Foreign News
Bolivian president thanks people after facing down failed coup attempt
Amid international outcry, an apparent coup attempt in Bolivia has subsided, with President Luis Arce asserting his authority over the country’s military.
Earlier, on Wednesday afternoon, troops led by army general commander Juan Jose Zuniga had stormed the presidential palace and taken up positions in the square outside. News reports indicated a tank slammed the palace doors.
But within hours, Zuniga urged the soldiers to withdraw, after leaders from around the world blasted the army’s actions as illegal.
President Arce hailed the withdrawal as a victory for Bolivia’s democracy and addressed the country’s citizens in the aftermath, some of whom had taken to the streets in protest of the alleged coup attempt. “Many thanks to the Bolivian people,” said Arce. “Long live democracy.”
Dramatic footage on Bolivian television showed Arce facing down Zuniga and a group of soldiers in a palace hallway on Wednesday. “I am your captain, and I order you to withdraw your soldiers, and I will not allow this insubordination,” Arce said.
The news agency Reuters reported that Zuniga was ultimately arrested.
Since taking office in 2020, President Arce has led an embattled government, fending off pressure from both the left and the right.
Under his leadership, right-wing forces in provinces like Santa Cruz have led deadly strikes against measures they believe are designed to keep them from power. Just last year, a prominent opposition leader, Luis Fernando Camacho, was arrested for his alleged role in 2019’s political arrest.
And on the left, President Arce faces push-back from his former political mentor, ex-President Evo Morales, who has declared his intention to replace Arce in the 2025 presidential race.
Adding to the political turmoil has been nationwide fuel shortages and a financial crisis that has seen its currency reserves crater.
“The president of the country is in a bit of a problem, in the sense that he’s got low approval ratings. The last one in March, he was at 38 percent. The economy’s not doing well at all. And he’s also involved in a protracted battle with Evo Morales, the ex-president of the country,” explained Al Jazeera correspondent John Holman. “So this is a difficult time for President Luis Arce.”
Zuniga was Arce’s hand-picked leader for Bolivia’s military. But as he entered the presidential palace on Wednesday, Zuniga cited the malaise in the country as a motivation.
“The three chiefs of the armed forces have come to express our dismay. There will be a new cabinet of ministers. Surely things will change, but our country cannot continue like this any longer,” Zuniga told a local TV station. “Stop destroying, stop impoverishing our country, stop humiliating our army.”
The general added that he would continue to recognise Arce as the commander-in-chief “for now”. But he explained that his aim was to “restore democracy” and “free political prisoners”.
Local media reports indicated that Arce had stripped Zuniga of his role atop the country’s military earlier in the week, fuelling tensions between the two leaders.
But as armed soldiers and armoured vehicles filled the Plaza Murillo in the centre of the capital La Paz, the backlash came swiftly.
The country’s largest labour union announced an indefinite strike in defence of Arce’s government. Videos circulating on social media appear to show crowds of people chasing away pro-coup forces.
Former President Morales also denounced the military’s actions, calling for criminal prosecution against Zuniga and anyone who helped him. “We will not allow the armed forces to violate democracy and intimidate people,” he said.
Even the right-wing leader who replaced Morales, former President Jeanine Anez, rejected the military’s advances.
“Total repudiation of the military mobilisation in the Plaza Murillo, attempting to destroy the constitutional order,” she wrote on the social media platform X, adding that Arce “must leave through the vote in 2025”.
From the presidential palace, Arce broadcast a video presenting a united front, standing alongside all his ministers. He pledged to “confront any attempt that threatens our democracy”.
“To the Bolivian people and the entire international community, our country today is facing an attempted coup d’etat,” Arce said in the video.
“The Bolivian people are called today. We need the Bolivian people to organise and mobilise against the coup d’etat in favour of democracy. We cannot allow once again coup attempts to take Bolivian lives.”
Wednesday’s scenes brought alarm to the Andean nation, where ex-President Morales has long maintained he was removed from office in a 2019 coup after he ran for a fourth term in office.
Bolivia has had a long history of political unrest since it gained independence in 1825. Kathryn Ledebur of the Andean Information Network said of all the South American nations, Bolivia is considered the one that has experienced the most coups.
“But it enjoyed a very long period of democracy until the 2019 coup,” she explained in an interview with Al Jazeera. “I think it’s very important to remember that Bolivia had an illegal government with the support of the military and a coup in 2019.”
That, she said, has fed scepticism among the public towards the armed forces, something reflected on the streets of La Paz on Wednesday. “The military has a bad reputation,” Ledebur said.
While she acknowledged some military officers were charged with crimes, the institution itself “didn’t receive significant legal consequences or any sort of punishment or restructuring after this very anti-democratic activity in 2019 and 2020”.
Wednesday’s actions, however, send a strong signal about the continued threat that the military may pose, Ledebur added. “It’s a very very clear sign that the army is not firmly entrenched in democracy, nor the rest of the armed forces.”
Photos from The Associated Press showed soldiers clearing away journalists near the presidential palace during the alleged coup.
Ultimately, President Arce replaced General Zuniga with Jose Wilson Sanchez, who ordered all mobilised troops to return to their barracks.
“No one wants the images we’re seeing in the streets,” Wilson Sanchez said. The public prosecutor’s office said it will open a criminal investigation into those behind the failed attempt against the government.
As images of the alleged coup started to circulate across the globe, world leaders from countries like Brazil, Mexico and Colombia expressed alarm and denounced what they considered an attack on democracy.
“We express the strongest condemnation of the attempted coup d’etat in Bolivia,” said Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, a popular left-wing leader.
Honduran President Xiomara Castro, meanwhile, called the mobilisation a “criminal coup d’etat”. Gabriel Boric, the president of the neighbouring country of Chile, issued his own statement: “We cannot tolerate any breach of the legitimate constitutional order in Bolivia or anywhere else.”
But the condemnation stretched well beyond Latin America. A White House spokesperson said the United States “urges calm and restraint”. European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said his organisation “expresses its solidarity with the Bolivian government and people”.
The Organization of American States (OAS) – an international group comprised of 32 member states – also weighed in with an appeal to the military.
“We condemned the events in Bolivia. The army must submit itself to the legitimately elected civil power,” OAS leader Luis Almagro said while the turmoil unfolded.
Holman, the Al Jazeera correspondent, warned that the outpouring of support did not mean that President Arce’s troubles were over.
As General Zuniga was arrested, Holman explained that the military leader made unverified allegations that this apparent coup was organised by Arce himself to boost his dismal approval ratings.
“For now, stability of a sort returns,” Holman said. “It’s a really difficult, combustible situation right now in a country that has become deeply divided and polarised. The fact that whatever happened this afternoon has ended isn’t going to take away the explosive nature from the country.”
[Aljazeera]
Australian teen Bianca Jones has become the fourth tourist to have died in a suspected mass poisoning in Laos.
The 19-year-old’s family confirmed her death to the media on Thursday. Hours earlier, the US State Department told the media that an American man died in the tourist town of Vang Vieng.
Two Danish women, aged 19 and 20, also died last week in Laos, Danish authorities confirmed, declining to share more due to confidentiality concerns.
The deaths remain under police investigation, but news reports and testimonies online from other tourists suggest they may have consumed drinks laced with methanol, a deadly substance often found in bootleg alcohol.
Jones’s friend Holly Bowles is in hospital on life support, while a British woman is also reportedly in hospital.
New Zealand’s foreign ministry told local media on Thursday that one of its citizens was also unwell from suspected methanol poisoning. It is unclear how many more people have fallen ill.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the department of foreign affairs had confirmed Jones’s death.
“Our first thoughts in this moment are with her family and friends who are grieving a terrible and cruel loss,” Albanese said on Thursday afternoon.
“This is every parent’s very worst fear and a nightmare that no one should have to endure.”
He said he hoped Ms Bowles, who is currently at Bangkok Hospital, would recover well.
The US State Department said it was “closely monitoring” the situation with regards to the American victim, adding that it was up to local authorities to determine the cause of death.
Australian, New Zealand and UK authorities have each warned their citizens to be careful of methanol poisoning when consuming alcohol in Laos.
Nana Backpacker Hostel, where the two Australian women stayed in Vang Vieng, told the BBC that it was closed for police investigation.
The hostel’s manager told the Associated Press that the two women were among more than 100 guests who received free shots of Lao vodka from the hostel. The pair then headed out for the night, he said, adding that no other guests reported health issues.
The manager said he hoped the investigation would clear the hostel’s name, but said they have stopped giving free shots for now.
In a statement to Australian newspaper the Herald Sun, Jones’s family expressed their “deepest gratitude for the overwhelming support, love, and prayers we’ve received from across Australia”.
“We kindly ask for privacy as we navigate through our grief and begin to heal,” the statement said.
Unlike ethanol, the key component of alcoholic beverages, methanol is toxic to humans. Bootleg liquor producers sometimes add it to their drinks, however, as a cheap way to increase alcohol content.
Earlier this year, at least 57 people in India died after consuming methanol-laced liquor. Similar cases of mass poisoning have also been reported across the world, from the Philippines to Peru.
Vang Vieng is a small riverside town in central Laos, and a hub for backpackers in Southeast Asia.
[BBC]
The humanitarian medical organisation Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has suspended its operations in the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince, following a violent attack on its staff and the alleged killing of two patients they were treating by Haitian police officers.
The incident took place last week as violence continued to worsen in the country.
An estimated 25 people were killed in Port-au-Prince on Tuesday alone in what police say was a foiled attempt at a gang invasion of a wealthy neighbourhood.
Politically, the situation also remains critical with interim Prime Minister Garry Conille fired this month by the country’s ruling council – less than six months after he took office.
MSF says that on 11 November one of its ambulances carrying three young men with gunshot wounds was stopped by Haitian law enforcement officers.
Apparently supported by a paramilitary self-defence group, the men attacked the vehicle, removed two of the patients, took them outside hospital grounds and executed them.
The humanitarian group denounced the violence in a strongly worded statement last week, saying their personnel had been tear-gassed and held against their will for several hours.
While that incident appears to have been the final straw for MSF in Port-au-Prince, at least for the time being, it was not the only recent example of extreme aggression against their staff.
The announcement comes amid a worsening climate of violence in Haiti with some 25 suspected gang members killed in the capital on Tuesday.
The police say that residents helped officers to fight off an attempted attack on the upscale suburb of Pétion-Ville.
The neighbourhood was cordoned off after residents barricaded streets, some armed with machetes and makeshift weapons, in an apparent effort to prevent a gang invasion.
[BBC]
Winter has come to Delhi and with it, a familiar sense of gloom. The sky here is grey and there is a thick, visible blanket of smog.
If you stay outdoors for more than a few minutes, you can almost taste ash. You will feel breathless within minutes if you try to run or even walk at a brisk pace in the smog.
Newspapers are back to using words like toxic, deadly and poisonous in their main headlines.
Most schools have been shut and people have been advised to stay indoors – though those whose livelihoods depend on working outdoors can’t afford to do so.
Delhi’s air quality score was somewhere between 1,200 and 1,500 on Monday and Tuesday, according to different monitoring agencies. The acceptable limit is less than 100.
These scores measure the levels of particulate matter – called PM 2.5 and PM10 – in the air. These tiny particles can enter the lungs and cause a host of diseases.
On social media, people have been expressing shock, disappointment and anguish that it’s all happening again.
Along with the gloom, there is a strong sense of déjà vu – like we have seen this all many times before in the past 15 years.
Covering this story feels like watching (and being in) the same dystopian film every year – following the same characters, plot and script. The outcome is always the same – nothing changes.
The parks are empty again – people, particularly children and the elderly, have been told to stay indoors.
Those who must work – daily-wage labourers, rickshaw pullers, delivery riders – are coughing but still going out.
Hospitals are seeing an increasing number of people coming in with respiratory problems.
And amid all this, we are back to the same question again – why does nothing change?
The simple answer is that solving Delhi’s air problem requires monumental efforts and coordination.
The sources of the problem are many. One of them is the practice of farmers burning crop remains to clear their fields quickly to sow seeds for the next yield.
This mostly happens in the neighbouring states of Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh. The smoke from the farm fires engulfs Delhi every winter and hangs low in the atmosphere as wind speeds reduce during winter months.
But farmers can’t be entirely blamed for this because this is the cheapest way of clearing fields.
Different governments have talked about providing machines and financial incentives to stop crop burning, but very little has happened on the ground.
Delhi itself produces a huge chunk of the pollution – emission from vehicles, construction and factories.
Every year, in the winter months, people get angry, journalists write and produce reports, politicians blame each other and courts fume – until we do it all over again the next year.
A public health emergency like this would spark mass protests in most democracies. But the anger in Delhi is mostly limited to social media.
Activists say the reason is that pollution doesn’t cause immediate problems for most people. Ingesting high levels of PM2.5 deteriorates health slowly. A Lancet study found that pollution led to more than 2.3 million premature deaths in India in 2019.
And then there is the class divide. People who can afford to temporarily leave the city do that, those who can buy air purifiers do that, and those who can vent on social media do that.
The rest, who don’t have these options, just go about their lives.
The collective angst has so far not resulted in a massive protest and, as the Supreme Court once observed, politicians just “pass the buck” and wait for the season to get over.
Experts say governments at the federal level and in different states need to leave their party politics behind and work together to solve this problem. They need to focus on long-term solutions.
And citizens need to hold politicians accountable and courts have to pass decisive orders months before the pollution worsens.
This year, we are again in the thick of the season and temporary measures have been announced, like banning construction work.
But can these bring Delhi’s elusive blue skies back? The evidence from the past few years doesn’t give much hope.
[BBC]
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