Every year the European Parliament awards a so-called “Sakharov Freedom of Conscience Prize.” The official story goes that the winner is selected for his or her contribution to the promotion of human rights. But a quick review of recent laureates belies that unctuous claim. Last year’s winner was an abstraction called the “opposition to Lukashenko,” and the prize has also been awarded to equally nebulous entities such as “Uyghur dissidents in China,” and the “Venezuelan opposition.” In the same tradition, “Afghan women and girls,” left a month ago to their own devices by the prize-givers, have also been nominated for recognition this year. Clearly the high sounding prize, brazenly manipulating the prestige of an iconic Russian scientist who just happens to be dead and unable to disown it, is a political propaganda tool.

The salience of the latter point is compellingly illustrated by this year’s principal nominees, the Bolivian coup regime “acting president” Jeannine Añez and the infamous Russian prevaricator Alexey Navalny.

The in-your-face European Parliament human rights prize nomination of señora Añez, for the notable accomplishment of serving as provisional head of state in an illegal coup regime which deposed the legitimately elected President, should be enough to give the whole game away, shouldn’t it? Fabled European values and the rule of law prattle apparently do not apply to countries where the majority indigenous population insists on having as its leader someone with whom it shares cultural and (why not say it openly?) ethnic affinity. Especially when that leader’s obnoxious policies (think of Mosadegh and Nasser for a moment) audaciously aim to preserve the country natural wealth and use it for the benefit of its citizens, and contrary to the designs of foreign industrial magnates. Mrs. Añez, who looks as Bolivian as apple pie, was fully cognizant of these circumstances when she accepted to front for her foreign sponsors and assume leadership of the coup regime they were installing, by agreeing to serve as the illegal President. By doing so, she violated the human rights of the vast majority of the Bolivian people who supported, as they still do, Evo Morales, the person she seditiously drove out of elected office. The potential that such a usurper might be awarded a “freedom of conscience” prize bearing the name of Andrei Sakharov, a man who was not perfect but stood for things quite opposite to the base political skulduggery to which this wretched, foolish, and power hungry woman had lent herself to, is nothing less than shocking. It is indeed an act of depravity and cynicism that only the amoral leadership of present-day Europe might have been capable of.

The other leading contender, Alexey Navalny, is cut from the same cloth. However, unlike Mrs. Añez, while having enjoyed his intoxicating fifteen minutes of fame, he had never been invested even temporarily with the glory of presiding over a broken and dismembered Russia, as he and his directors had dreamt. Like Mrs. Añez, Navalny is facing the music in a way neither of them had contemplated or was prepared for.

It is conceivable that had the proposal of collaboration been made to them after instead of before Afghanistan, they would have analysed it more soberly and even sceptically. That is merely a hypothetical possibility, of course, since such greedy and ambitious characters are not noted for their steep learning curve. But for all its undeniable unpleasantness, prison is nevertheless a great place to focus the mind. Both Mrs. Añez and her Russian colleague now have an opportunity to ponder not just their fate but also the subtle message underlying the spectacular honours that might soon be heaped on one or both of them.

That message is stark and simple, and it is that they are washed out. They will never seize the prize which they avidly sought, the opportunity to rule and plunder their countries as foreign surrogates, because their usefulness has finally run its course. The most that they can aspire to now is a consolation prize of sorts, the fading Empire’s European puppets’ act of condescension reserved for third or fourth echelon collaborators.

Oh, will they and their ilk ever learn? Most likely not.

Can an arrest be considered an “opposition crackdown” if the individual is a U.S.-backed coup plotter who served as alleged “acting president” in the ousting of former Bolivian President Evo Morales? According to mainstream media, the designation is legitimate. Leading headlines from Europe have been swift to legitimise statements from Jeanine Anez, former interim president, or dictator, depending on how one views the foray by the Trump administration to meddle in Latin America by replicating the foreign interference of past decades.

Anez, who was not handcuffed at the time of her arrest and escorted by the Bolivian police for questioning, downplayed her role in the U.S.-backed coup. “This is an abuse,”Anez claimed. “There was no coup d’etat, but a constitutional succession.”

But the White House under former U.S. President Donald Trump stated otherwise, in a thinly veiled statement which signalled involvement, and a warning to other Latin American countries. “These events send a strong signal to the illegitimate regimes in Venezuela and Nicaragua that democracy and the will of the people will always prevail,” Trump had said. “We are now one step closer to a completely democratic, prosperous, and free Western Hemisphere.”

The UN and Human Rights Watch (HRW) have lent their support to Anez and other Bolivian officials involved in the 2019 coup. HRW’s Americas Division Director, Jose Miguel Vivanco, stated that the arrest warrants issued for Anez and other officials do not contain evidence of terrorism.

If the “crackdown” discourse was reversed, the recent amnesty granted by the Bolivian government to over 1,000 people rounded up by Anez’s government speaks volumes about which political entity embarked upon state terrorism and persecution. Not to mention the violence unleashed upon Bolivia’s indigenous population in the aftermath of the coup, as well as the massacres of Sacaba, for which the former Police Commander Jaime Zurita is being charged.

HRW criticised the Bolivian government’s amnesty bill, stating it opens avenues for abuse, while acknowledging that Anez’s regime persecuted MAS supporters in politically motivated cases.” In a previous report, the organisation also criticised Anez for “disproportionate charges against Morales.”

What is missing is the political context which human rights organisations mostly prefer not to wade through. While Morales lost support over his decision to stand for a fourth presidential term, Anez herself lacked any political majority in Bolivia and it was through state-sanctioned terror that the interim period was governed, at the expense of Bolivia’s indigenous. In October 2020, Bolivians voted the MAS back into power, restoring order under a new presidency and repudiating U.S. influence.

Standing against what the coup sought to achieve, which included bringing Bolivia under the clutches of the International Monetary Fund, is what the international community should have done. The monopoly instigated by the U.S. of what constitutes a democracy has been subverted by the U.S.’s own purportedly “democratic” involvement in foreign intervention to bring dictatorships into action.

Reconstructing democracy, for Anez, meant a government without indigenous representation, despite the fact that over 60 percent of Bolivians are indigenous. Pacification, for the right-wing coup, was built upon ostracization and oblivion. If the indigenous are not represented, the government can deny their existence. Opponents of Morales and the MAS heeded Anez’s call, burning the indigenous flag in the streets as a prelude to the violence unleashed in the aftermath.

If human rights were really a concern for those opposing Anez’s arrest, the same critics would have intervened on an equal level over the violence unleashed in the aftermath of the coup. But that wouldn’t do for the likes of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, for example, who expressed concern over the arrest and failed to spare any for Anez’s victims – the indigenous, same as Bolsonaro’s targets and victims. Bolivia has upheld its promise to deliver justice over foreign intervention through a democratic framework, and its critics would do well to heed the process.

Áñez was astoundingly prevented from boarding a plane at the Jorge Henrich Arauz airport in the city of Trinidad, as she was trying to go to a border city and then flee to Brazil. There is likely to be more to this story, involving a small deal with Trinidad & Tobago’s financial intelligence service, the FIUTT, who appears to have informed a left-leaning activist group with ties to Bolivia and Venezuela, to make the ‘citizen’s arrest’, so as to separate the state from the actual arrest.

From Deutsche Bank to Citibank – Espionage: Moves against Morales

At issue here is that Puerto España’s FIUTT service is apparently aware of Áñez’s money laundering to an offshore account under their watch, connected also to the US and its own Citibank. The tip from the FIUTT financial intelligence in Trinidad and Tobago on an eyebrow raising transaction was relayed directly to vectors within the Movement for Socialism (MAS-IPSP).  Because of Áñez has accounts either frozen or under scrutiny in Bolivia, it appears she had suddenly accessed or moved a high amount of money in an offshore account, as she prepared to leave from the Trinidad region (Bolivia) to Brazil. She was likely attempting to travel using false documents.

For its part, the Bolivian BIP or the Special Security Group would not be the best party involved in making the arrest themselves directly, as this could connect that a tip-off from Trinidad and Tobago’s FIUTT had cooperated with Bolivia’s Special Security Group, (or worse, likely, the MAS-IPSP itself) which in turn is conducted under the Ministry of the Interior.  Activities of the Ministry of the Interior are under scrutiny, and moreover there are divisions and potential leaks within them, and could sully the legal case against Áñez. Because of the very same relationships and allegiances that made the coup possible from within the military and police would also apply to Bolivian intelligence activities under the Ministry of the Interior.

Because the Special Security Group and the Multipurpose Intervention Brigade (BIP) may be compromised and could then inform Áñez that her plans were known and an arrest was imminent, where she could have avoided being at the airport that day and would look instead at other ways of crossing the border perhaps by land, the moves here on the part of the Movement for Socialism are better understood.

The charges against Áñez include corruption, and her defense will revolve around claims that the evidence is politically motivated or was arrived it illegally, without proper warrants. Thus, a problem could arise between Sucre and La Paz. The judiciary in Sucre would look at La Paz for making a politically motivated prosecution and prosecutors would then be in a position of engaging in parallel construction of the evidence, one that circumvented the actual direct relationship between MAS-IPSP and Puerto España’s FIUTT. The fact that MAS would claim that problems within the Ministry of the Interior and Bolivia’s own intelligence service were the reason for this.

Trinidad is a member of the US led Caribbean Basin Security Initiative (CBSI), invites significant US foreign investment, and is likely not to want to be seen as overtly involved themselves. Here, the role of Citibank in Trinidad’s non-citizen banking system where offshore accounts are possible, cannot be understated.

To wit, much of the thrust of 21^st Century Socialism has been part of a transatlantic agreement wherein Citibank is in an investment partnership with other transatlantic banks within the IMF structure, prominently Deutsche Bank, in Eastern Europe and the Balkans. In exchange, Deutsche Bank subsidiaries and partners in France and Spain are the primary western banks on call for Latin American countries belonging to the so-called ‘pink tide’.

And so this counter-coup against Áñez is as much a European banking effort against its ‘frenemy’ in the form of Citibank and New York City.

The Failed Coup

These exciting events are now transpiring as the result of what has become an ultimately failed coup attempt in Bolivia, a tragic year-long period where democratic rule was upended.

Indeed, last month something incredible happened. The Globalist’s golpe de estado failed, in what has been a series of incredible failures world-wide. Among their sought after bounty was Bolivia’s lithium wealth, valued in billions. Bolivia is known to have somewhere between 50 to 80 percent of the world’s lithium.

Morales (L) and Áñez (R)

Goldman Sachs says that the global market demand for lithium could in fact triple to some 570,000 tons a year in the next 10 years due to electric vehicles. It’s no wonder that Elon Musk’s hands were all over it.

But nevertheless, Evo Morales made a come-back in at the end of October 2020, and was able to overturn a coup (by way of law-fare) imposed on the country from the Globalist deep state.

Summarizing it succinctly, Ramona Wadi wrote for SCF last month;

“Bolivia has managed to overturn the neoliberal agenda which the U.S. attempted to force upon the nation in the 2019 coup, which ousted former President Evo Morales to install the far-right wing Jeanine Añez as president, or dictator. While Chile was dealing with its state violence, the Bolivian coup was out in the streets exerting its vengeance on the country’s indigenous population. For months, Bolivians protested against state violence and police repression. It is now the new government’s obligation to bring the perpetrators to justice, while retracing Bolivia’s path to its revolutionary progress.”

Besides being involved in an unconstitutional coup, where the armed forces and the police conspired with US Deep-State agents to overthrow Evo Morales, Jeanine Áñez is also wanted in particular for killing of civilians in Senkata and Sacaba.

And yet despite all this, western media – in backing the coup – painted her as a symbol of a woman “breaking the glass ceiling”, and then she doubled-down on virtue signaling by claiming without evidence that she had ‘contracted the coronavirus’, in what was no doubt both a sympathy ploy and a signal to globalist elites that she was still their man, or woman, rather.

Of course we face a strange and newly arisen contradiction in our terminology, where in Latin America ‘far-right’ means almost nothing like what it means inside the US. In Latin America, it describes an agent of the bankers and foreign interests who undermine sovereignty, and who employ the tactics of death squads and mass repression. In Latin America, it is the ‘far right’ who view the common people as the ‘deplorables’, and tend to view themselves as trying to maintain a vestige of privilege bestowed on them by the legacy of Spanish colonialism on the continent.

Despite her own obviously indigenous features, Jeanine Áñez Áñez is among a certain upwardly mobile demographic of La Paz’s urban petit-bourgeoisie whose blonde hair comes from the bottle and not from the mother. While perhaps a seemingly trivial point for those outside of Latin America, this ‘personality tick’ of hers has become a symbolic focus of outrage against her coup, as it is emblematic of the disastrous neoliberal policies of its petit-bourgeoisie who fetishize the downplaying of any indigenous roots. For these reasons and more, the big news of her detention on November 24^th was widely celebrated by Bolivia’s underclass.

Will Justice Fall on Áñez? Musk’s Puppet and her Crimes against Humanity

But others from her administration have already successfully escaped justice. Defense Minister Fernando Lopez who was critical in organizing the coup and who is believed to have received millions from Elon Musk, has escaped to Brazil. Last week, former de facto government minister Arturo Murillo, facing corruption charges and more, successfully fled the country and arrived in Panama. As a result of this, three officials of the Bolivian Migration Directorate were arrested for allowing these wanted fugitives to escape. Presently Bolivia is in both diplomatic talks and litigation to push Panama and Brazil to return the ‘asylum seekers’ to face justice in La Paz.

Following the inauguration of Morales’ ally, the newly-elected Bolivian President Luis Arce, the corruption that prevailed during the de facto government has been further revealed. At present, there are some 24 cases open and being reviewed by courts.

Last October the Plurinational Legislative Assembly moreover recommended that the Public Prosecutor’s Office (Fiscalía) open a lawsuit against Añez for the massacres of Cochabamba, Senkata, Sacaba, and El Alto, which all occurred in November 2019. She stands accused of committing the crimes of genocide, torture, and kidnappings.

November 2019, Mourners in Bolivia make prayers for citizen’s killed by Añez’s coup forces – Photo credit – The Associated Press

Elements from within the armed forces and the police were the primary ‘on the ground’ actors of the coup d’état of November 10th, 2019, and would have also involved actors within the Ministry of the Interior including the BIP or perhaps the Special Security Group. At the time in exile in Argentina and fearing his own life, Evo Morales repeatedly called for charges against those responsible for the massacre in El Alto. Morales has denounced Bolivia’s high military commands for decorating and honoring the “coup leaders,” who now stand accused in the massacring of citizens.

The aim of these killings ordered by Áñez was to strike fear in indigenous communities, because of the mechanisms of the coup. Many coup tactics are employed during elections, as being seen right now in the US against Donald Trump. It is an opportune time because electronic voting devices, or the much older method of controlling local political machines, are used to throw the vote towards an otherwise unpopular leader – such as Biden.

But in the case of Bolivia, with Añez who was backed by American plutocrat Elon Musk, the coup had to be arranged after the election because the re-election of the wildly popular Morales was hard to contest. But in Bolivia, where indigenous communities live protected from many of the depravities of modernity, it is difficult to widely use electronic voting. And more, the local political machines are controlled by indigenous people who saw Evo Morales as one of their own.

And so the coup relied upon the mid-century fascist tactics of the death squad, torture, and classical repression.

Elon Musk’s hopes were that the then upcoming October 2020 elections could see a continuation of the Añez junta, if sufficient numbers of Bolivian populists could be murdered.

But now with the come-back success of Morales’ party with the assumption of the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) into power with Morales ally Luis Arce, the promises to investigate the various crimes committed the year that Áñez was in government are now coming to fruition.

Elon Musk, in search of ever-cheaper access to lithium, got behind this brazen gilded-age act of imperialist violence. He was eager to oppose the will of millions of Bolivian voters, a base widely backed by its indigenous population with its pre-Columbian culture.

SPACEX CEO ELON MUSK SHOWS PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA AROUND THE COMPANY’S CAPE CANAVERAL ROCKET PROCESSING SITE IN 2010. (CREDIT: BILL INGALLS / NASA)

Now the character of Elon Musk has been difficult for some to discern, but what is abundantly clear is that he represents a breed of ‘entrepreneurs’ in name only, who in fact rely on ‘socialism for the rich’, on subsidies and government largesse. He has angled on themes that suit his own interests, and his own interests alone. At times appearing to align with Trump’s populism on space technology or against lockdowns, but in fact got his start from deep connections with the Obama administration’s mini ‘Green New Deal’, and the privatization of NASA resources that made Tesla Motors and Space-X a possibility.

It is lamentable, or at the very least hypocritical, that he would work so hard to subvert any kind of socialism for the poor, as was the case when he so enthusiastically supported the coup against Bolivian President Evo Morales.

The successful prosecution of Áñez, who faces murder and kidnapping charges, will help bring closure to a troubled, if brief, chapter in the long trajectory of independence, national liberation, and self-determination for Bolivia and its 11 million people.

Mainstream propaganda attempted to justify the coup by spreading a false narrative of the people rejecting Morales’s government. However, when faced with a choice between the two main candidates, the former right-wing president Carlos Mesa and the MAS former Economy Minister Luis Arce, voters opted for the a future governance that has consistently rejected U.S. and international interference. The elections gave the MAS a resounding victory, with a bigger margin than the 2019 elections in which Morales was elected.

Arce will officially take power in December this year. Senate candidate Leonardo Loza described the forthcoming path towards justice thus: “We will not be a government of persecution. But there will be no forgetting or forgiving for those wo got killed in Senkata and Sacaba during the 2019 coup.”

In Senkata and Sacaba, at least 19 people were killed by the military in the aftermath of the coup. In addition, the coup instigated a climate of extreme repression and violence, reminiscent of earlier dictatorship practices in Bolivia itself and in Latin America.

Añez has reportedly asked the U.S. to provide 350 visas for officials involved in the 2019 coup, in a bid to avoid prosecution. As soon as the MAS victory was evident, Añez recognised the electoral result and asked the socialist party “to govern with Bolivia and democracy in mind.”

Democracy also requires justice. Añez’s request, undoubtedly part of the U.S. narrative of “restoring democracy to Bolivia” albeit through a coup leading to dictatorship, had still not differentiated between the people’s democracy and coercive neoliberal violence – the latter being the brand which her government promoted and which the people so clearly rejected.

Arce has also called for the resignation of Luis Almagro, the OAS Chief who alleged electoral fraud in the 2019 elections which saw Morales return to power. The call for resignation is regional – Almagro’s vested interests in promoting the U.S. agenda opens up Latin America to imperialist interference. “There should not be interference in the internal affairs of a country. If Almagro did that in Bolivia, imagine, he can do it with any other country, and we cannot allow that,” Arce explained. Morales also declared he would be pursuing judicial action against Almagro.

The Bolivian elections have illustrated the centrality of social movements to the political process. While the coup attempted to push the indigenous people to the periphery, the elections provided an opportunity to reverse the changes desired and envisaged by the U.S., and a strong return to the MAS. However, the new government faces the task of curbing the right-wing reactionary groups which are supported by the U.S.

However, the electoral triumph many not spell the end of U.S. intervention in the country. The U.S. is known to have used diverse tactics to instigate violence and unrest in Latin America, biding its time until it strikes again. The military and the police have yet to completely prove their allegiance to the new government and against U.S. designations on Bolivia. Añez also subjugated the country to an IMF loan of $327 million. Regional and international solidarity with Bolivia is imperative in order to isolate U.S. interference and to allow Bolivia to rebuild itself from the deprivation ushered in a single year of U.S.-backed dictatorship rule.