Bolivia: Senkata and Sencaba Events Under Investigation

Bolivian Legislative Commission announced on Thursday that they will investigate the Senkata and Sencaba events in the El Alto province that took place in November 2019.

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According to Victor Broda, Movement to Socialism (MAS) party deputy and Special Mix Legislative Commission’s president, the inquiring process would not be a simple data collection, but a determination on both intellectual and material responsible. 

"Determine indications of who are the intellectual and material authors of this fact, the accomplices, the instigators and obviously that final report, if there is criminal responsibility, will have to be sent to the Public Prosecutor's Office," the leftist functionary explained.

The first action in the process is to hold audiences with the affected citizens and register oral and written testimonies. Interviews with the victims’ relatives and wounded ones during the confrontations will be taken as evidence. Those who were under illegal judicial processes will declare as well. 

Legislative Assembly will receive an official report with all the information after May 15. The administrative body will be sent to the Public Bolivian Prosecutors´ Office. 

In Senkata, military assets confronted a group of protesters who were claiming to be in favor of Evo Morales, after he suffered a coup d'état. As another military contingent pulled out, it violently repressed a march in the vicinity of Cochabamba. A total of 36 people died. 

The de facto government refuses to take responsibility for these events, which involved Luis Fernando Lopez Julio, Minister of Defense of the Añez administration. Bolivian Parliament deposed  Lopez under accountability avoiding accusations and later reinstated by the president. 

The Inter-American Human Rights Commission qualified these events as a massacre.