The Ibero-American Commission on Human Rights for the Development of the Americas (CIDHPDA), through its Ibero-American Council and in the voice of its Commissioner for Latin America and the Caribbean, Víctor Hugo Gutiérrez Yáñez, categorically rejects the illegal detention of our Commissioner in Bolivia, Fernando Hamdan, who has been used as a scapegoat for the attempt of an alleged failed coup d'état.
The human rights activist, detained since July 7, accused of participating in the June 26 military uprising led by General Juan José Zúñiga, was taken to the San Pedro prison in the city of La Paz, by order of the Anticorruption and Violence Against Women Judge No. 5. He will remain in preventive detention for six months while investigations continue. With Hamdan, 25 people have been charged and remanded, including military and civilians, 15 of them under preventive detention and 10 under house arrest.
Hamdan is accused of allegedly committing the crimes of terrorism and armed uprising against the security and sovereignty of the State. The commissioner president of CIDHPDA Bolivia, in a written statement, has said that the precautionary measures hearing disregarded his violent, undue and arbitrary detention. He also denounced that his rights have been denied by the authorities by dismissing his work as a human rights defender, regardless of his credentials: "the right to defend rights is enshrined and is what I have been developing these last 4 years".
"Today they want me as a scapegoat for a conspiracy with no other purpose than to persecute me, to persecute others, for a false coup d'état", concluded Hamdan. While the government insists that Hamdan was posing as an activist, his defense warns of an interference of the Executive in the decisions of the Prosecutor's Office. On the other hand, Eduardo Del Castillo, Minister of Government, has assured that there are recordings, images, videos and testimonies of "how Fernando Hamdan would have participated in this illicit act", however, the defense highlights the fact that the testimonies that accuse the activist are from persons deprived of their liberty.
We hold the Bolivian government responsible for the life of our commissioner for an unjust detention that has only come to stain the lives of human rights defenders who seek a free and democratic country to achieve a better way of life.