Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Unasur Report Questioned

From La Razón comes word that Colombia, Peru, Uruguay, and Paraguay have registered objections to Unasur investigator Radolfo Matarollo's report on the Sept. 11 massacre in Pando, Bolivia, in which at least 16 people died, according to Brazilian newspaper O Estado de São Paulo:
The report "was considered hasty and partial by Peru, Colombia, Uruguay and Paraguay," the newspaper said, adding that sources in Brazil "admitted that there was an incident in which 16 people died, but described the action of the UNASUR commission as rubber-stamped and partial."
Besides these flaws, there are three omissions: "The first two victims of the 'slaughter' were opposition activists. The second was that the Minister of the Presidency ... was in Porvenir before the confrontation to mobilize pro-government demonstrators ... Another omission was that many rural supporters of Evo were armed at the time of shock."

I do not see how any of these three "omissions" (if they are in fact omitted from the final report--which we have not seen yet) change the fact that Morales' supporters were gunned down. There are people from the opposition that insist that Presidential Minister Juan Ramon Quintana had a hand in the attacks, claims which I find absurd. That opposition people were also killed--if true--is immaterial to the case (if they were, though, justice demands accountability from their assailants). Which leaves the claim that Morales' supporters were armed before the attack. I bet they were--with stones, clubs, and machetes, which any peasant in Bolivia usually carries when there might be a confrontation with the opposition, which is known for being extremely violent.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hello Matt! Greetings from Vienna. Did you get my email..?
Ulli

Anonymous said...

It's very likely that the opposition killed a couple of their own, if indeed it's true that two of them died. They are violent enough to do that, especially if it lends them a semblance of the credibility they blatantly lack. They are as bad as their Venezuelan counterparts and then some--and the Venezuelan ones are bad enough to kill their own, too. They've done it more than once, as I recall.