result of a coup d’état against him, while his detractors claim it was the result of electoral fraud accusations in his favor in the failed general elections of 2019.
Bolivian opponents rejected the sentence against Áñez and criticized the justice system, while Human Rights Watch (HRW) expressed concern about the way in which the case against the interim former president was handled.
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