Bolivia: against a background of coronavirus, the acting president criticized on all sides

Interim President of Bolivia Jeanine Añez at a press conference in La Paz on November 15, 2019 (illustration image). RONALDO SCHEMIDT / AFP

Text by: Alice Campaignolle

In Bolivia, the fight against Covid-19 requires measures restricting rights and freedoms, including freedom of movement, like everywhere in the world. But in the Andean country, anger is mounting, beyond the restrictions due to the coronavirus, the unelected authorities who run the country seem to be adopting an increasingly authoritarian trend of government.

Publicity

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From our correspondent in La Paz,

The Bolivian president has an eye for detail. She chose the day dedicated to journalists in Bolivia last Sunday to make public a presidential decree restricting press freedom in the country even more.

It is specified that any person producing written or printed information raising doubts as to Covid-19, may be prosecuted for damage to public health. Here, journalists and Internet users are directly targeted.

So outcry among information professionals, and they are not the only ones to be angry. These days, the interim president Jeanine Añez is criticized from all sides. Particularly since another presidential decree allowing the entry of several transgenic seeds in the country, while so far only two types of GMO soybeans were planted on Bolivian soil.

Environmental protection associations therefore reject this decision, and behind them tens of thousands of concerned citizens. And many recall that the current government in Bolivia lacks legitimacy because it was not elected, yet it has now been six months since it ruled the country, and that suspicions of corruption weigh on several ministers.

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  • Bolivia
  • Coronavirus
  • Human rights
  • Freedom of press
  • Environment

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