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Ministerio
de Justicia, Bolivia Fax:
(591-2) 2356781 20 March 2002 Dear
Minister, Re:
The murder of Victor Hugo Daze, Bolivian water protester We,
two international women’s networks, write to protest the acquittal by
a military tribunal of the sharpshooter who murdered Victor Hugo Daza, a
17-year-old protester against water privatisation in Bolivia. Video
footage from an independent Bolivian television network clearly showed
Captain Robinson lriarte de la Fuente, a graduate of the infamous US
School of the Americas, firing into a crowd of unarmed civilians,
fatally wounding the young man in the head. This footage, seen by people
in Bolivia and around the world, was apparently not considered as
evidence at the trial. This
acquittal shows a cynical manipulation of the Bolivian justice system,
designed to pave the way for impunity for this and for other acts of
future military violence. Although the video shows that Captain lriarte
was dressed as a civilian at the time of the shooting, with no
identification of his rank or affiliation, the case was diverted from
the civilian criminal justice system to a military tribunal. Once again,
the military duly looked after its own and not only acquitted Captain
lriarte of all responsibility associated with the shooting but, as a
final insult, promoted him to the rank of Major. Any
of us could have been Victor Hugo Daza. He was protesting so that people
in Cochabamba, and everywhere, could have water as a basic human and
social right. He was part of one of the biggest and most successful
movements in recent history — an example to us all. The theft of water
via privatisation even outlawed the collection of rain water in order to
force people who have little or no income to pay extortionate fees for
water or die. In self-defence, people mobilised and through their
courage and persistence drove the water company out of the country and
forced the government to renationalise. This
is not the first time we write to protest injustice against water
privatisation protesters. We previously supported a call to end blatant
attempts to criminalise Oscar Olivera and other leading
anti-water-privatisation protesters. While murderers are acquitted,
those who fight to preserve life pay with death and/or persecution for
their concern. As
women we are aware of the pain the family of Victor Hugo Daze must be
feeling, especially his mother. We do not raise our children, putting in
so many years of caring work, to see their lives taken away. No mother
should have to bury her child. On top of this, the Daze family has had
to face the court verdict granting impunity to Victor Hugo’s murderer
and even rewarding him for his terrible crime. We
women do the work of giving birth to and taking care of families,
growing food for survival and volunteering in the community
the work which produces, maintains and nourishes life. So as
women and carers, we condemn this license to kill which the military
everywhere appropriates, which sanctions and rewards the murder of those
we have cared for and loved. Only too often we are forced to engage in
campaigns to preserve resources like water, which are everyone’s
birthright. And then we have to campaign to get justice for the murders
of loved ones, killed because they refused to be silent in the face of
genocide. This work of justice falls most heavily on women — mothers,
daughters, sisters, wives, partners, aunts and grannies who visit
lawyers and court rooms, persistently demanding justice and never giving
in, thus protecting all of us from future injustices. All the more so
in this case, as it is nearly always our task if we live in the global
South, to be the water carriers, sometimes walking hours every day to
fetch water for basic needs such as cooking and washing. Today, women
and girls too are forced to work harder and travel further to collect
water, and often have to resort to polluted sources in order to get any
at all. More than five million people, most of them children, die every
year from illnesses caused by drinking poor quality water. Why
do we have to face this murderous waste of precious lives? As private
corporations have sought to profit from the privatisation of water
supplies worldwide, taking over the building and operation of many dams,
they have been facilitated in this theft of our lives by the IMF and the
World Bank. The IMF/WB have lent huge amounts of money to governments in
the South on condition that they, like Bolivia’s, force so-called
‘development’ projects and ‘structural adjustments’ on those of
us with least. Conditions imposed on many other countries as well as
Bolivia have included the privatisation of water supplies and ‘full
cost recovery’, which mean that while the better off among us go to
market to buy some water, it becomes inaccessible, unaffordable and
unsafe for those among us who do not have cash. In Bolivia and
elsewhere, by denying Indigenous communities water, they have also
denied Indigenous cultural rights to use what is for many the most
sacred element. Whether
through the privatisation of water utilities or the ‘development’ of
large dams, the government loans have all had to be paid for with
increased poverty, loss of access to the essentials of life, gross
violations of human rights and ecological devastation, as well as with
destruction of people’s cultural heritage and millions of deaths
worldwide. As the World Commission on Dams has documented, Indigenous
people and other communities of colour have paid the heaviest price of
all, and within those communities the devastation caused has entailed
more overwork and heartache first of all for women. As homes,
livelihoods and communities are destroyed due to lack of access to water
or when they are lost under the waters of a dam, it is women who do the
work of survival of the community and its cultural roots. While much lip
service is paid to ‘culture’, the reality is trampled on. Yet what
is culture if not the unique relationships each community has developed
in order to pass on and extend what it has learnt for its survival and
its pursuit of happiness. And protecting such culture, based in the
history of our struggles, is first of all the work of women. The
denial of water by corporations and financial institutions from the US
and other Northern countries, to communities in the countries with the
poorest people, or in those countries the US does not approve of at any
particular moment, may go under the name of ‘development’ and
‘poverty reduction’. But this denial of water is known to all of us
as just the latest, most blatant and most widespread form of racist
genocide. We are involved
in opposing the building of the llisu dam in Turkey, a project which
would displace mostly Kurdish communities but also other people of
colour, destroy their cultural heritage, cause environmental devastation
and reduce the flow of river water to communities downstream in Syria
and Iraq. The project would extend a long history of brutal military
repression of Kurdish people in particular — which is not so different
from the repression Indigenous people and people of African descent have
had to face in Latin America and elsewhere — and serve to hide their
struggle against this genocide. Since under a State of Emergency the
military in Turkey continues to wield power, whatever evidence remains
of military crimes committed in the 1 990s — village destructions,
burning of homes and murders — would be conveniently concealed by
flooding. Turkey
has also concluded a deal to divert water from another dam to Israel and
is reported to be attempting to do so with water which now goes to Syria
and Iraq. As
corporate power and its wars have threatened our lives over the course
of the 20th century and now more than ever in the 21st, massive
movements of people — the majority, again, in the global South —
have had to do the justice work. We are speaking of the huge protests
against the building of dams in countries like India and Spain or the
placing of a price tag on essential water supplies like in Bolivia.
People everywhere — and women have been at the forefront in this —
have refused to pay the horrific costs imposed on them and have demanded
to hold onto their right to this water —that is, to life. So
corporate power enlists the help of its military arm to push through its
deals and projects in the face of mounting evidence of their devastating
effects on communities and the planet itself. Pressure from grassroots
movements everywhere has forced recognition of the true extent of these
effects and of the military violence used to back these deadly projects.
The World Commission on Dams, for example, has heard the testimony of
many communities, in particular of Indigenous people and other people of
colour. It
has documented the military murders of women, children and men who
demanded to be consulted about their water and energy needs, the routine
heavy-handed policing at peaceful demonstrations and the imposition of
martial law in order to force projects through. Today, no government can
claim it doesn’t know about all of this. People
everywhere are reclaiming the land and our planet in order to stop this
theft (via privatisation) of water and other essentials of life. As
women, we are demanding in particular that the money lavished on killing
and warfare — now over $900 billion worldwide and growing with
‘America’s new war’ — is invested in life and the caring for
life, which we all but especially women do every day all over the world. We
mention all this because this is the corporate and military power that
Victor Hugo Daza with his presence at a protest against water
privatisation was challenging, this is why he was murdered, and this is
why his murderer must be punished: the survival of the human race and
the planet depend on ending such privatisation of vital resources and
getting justice for those who have been victimised for opposing it. So
we wholeheartedly support the call of the Coalition for the Defense of
Water and Life and demand that your government holds Captain lriarte
accountable for his crimes in a civilian court. Not to do so would be a
clear statement that the Bolivian government does not value every life
as we do, and that it wishes to be held responsible for any further
violence and death which is likely to result from granting such
scandalous impunity to the army. It’s time governments started looking
after people instead of acting as lackeys to the US and its corporate
and military might at the expense of everyone else. Signed, Maggie
Ronayne, International Wages for Housework Campaign, Ireland Nina
Lopez-Jones, WinWages (Women’s International Network for Wages for
Caring Work), England Copies
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