Former Bolivian President to pay damages to families of protestors killed during his tenure

[Judi Lynn]

2. Bolivia's ex-leader to compensate massacre victims in landmark U.S. case

By Paulina Villegas
September 28, 2023 at 6:50 p.m. EDT



Bolivian plaintiffs from the Aymara community outside a federal court on April 3, 2018, in Fort Lauderdale, after a jury found former Bolivian president Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada and his former minister of defense Carlos Sánchez Berzain responsible of extrajudicial killings of their relatives during the unrests in October 2003. (Leila Macor/AFP/Getty Images)

Twenty years ago, Eloy Rojas Mamani made a promise to his 8-year-old daughter Marlene at her funeral: He would not rest until he found justice for her death.

She’d died inside their home in the highlands of Bolivia when a bullet from a government sniper lanced through her chest amid a deadly episode when government forces massacred dozens of civilians, mostly indigenous people. This week, Mamani said, that day finally came thanks to the resolution of a landmark U.S. court case.

. . .



Former Bolivian president Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, center, exits the U.S. Federal Courthouse in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., with his lawyer Stephen Raber, on March 20, 2018. (Leila Macor/AFP/Getty Images)


The case marks the first instance a living, former head of state has stood trial in a U.S. civil court and been found responsible for human rights abuses under their leadership abroad, legal experts said.

. . .

The resolution culminates a years-long legal battle led by Rojas Mamani and seven other Bolivian families who sued Sánchez de Lozada and Sánchez Berzain in 2007 under the U.S. Torture Victim Protection Act. The case accused them of instructing military forces to intentionally kill and injure their unarmed relatives during a period of widespread unrest known as the “Gas War.”

“This trial has offered indigenous Aymara people, some of the poorest people in one of the poorest countries in the world, a message that even campesinos can win against the most powerful and that no one is above the law,” said Thomas Becker, director of the University Network for Human Rights and the leader of the legal action, using a Spanish term referring to farmers.

Sánchez de Lozada, commonly known as Goni, a U.S. educated, market-friendly mining magnate, ruled Bolivia from 1993 to 1997 and then again starting in 2002. When the staunch U.S. ally in his second term began trying to sell the nation’s natural gas reserves to private corporations for export, the plans caused an uproar, and thousands of largely indigenous Bolivians flooded the streets to protest.

. . .

One former soldier in the Bolivian military later testified in U.S. court about what happened after Sánchez de Lozada sent the military to quell the demonstrations. He told the court that he was ordered to shoot at “anything that moves” in a civilian community. Another said he witnessed a military officer kill a soldier for refusing to follow orders to shoot at unarmed civilians. Witnesses also recounted that tanks rolled through the streets and “soldiers deliberately fired deadly shots,” at unarmed civilians, some while they were inside a home or a building. Others were shot while they were “hiding or fleeing,” according to court documents.

More:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/09/28/bolivia-sanchez-de-lozada-civil-lawsuit-settlement/

or, no subscription:

https://web.archive.org/web/20230928225615/https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/09/28/bolivia-sanchez-de-lozada-civil-lawsuit-settlement/