Morales criticises Croat, Irish & Hungarian governments attitude to "Coup"

by jack jones Sat Apr 25, 2009 12:30

nice to see the irish government is concerned over possible 'shoot to kill' policy. but aren't they 30 years late, and did they have to spend all that money on air travel when a train ticket to belfast would have done the trick?

LA PAZ, Apr 24 (IPS) - The dismantling of a commando made up mainly of men described by the Bolivian government as foreign mercenaries could lead authorities to the people who organised around a dozen different attacks carried out since 2006 in the city of Santa Cruz.

Bolivian Vice President Álvaro García Linera said the attacks were aimed at destabilising the lefting government of Evo Morales and were to culminate in the assassination of the president.

He said business leaders and landowners in the eastern province of Santa Cruz were financing the clandestine operations by the five alleged terrorists, three of whom were shot and killed by the police.

The vice president said some of the businessmen and landowners backed such action of their own accord, and that others did so under pressure.

But the leader of the opposition-controlled Senate, Santa Cruz businessman Oscar Ortiz, questioned the official report that the men were killed in a shootout, and said he suspected they were simply murdered by the police.

According to witnesses, however, police had attempted to arrest the men in downtown Santa Cruz, and they fled to a hotel, where a half-hour shootout came to an end when the alleged plotters reportedly detonated a grenade inside their hotel room.

Santa Cruz governor Rubén Costas, Morales' most prominent political opponent and one of four governors who have sought autonomy for their provinces, initially suggested that the supposed assassination plot was staged, but is now demanding an impartial investigation.

For its part, the rightwing Santa Cruz Civic Committee, led by local business leaders and landowners, is demanding to see the evidence and photos of the commando that the government says it has.

The Apr. 16 police operation, in which two men were arrested and three killed, took place in an upscale hotel in the capital of the department of Santa Cruz, a city of 1.5 million located 900 km east of La Paz.

No police or judicial investigation has so far clarified the months-long escalation of bomb attacks and fires that targeted the homes of cabinet ministers, government officials and opposition leaders in Santa Cruz, the stronghold of the business and landowners associations and other conservative sectors opposed to Morales since he took office in January 2006.

However, the Apr. 15 attack on the Santa Cruz home of Roman Catholic Cardinal Julio Terrazas, which was carried out with military-style plastic explosives, caused a public outcry, and the police set out to track down the culprits.

Terrazas was out of town at the time of the attack, for which no one claimed responsibility.

The gun battle in the Las Américas hotel in Santa Cruz occurred the night after the bombing attack on the cardinal's home. The police reported that members of an elite anti-terrorist unit had been involved in a gunfight with a far-right group of mercenaries, and that three men were killed: Romanian-Hungarian Magyarosi Arpak, Irishman Michael Dwyer and Bolivian Eduardo Rózsa Flores, who also apparently holds Hungarian and Croatian passports.

Two others were arrested: Bolivian-Croatian Ramiro Francisco Tadic and Romanian-Hungarian Elod Toaso.

The police also reported that they found a cache of sniper's rifles, high-calibre firearms, munitions, and plastic explosives similar to those used in the attack on Terrazas' home, as well as the lid of a container that might have been used to hold the explosives in the bombing attempt the night before.

The arsenal was found in a marketplace warehouse belonging to the Cooperativa de Teléfonos de Santa Cruz de la Sierra, a telephone company owned by wealthy local business leaders who are active in the opposition to the Morales administration.

In September 2008, one of the three men who were killed, Eduardo Rózsa Flores, a Bolivian journalist from Santa Cruz who fought in the Balkans war, had taped an interview with a Hungarian TV personality ”in case anything happens to me.”

In the interview, which was broadcast by the Hungarian MTV station after the news of his death came out, Rózsa Flores said he had been invited by the opposition in Bolivia to set up an armed defence force to protect the autonomy of the province of Santa Cruz. He also said that ”We are ready, within a few months in case co-existence doesn't work under autonomy, to proclaim independence and create a new country.”

While the hidden arms cache in a building owned by rightwing opposition businessmen was reported in Santa Cruz, Vice President García Linera warned in statements from La Paz of the presence of mercenaries, and Morales said from Venezuela û where he was taking part in a meeting of the ALBA (Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas) bloc, held ahead of the fifth Summit of the Americas hosted by Trinidad and Tobago û that the group was plotting to assassinate him.

Rózsa Flores, the son of a Communist militant who settled in Santa Cruz, was commander of an international brigade in the Balkans conflict made up of 380 mercenaries from 20 different countries, who were fighting for Croatian independence.

Political violence and terrorist attacks are nothing new since Morales, Bolivia's first indigenous president, was sworn in. Radical rightwing opposition groups stormed central government buildings in Santa Cruz last September, while anti-government protesters caused a natural gas pipeline explosion in the southern province of Tarija.

And on Sept. 11, 2008, a group of indigenous supporters of Morales were violently blocked by provincial authorities from entering the town of El Porvenir in the northern Amazon jungle province of Pando.

The Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) and a United Nations commission condemned the massacre of 13 indigenous peasants, which led to the arrest of conservative Pando governor Leopoldo Fernández, who is in prison in La Paz awaiting trial.

The survivors described the incident as an ”ambush” by the opposition, and video footage showed people desperately swimming across a river to escape, under gunfire.

The incident was the bloodiest in over a week of often violent protests by the rightwing opposition in Bolivia's relatively wealthy eastern provinces, which have been fighting for autonomy.

Bolivia, South America's poorest country, is basically divided between the western highlands, home to the impoverished indigenous majority, and the much better off eastern provinces, which account for most of the country's natural gas production, industry and GDP. The population of eastern Bolivia tends to be lighter-skinned, of more mixed-race (Spanish and indigenous) descent.

by iosaf Wed Apr 22, 2009 21:50

This story has two main curves of speculation and selection of facts. But it also as most readers now appreciate boasts a cast which when considered not for their ideological similiarity but geographic diverse origins, tell us so much about our modern world.

The Irish state which in the first instance moved to offer public sympathy to the Dwyer family and assist in the repatriation of remains (which really is quite a perk - you get cut up and dropped in an Amsterdam canal they don't bring back your coffin) has only today proffered a statement which some might be tempt some journalists to be interpreted as couched in the diplomatic language of a tense exchange of opinion and difference.


Irish Minister Michaél Martin said they (the Irish government) had "no sympathy" for anything meant to destabilise Bolivia and that the Irish government "has not the remotest desire of getting involved in the internal political situation in Bolivia"........ "Our interest relates exclusively to the fact that an Irish citizen was killed by the Bolivian state security forces in particularly violent circumstances," Michael Dwyer was identified to the media by name and nationality and gruesome newsreel of his dead body displayed on the international media before any contact was made with the Irish Embassy."....."The Irish government has a legitimate right to seek the facts of how one of its citizens came to be killed by the security forces of another state, particularly where prima facie evidence is sufficient to raise questions in relation to the description of events released by the Bolivian authorities."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8013025.stm

Without dwelling too much on sensitivty to how words are used and understood in either English or Spanish to either redaers of Europe or the Americas - the last comment shows how the two principle parabola of reporting, speculation and containtment of this story are playing out on as I stress only two of the most plausible vectors. Nor asking anyone to pay too much attention to the rank of commentators behind these exchanges between states without full embassy ties. (President Morales first denied Bolivian citizen involvement in the cell, perhaps choosing to identify the dead by one of their parents' adopted countries - whereas the vice-president, whose intriguing story this really is, confused everyone at the beginning by listing all the mixed up nationalities together and thus identifying by nationality more dead bodies than were bodies on the site.

All was this followed by specific condemnation of attempts to topple Bolivia from the President of the United States of America as reported on an another thread where you can see Obama shaking hands with Chavez ... http://www.indymedia.ie/article/91981#attachment1000046798

Yet a minister of Ireland replies, without comment from foreign affairs spokespersons or the office of the Taoiseach)

Meanwhile, Bolivian indymedia contributors are working on identifying faces and names which are to be read on the internet social networks of the presumed terrorist cell as well as in the self-promotional video on the Croat born longterm Hungarian resident who we might think if Dwyers champions had their way - employed Dwyer as a bodyguard.


Only a complacent ex-soldier would hire a bodyguard who came to work without arms-training and at least something a bit more hardhitting than a tattoo'ed arm. But if they didn't feel comfortable with a gun at least they kept different hours to you so you could kip and nod off in a peaceful security.................. If I may also say a complacent ex-soldier would not employ a bodyguard but rather a dupe with perfectly traceable profile to put his own covert activity beyond suspicion. "Al Qaeda surround themselves with horrible pissheads who surf porn all the time...."

They have now drawn connections to the exile Bolivian community in Miami USA which many readers will appreciate go to the same shopping mall as the Gloria Estafan led exCuban community. & not just passing faces, but ex-government ministers facing unworkable extradition requests to face charges for genocide and human rights abuses during one of those past Bolivian governments which though it pumped out the gas never really figured in our local newspapers.

If Mr Dwyer was shot to kill in a counter-terrorism action for no more reason than sloppy police work or an attempt to have a few moments of international media speculation following on from a good enough James Bond movie plot -

then we ought pass a moment to consider all those Irish who lost their lives in shoot-to-kill operations without much in the way of prima facie evidence convincing us that they were indeed playing wargames which alas, carry such nasty penalties. We must know these things, no? You mess in international drugs and you could end up chopped up in a dutch canal. You hook up with transnational neonazi guerilla networks and you might just end up liquidated.

As if he was the only one from Ireland who had met the profile parameters.


As if he was the only one from Ireland who had met the profile parameters.........................or the only one with a bit of Irish citizenship and a folkloric connection to what alas, many in the world identify as either tough and terrorist or pagan and nazisymbolic.


On another related thread on this indymedia node, we see a hint that some in Ireland are worried by the threat of collusion between far right elements and the supervision of legitimate protest here and legitimate government in the third world. Which just go to show there are still some people who are very quick on the uptake. Is it I wonder, too early to suggest yet a fourth parabola or angle with which to explore this whole story now it's interesting us in both Bolivia and Ireland's Shell?

If it transpires that this international story which stretches from Romanian to Hungary, Croatia to Ireland, the Brazilian frontier with Brazil and the convicted military putschists of Argentina and the exiled ex-Bolivian rightist government crew in Miami USA to the exiled Venezuelan opposition in Peru to the spokesperson for Bolivian business in Madrid -

is really just about "shoot-to-kill" for Irish trainees in the bodyguard sector, will the adequate persons please insist our diasporia carry their little guns with them at all time and at least shoot out of the room.

go down fighting like.

by iosaf Wed Apr 22, 2009 15:17

The reporting of Evo Morales comments yesterday has been spun two ways - Europapress claims he was opening the door for an international investigation despite the local inquiry only being scheduled for its first hearing next week, an interpretation in sharp contrast to most Latin American media which interpreted the comments as either a refusal of the EU states' demands (see Mexican press linked below) and even in the local Bolivian press an insinuation that Ireland, Hungary and Croatia were supportive of a coup

3 different takes on the same comments :-
http://www.europapress.es/internacional/noticia-bolivia....html
http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2009/04/22/index.php?section...n1mun
http://www.la-razon.com/versiones/20090422_006705/nota_...2.htm

But now today we see the first links to Argentinian ex-military elements.


The Argentine magazine "Pagina 12" is reporting on its website that the Bolivian government is investigating links between the dead men and a group of former Argentinian solidiers on the far right of that country known as “carapintadas" ( = painted faces ).

The carapintadas were most active during the period of 1987 and 1990 when they attempted three uprisings against the governments of Raúl Alfonsín and later one against the government of Carlos Menem.

As such they earned their place in Argentina's "dirty war" and ironically also varying degrees of clemency in the process of reconciliation which followed. A process which finally ended in the last years with the stepping down of the "mothers of plaza mayo" weekly protests for the disappeared. As of 2003 only one "carapintada" is in prison.

Jorge Mones Ruiz travelled to Santa Cruz, Bolivia at the beginning of April. He then met Eduardo Rozsa the so-called leader of the presumed terrorist cell. They had of course just decided to end their 82 day stay in the Asturias Hotel and move on to the Americas Hotel where they would die.


He presented himself as an Argentinian representative of the far-right group "UnaAmérica" which rather grandly presents itself as a crusading opposition to the Unasur block of co-operating leftist regimes of South America which range from the Boliviarian such as Venezuela and Bolivia to the liberal left of Chile, Argentina and Brazil.

The group is currently led by a Venezuelan engineer Alejandro Peña Esclusa.


last name to throw in the pot today :-

Branko Marinkovic, a Croat known fascist and leading player in the Santa Cruz seperatism scene also met with the Argentinian Jorge Mones Ruiz and Eduardo Rozsa under whose wing the Irish Dwyer died.

http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=84190
http://www.la-razon.com/versiones/20090422_006705/nota_...1.htm

by Peter Wed Apr 22, 2009 13:41

http://www.indymedia.ie/article/91977

More talk on this subject on the following link....

by Jim Wed Apr 22, 2009 12:08

Flores and his goons including Mick Dwyer were a potential paramilitary threat to Bolivian internal state security.
There is strong opposition to the Morales government among the cosmopolitian white Spanish speaking elite in Bolivia.
Rubbing out Flores, Dwyer et al is sending out warning to the more mainstream right wing opposition from the Left wing regime not to get any fancy ideas.
It is simply returning the favour for when Right-wing regimes in Bolivia used death squads to rub out some troublesome leftist radicals in the past.