Bolivia’s interim government is to file a case with the International Criminal Court (ICC) against former Bolivian president Evo Morales for “crimes against humanity,” Bolivian Minister of Government Arturo Murillo announced on Friday.
The government would file the lawsuit “in the next few days,” Murillo told state radio Patria Nueva.
The Hague, Netherlands-based court has jurisdiction to prosecute individuals for crimes against humanity.
Murillo last week filed a criminal complaint in Bolivia accusing Morales of sedition and terrorism, after he allegedly called on supporters to blockade cities and cut off fuel and food supplies.
The former president “must answer to justice for what he has done, and is doing, in addition to his accomplices who have participated in the tragic events that Bolivians have experienced,” Murillo said.
If Morales — who fled to Mexico after resigning on Nov. 10 — is charged and convicted in a Bolivian court, he would face a maximum penalty of 30 years in jail.
Morales has in turn accused the interim government of “genocide” following the deaths of 32 people, mostly his indigenous supporters, in post-election violence.
Morales denied wrongdoing and said that he was being persecuted for leading a pro-poor, pro-indigenous government and nationalizing the country’s gas and other natural resources.
The Bolivian Plurinational Legislative Assembly last week gave a green light for a new vote without Morales, Bolivia’s first indigenous president. He had been seeking a fourth term after nearly 14 years as leader of the poor but resource-rich country.
Meanwhile, Murillo expressed concern over the arrival in Bolivia of an Argentine human rights group.
“We recommend these foreigners who are arriving ... to be careful,” Murillo said. “We are looking at you. We are following you.”
“There is no tolerance for terrorism, sedition or armed movements. Zero tolerance,” he said.
The Argentine rights group said on Twitter: “While the de facto government accuses us of being terrorists, we have started what we came to do, take testimony of the different human rights violations that the Bolivian people are enduring.”
Chinese authorities have marshalled extraordinary resources to monitor a herd of traveling elephants and to keep it away from residential areas. Media reports quoted the Yunnan Forest Fire Brigade as saying that a team of eight people have been tracking the elephants, around the clock, on the ground and by drone. In the latest update, authorities said that the herd of wild Asian elephants had been tracked to a forest just outside a village in Xiyang Township, in Yunnan Province, about 90km southwest of the city of Kunming, heading back in the direction they came from. Drone images showed the elephants lying down
Tall, thin and brightly colored, Hanoi’s “tube houses” dominate the city’s streets as 9 million people compete for space in Vietnam’s bustling capital. Although Vietnam saw a number of villas and garden houses built during the French colonial period, Hanoi has few of these grand residential homes. Instead, tree-lined streets are packed with dwellings that are barely 4m wide, but are three times that in depth. Typically, a tube house might be home to a family of four, but two or three generations of relatives sometimes have to jostle for space. The first tube houses — known as nha ong in Vietnamese — are
The head of the Philippine military on Monday visited a coral-fringed island his country occupies in the South China Sea, a move that could stoke already heightened tensions between Manila and Beijing in disputed waters claimed by both countries. During the visit, Philippine Armed Forces Lieutenant General Cirilito Sobejana commended service members for the role they played in protecting the island’s residents and “guarding the country’s territories” in the strategic waterway. The visit comes after diplomatic protests made by the Philippines in the past few months over what it says is the illegal presence of hundreds of “Chinese maritime militia” vessels inside
Maori might have been the first to discover Antarctica, with connections to the icy continent and its surrounding oceans stretching back to the seventh century, researchers say. A new paper by University of Otago combines literature and oral histories, and concludes that Maori were likely the first people to explore Antarctica’s surrounding waters and possibly the continent in the distance. They write that Maori and Polynesian journeys to the deep south have been occurring for a long time, perhaps as far back as the 7th century, and are recorded in a variety of oral traditions. The oral histories of Maori groups Ngti Rrua
RSS