[news] 17 Die in Violent Bolivian Tax Protests

[Gordon Flett]

17 Die in Violent Bolivian Tax Protests
Bolivia Hit by Wave of Violent Tax Protests, Leaving at Least 17 Dead

The Associated Press

LA PAZ, Bolivia Feb. 12 2003
Striking police and furious civilians clashed with government troops
Wednesday, touching off riots and looting that plunged the Bolivian
capital into chaos. At least 17 people were killed and 100 injured, and
sevenbuildings were left in flames.

Government troops fired tear gas, rubber bullets and live ammunition to
quell the riots, which started when demonstrators stormed the
presidential palace to protest government proposals to raise taxes and
cut spending on social programs.

As smoke from fires swirled through La Paz's historic center, President
Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada gave a nationally televised speech appealing
for calm and announcing he would suspend the tax increases.

"I plead with all Bolivians to put an end to the violence and to begin
honest negotiations," Sanchez de Lozada said. "I ask one more thing from
our father above God save Bolivia."

The death toll rose steadily as the violence continued. Officials late
Wednesday night put the death toll in the clashes at 17 with more than
100 injuries.

As the president withdrew all troops from the historic center,
protesters set fire to seven government buildings that burned throughout
the night as the city's firefighters abandoned their posts and joined
the police in the protests.

Protests then turned to looting. Before thousands of cheering onlookers,
protesters tossed computers and books from the windows of the government
buildings.

A large cheer came as protesters eased a large oak desk out a
fifth-story window, and then turned to screams of panic as it landed
squarely on a man walking below.

Several hundred demonstrators later attacked the brick and stone
headquarters of the president's party, burning the three-story building
and destroying a minibus in its garage.

Not far away, inmates set fire to the city's largest jail but
firefighters arrived on scene and began extinguishing the flames. There
were no immediate reports of injuries.

With no police or military presence, the city plunged into chaos.
Ambulances screamed through the city, carrying the injured to hospitals,
which pleaded for blood donations. Tired nurses and doctors created a
human chain to keep grieving family members from forcing their way into
the city's emergency rooms, surgery wards and morgue.

"I've been a doctor here for 30 years and I've never seen such a bloody
day," said Eduardo Chavez, director of the capital's main public
hospital. Chavez said five of the dead were police officers who died
from gunshot wounds.

There were no immediate details on what caused the deaths of the other
victims nor of how many of the injured were civilians, police or
government troops. At least one 27-year-old man who was shot in the eye
by soldiers said he was a volunteer firefighter who was only helping an
injured police officer into an ambulance.

The mutiny began Tuesday night when officers in four precincts refused
to begin patrols and demanded a 40 percent pay increase.

Officers in the capital are paid the equivalent of about $105 per month,
a salary that would have been eroded by proposed income tax increases
ranging from 7 percent to 13 percent.

By morning, nearly all police in La Paz and the surrounding area had
left their posts despite talks with government officials to avert the
strike.

Street protests began Monday after Sanchez de Lozada, struggling to lift
Bolivia out of a five-year recession, approved tax hikes that would
reduce the buying power of South America's poorest nation.

"The citizens here are full of fear," said Fernando Solis, a businessman
who was trapped by the protests inside the Paris Hotel in the city's
historic center.

Labor unions, business interests and others came out against the tax
increases, but it was the police revolt that appeared to spark the
violent street clashes with government troops.

Police officers, dressed in green fatigues, seized the foreign ministry,
firing tear gas in support of the demonstrators who laid siege to the
presidential palace across the square.

All shops were closed within at least 12 blocks of the historic center
as smoke from tear gas and burning tires, wood and other debris filled
the air.

"I'll continue fighting until the government is deposed," said Juan de
Dios, a 17-year-old high school student who joined a mob attacking the
presidential palace.

Television reports said human rights representatives were attempting to
mediate between the police and the government.

"We're living a total chaos," said Sonia Rocha, a restaurant owner. "The
government should really have thought before announcing these new taxes.
We're just too poor to pay them."

Wilma Plata, head of La Paz's Teachers union, said some 20,000 public
school teachers would join the police in a general protest Thursday.

"The government has created this crisis, and expects the nation's
workers to shoulder the burden," she said. "The government is destroying
us."