Evo Morales Demands Justice for 2019 Senkata Massacre

Evo Morales called for the punishment of the authors of the massacre in El Alto, where ten people died in a military operation ordered by the Anez coup government.

"The Bolivian justice system, by its initiative, by its commitment to life, must move forward with the investigation and find those responsible," the former president of the Andean country, Evo Morales, said this Thursday on Twitter, at the same time that he expressed his solidarity with the wounded and the families of the victims of the Senkata massacre, that occurred in 2019.

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Morales, forced to resign from the presidency on November 10, 2019, left the country to pacify the social unrest that ensued after a coup d'état orchestrated by the opposition and supported by the US. He asserted that "there cannot be impunity" without directly mentioning the self-proclaimed interim president Jeanine Áñez, singled out by Parliament as the main responsible for these deaths.

The leader of the Movement to Socialism (MAS) made these statements during a ceremony held in Senkata, a neighborhood of El Alto, to honor the ten victims and human rights activists on the first anniversary of the massacre.

The repression in Senkata took place four days after a similar police operation left ten people dead among demonstrators protesting the coup d'état. The Southern Zone of Pedregal (La Paz) and Sacaba (Cochabamba) were also the scenarios of violent acts that ended in bloodshed after Morales' resignation,  prompted by his desire to prevent the violence from continuing after weeks of confrontations and attacks against his supporters. 

Experts and analysts have also stressed the importance of creating some truth commission to "judge those responsible for the coup and those responsible for the massacres," so that "the coup leaders and all those responsible for crimes, massacres and corruption pay for all their crimes."

In turn, Bolivia's President-elect Luis Arce pledged earlier this month to order an investigation and find those responsible for the Senkata massacre.