LA PAZ: Protesters clashed with police in Bolivia’s largest city on Friday, after a court sentenced a key opposition leader to four months in pre-trial detention on charges of terrorism.

Several hundred demonstrators threw rocks and firecrackers at a police building and burned tires in downtown Santa Cruz, a reporter on the scene observed.

Riot police fired tear gas and made at least four arrests. Judge Sergio Pacheco ordered that Luis Fernando Camacho, a former presidential candidate, be held at the maximum security prison of Chonchocoro in La Paz.

Camacho, the right-wing governor of the country’s economic powerhouse region of Santa Cruz, was arrested on Wednesday on terrorism charges, including for an alleged role in the resignation of leftist president Evo Morales in 2019.

The prosecution on Thursday had sought six months in detention for Camacho, amid clashes between protesters and police in Santa Cruz.

Protesters burn cars, clash with police after the arrest of former presidential candidate

Camacho had been under investigation for his role in strikes and sometimes violent protests in 2019, prompted by Morales’s disputed election to a fourth term.

Morales ultimately resigned under pressure after losing the support of the military.

Camacho has repeatedly denied having fomented a coup against Morales.

Camacho, who leads the second-largest opposition bloc in congress, came third in presidential elections in October 2020 that were won by leftist Luis Arce, a Morales protege. Former interim president Jeanine Anez and ex-president Jorge Quiroga condemned his arrest.

The charges against Camacho echo the arrest and trial of Anez, who was detained last year and given a 10-year prison term in June for allegedly plotting the toppling of Morales, her predecessor.

Supporters of the socialist government of Arce, meanwhile, welcomed the detention of Camacho. Attorney General Wilfredo Chavez, a former minister under Morales, declared that “justice must do its job.”

Protesters in Bolivia’s Santa Cruz, a relatively wealthy farming region, attacked buildings, burned cars and blocked highways as part of a 24-hour strike following the arrest of the regional governor, a right-wing opposition leader.

As night fell, protesters in parts of the provincial capital torched cars and tires and hurled fireworks toward police, who used tear gas to try to disperse the crowds.

Pedro Vaca, Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression for the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), said in a post on Twitter he was receiving reports of “severe attacks” on the media, attributed to police deployments.

“I call on the authorities to give public instructions to their agents on the duty to guarantee freedoms of press, peaceful assembly and association,” he said.

During the day, largely peaceful groups had protested around the city by blocking roads with tires, rocks and flags strung across streets as blockades.

The protests are the latest face-off between Santa Cruz, led by Governor

Luis Fernando Camacho, and leftist President Luis Arce’s government.Camacho has maintained his innocence and called his arrest and transport to La Paz, the country’s

capital, a kidnapping. Prosecutors denied the arrest was a kidnapping or politically motivated.

The governor became a face for the right-wing opposition movement as a civic leader who called for Morales to step down in 2019. On Twitter, Camacho’s communications team said the fallout from the contested election “was not a coup, it was fraud.” Camacho also led weeks-long protests snarling trade from the region through last month, calling for the government to move up a census date that would likely give Santa Cruz more political representation and tax revenues.

The government has not said how it will respond to Friday’s roadblocks, though some military forces were spread throughout Santa Cruz late Thursday. In the last round of protests, government-allied groups violently clashed with Camacho supporters.

Meanwhile, some companies said they would pause sales while Camacho remained in jail.

Published in Dawn, january 1st, 2023