A14 eZ sU THE WASHINGTON POST.SATURDAy, MARCH 7 , 2020
Amazon, telling world leaders
that his country would use the
rainforest’s resources as it sees
fit.
The Amazon isn’t in flames, he
said, to snorts and laughter in the
gallery. He said the region is rich
with resources that Brazil alone
will choose how to use.
The fires were blamed largely
on loggers and farmers, who set
them to clear land for pasture
and agribusiness. Bolsonaro
campaigned on promises to open
the Amazon for development;
deforestation rates there have
nearly doubled since he took
office in January 2 019.
[email protected]two men had a warm meeting at
the White House last March, but
Trump has not followed up with a
promised visit to Brazil.
Trump has said he likes Bol-
sonaro and his pro-development
agenda. Trump did not join other
world leaders in criticizing Bol-
sonaro’s handling of huge fires in
the Amazon region last year that
are linked to deforestation. Bol-
sonaro’s critics say his policies on
mining and other development
have contributed to ecological
disaster.
Addressing the United Nations
General Assembly in September,
Bolsonaro rejected calls for for-
eign intervention in the burningness leaders amid an economic
slump. Brazil reported that eco-
nomic growth slowed to 1.1 per-
cent last year, and the country
has acknowledged that the global
coronavirus outbreak will further
affect economic performance.
Bolsonaro is a Trump admirer
who patterned his successful
2018 election campaign on
Trump’s 2016 victory, and he
proudly called himself the
“Trump of the Tropics.” He has
courted Trump and ties to U.S.
businesses, and Trump aides
touted Bolsonaro’s election as
both a welcome end to leftist rule
and an endorsement of Trump’s
transactional foreign policy. TheCaught unawares by the tariff
announcement on Twitter, Bol-
sonaro seemed confused and
flustered when reporters in Bra-
zil asked him what had hap-
pened. He said he was sure that a
call to Trump would fix matters.
It may have worked, although
Trump has not definitively re-
moved the threat. Bolsonaro
wrote on Facebook in late Decem-
ber that Trump had agreed not to
go forward with the trade penal-
ties, but the episode led to criti-
cism in Brazil that Bolsonaro’s
coziness with Trump had back-
fired.
Bolsonaro is visiting the Unit-
ed States for meetings with busi-porters at the White House be-
fore leaving for a tour of storm
damage in Te nnessee and then a
weekend of fundraising in Flori-
da.
“He wanted to have dinner in
Florida, if that was possible. The
president of Brazil. So we’ll be
doing that,” Trump said.
The White House followed up
with a statement saying the two
presidents “will discuss opportu-
nities to build a more prosperous,
secure and democratic world.”
The political, economic and
humanitarian crisis in Venezuela
is among other agenda items. The
White House statement did not
mention the tariffs.BY ANNE GEARANPresident Trump will host Bra-
zilian President Jair Bolsonaro in
Florida this weekend, Trump said
Friday, confirming reports that
the right-wing fellow populist
would attend a private dinner at
Trump’s resort home.
Bolsonaro will dine with
Trump at Mar-a-Lago on Satur-
day night, their first meeting
since Trump blindsided Bolson-
aro in December with an an-
nouncement of new tariffs on
imported steel and aluminum.
“Yeah, I am. We’re having din-
ner at Mar-a-Lago,” Trump said,
answering questions from re-
Trump announces he’ll have dinner with Brazil’s Bolsonaro at Mar-a-Lago
those talks or use them as lever-
age in the negotiations.
The Afghan capital has en-
joyed a period of relative calm in
recent months as U.S. negotia-
tors pressed the Ta liban to halt
large-scale attacks there in the
lead-up to the signing of the
peace deal.
Additionally, military pres-
sure on the Islamic State in
Afghanistan brought with it a
drop in that group’s attacks na-
tionwide. The last large-scale at-
tack in Kabul claimed by the
group was in August, when a
suicide bomber targeted a wed-
ding hall, killing 63 people, most-
ly members of the Shiite Hazara
minority.
[email protected]sharif Hassan contributed to this
report.forces, to include medical assis-
tance to those injured,” accord-
ing to a statement sent to The
Post.
The attack comes at a time of
deep political divisions in Af-
ghanistan. Afghan President
Ashraf Ghani and his rival Ab-
dullah both declared victory
when election results were an-
nounced last month.
Both men condemned Friday’s
attack. Ghani a lso called Abdul-
lah, according to a tweet from h is
office.
The two men are also at odds
over how to proceed with peace
talks with the Ta liban. The
U. S.-Taliban peace deal set a
March 10 deadline for the s tart of
intra-Afghan talks. But there is a
dispute over w hether t he govern-
ment should release thousands
of Ta liban prisoners ahead ofThe last attacker was killed
more than five hours after the
initial gunfire, according to a
senior Afghan official who spoke
on the condition of anonymity
because he was not authorized to
speak to the media while the
investigation into the attack was
ongoing. The official said the
large number of interconnected
rooms and the presence of civil-
ians in the building used by the
attackers slowed efforts to reach
them.
Rahimi, the Interior Ministry
spokesman, said 32 people were
killed and 81 wounded Friday.
The casualties included women
and children.
The U.S. military command in
Kabul said the response to
F riday’s attack was “A fghan-led
and Afghan executed, with ad-
vice and assistance from U.S.government forces but are under
pressure to minimize civilian
casualties.
The attack in southwestern
Kabul began when two gunmen
in a nearby multistory building
fired down into a crowd paying
tribute to a revered Shiite mar-
tyr. Armed with machine guns,
hand grenades and rocket-
propelled g renades, the attackers
quickly caused massive blood-
shed and then held off a unit of
elite Afghan police for hours
more, according to Interior Min-
istry spokesman Nasrat Rahimi.
Hayatullah Asadi ran for cover
behind a wall when the shooting
began. “People were terrified.
They were screaming and flee-
ing,” he told The Washington
Post from a nearby hospital
where many of the wounded
were being treated.spokesman.
The attack comes just days
after the signing of a peace deal
between the United States and
the Taliban and highlights the
likelihood of continued violence
in Afghanistan despite peace
talks.
The Islamic State is just one of
many armed groups in the
c ountry that oppose the current
peace efforts. The group is allied
with neither the Afghan govern-
ment nor the Ta liban, and it
endorses a ttacks on civilians w ho
do not adhere to its fundamen-
talist interpretation of Islam.
The Ta liban quickly issued a
statement Friday saying it was
not behind the attack. The Unit-
ed States and the Taliban signed
a peace deal last Saturday, and
since then, the group’s militants
have launched attacks on AfghanBY SUSANNAH GEORGE
AND SAYED SALAHUDDINKABUL — The first shots were
heard before noon Friday and
were quickly followed by explo-
sions at the site of a gathering of
hundreds in western Kabul.
Within hours, 32 people were
dead and scores w ounded, ac-
cording to a government spokes-
man.
The Islamic State in Afghani-
stan asserted responsibility for
the attack, posting a statement
Friday on social media accounts
that are linked to the group. It
was the first attack in the Afghan
capital claimed by the extremists
in months.
Afghan opposition leader Ab-
dullah Abdullah was at the rally
when the attack began but es-
caped unhurt, according to his
32 killed and scores wounded in Kabul attack claimed by the Islamic State
followed him out the door.
Catholic Church leaders called
an emergency meeting with Bo-
livian officials and dignitaries
from the European Union and
Brazil, according to Waldo Albar-
racín, a prominent anti-Morales
human rights activist who attend-
ed. That night, he said, M orales
supporters attacked and burned
his home.
Áñez was invited to serve as
interim leader. But Albarracín,
like others, n ow denounces her
for going back on the promise
that she would not s eek a full
term.
“Her role was to lead the coun-
try to transition, not to run for
president,” he said.
Critics say Áñez has polarized
the nation in part through rheto-
ric — she warned voters in Janu-
ary against allowing the return of
“savages” to power, an apparent
reference to the indigenous heri-
tage of Morales and many of his
supporters. Right-wing Bolivians
had long accused Morales of ex-
erting undue pressure on the
news media — but Áñez’s govern-
ment has appeared to do the
same, labeling as “seditious” out-
lets critical of her administration.
Humberto Pacosillo closed his
Inti Pacha Radio in November, he
said, after he was warned by au-
thorities that he could be jailed
for sedition. His station had aired
reports that blamed the interim
government for the killings of
left-wing protesters during clash-
es that followed Morales’s resig-
nation. At least nine people were
killed in the central city of Sacaba
on Nov. 1 5, and at l east eight more
were killed four days later in
El Alto, according to the ombuds-
man’s office.
“We report on what is going on
in our communities,” Pacosillo
said. “It is the reality, but those in
power don’t want to hear. They
started calling us ‘communica-
tion terrorists.’ ”
Áñez’s government initially
blamed the killings on Morales
supporters, claiming that demon-
strators shot their own allies to
cast blame on her administration.
Officials continue to deny that
security forces were at fault, but
in mid-February they began nego-
tiating compensation packages
with victims’ families.
Iveth Saravia, who runs a com-
munity organization in El Alto,
said she saw police and soldiers
open fire on protesters there. The
government had said the demon-
strators were plotting to blow up a
storage facility that provides met-
ropolitan La P az with cooking fuel
— a claim she and other protest-
ers deny.
“They claimed we were at f ault,
but we did not have guns or tear
gas,” she said. “The only weapon
we had was our voice. We p leaded
with the military, a sking why they
were shooting.”
“It is hard to say anything,
because if you talk, they accuse
you of all sorts of crimes,” s he said.
“If you post something on social
media, it is sedition. They perse-
cute anyone who is critical and
praise anyone who attacks their
opponents.”
[email protected]Faiola reported from miami.selves been seriously and credibly
accused.
That double standard, analysts
say, could be working against the
administration’s stated goals in
Venezuela, where U.S. officials are
trying to turn the leftists in Presi-
dent Nicolás Maduro’s inner cir-
cle against him.
Perhaps no country exempli-
fies the double standard better
than Bolivia. When socialist Pres-
ident Evo Morales resigned and
fled in November amid accusa-
tions of election fraud, Áñez was a
second vice president of the Sen-
ate from a conservative opposi-
tion party. In the absence of Mo-
rales and other top leaders from
his Movement for Socialism, she
declared herself the nation’s in-
terim president — and was quick-
ly recognized by the United
States.
Since being sworn in, the
fiercely anti-socialist Áñez has
presided over the detention of
hundreds of opponents, the muz-
zling of journalists and a “nation-
al pacification” c ampaign that has
left at least 31 people dead, ac-
cording to the national ombuds-
man and human rights groups.
Washington has yet to comment.
“There is an unwillingness on
the level of the Trump administra-
tion to hold Áñez to account, so
she has a lot of room to do what
she wants, including what seems
to be the carrying out of vendet-
tas,” said Michael Shifter, the
president of the Washington-
based Inter-American Dialogue.
“I think this is only going to fur-
ther entrench governments like
Maduro’s. Because they see what’s
happening in Bolivia, and they
know what awaits them if they
leave power, despite any guaran-tees they might be offered.”
Nadia Cruz, Bolivia’s ombuds-
man, said her office has grown
increasingly concerned that pro-
test is being criminalized, and
that charges of “sedition” and
“terrorism” are being brought for
simply disagreeing with or
q uestioning the Áñez administra-
tion.
U.N. human rights chief Mi-
chelle Bachelet expressed her
“concern” last week over “the
prosecution of dozens of former
government officials and persons
related to the previous adminis-
tration.” H uman rights groups de-
nounced the Áñez administration
for vetoing the participation of
two experts on a commission
linked to the Organization of
American States to help investi-
gate abuses in Bolivia during the
last months of 2019.
Áñez and senior members of
her government declined repeat-
ed requests for comment. Con-
gressman To más Monasterio, a
solid Áñez backer, said the criti-
cisms against her are unfounded.
He said Áñez represents “a clear
vision of the future, of a modern
Bolivia, which is why traditional
parties want to stop her.”
Monasterio called allegations
of political persecution “fake
news.” The “true” persecution, he
said, occurred during the long
rule of Morales’s socialists.
“We can talk about death
threats, but the ones I received,”
he said. “They and not us are the
ones threatening and provoking
death.”
Publicly, the Áñez government
denies using hard-line tactics —
officials say they’re simply re-
sponding to Morales’s genuinely
seditious and violent backers.Morales, accused of corruption,
controlling the courts and cling-
ing to power, resigned after a
scathing report by the OAS up-
held opposition allegations of
fraud in the October presidential
vote that Morales claimed to have
won.
Researchers from the Massa-
chusetts Institute of Te chnology
recently questioned the OAS re-
port, arguing that they found no
“statistical support for the claims
of vote fraud.” An article by the
researchers, published by The
Washington Post, prompted the
Mexican government, which has
backed Morales, to demand an
“independent” review of the elec-
tion results. The OAS fired back,
saying the researchers’ analysis
contained “countless falsehoods,
inexactitudes and omissions.”
In Bolivia, even anti-Morales
politicians and activists who once
backed Áñez now say her admin-
istration has used threats and
intimidation to consolidate pow-
er. The targets have included for-
mer Morales cabinet ministers
and socialist politicians brought
up on charges as varied as corrup-
tion, sedition and “making illegal
appointments.”
There’s a “real persecution of
people in the previous govern-
ment,” s aid José Luis Quiroga, the
policy director for Carlos Mesa, a
former president who finished
second to Morales in the October
election.
Opinion polls now show Mesa
running second to the socialist
Luis Arce, Morales’s former fi-
nance minister, in a May do-over.
Áñez, who at one time pledged
not to seek the office, is also
running. Morales and another se-
nior socialist ally have beenbarred by the newly reformed
electoral council from running
for the Senate.
“In many cases, they are doing
exactly what [the socialists] did to
their political enemies,” Quiroga
said. “A simple accusation is
made, and the prosecutor and
police go all out.”
The U.S. government, a sharp
critic of Morales, has refrained
from criticizing Áñez publicly. In
December, weeks after protesters
were killed in her pacification
campaigns, Trump tweeted his
support for her “as she works to
ensure a peaceful democratic
transition through free elections.”
The following month, Mauricio
Claver-Carone, the director of
Latin America policy for the Na-
tional Security Council, traveled
to Bolivia “in the name of Presi-
dent Trump to greet and recog-
nize the labor of President Áñez at
this moment of transition and
optimism for Bolivia,” he told re-
porters in La Paz.
A senior State Department offi-
cial, asked why the United States
had refrained from addressing
alleged abuses by the Áñez gov-
ernment, said that “our message
has been consistent all the way
through to all actors, that they
need to be able to create a frame-
work of impartiality.... That g oes
for every actor in the system,
including the transitional author-
ities.”
Morales, Bolivia’s president for
more than 13 years, resigned
Nov. 10 after the OAS issued its
preliminary report on the elec-
tion and Bolivia’s military and
national police withdrew their
support for him. Confusion
reigned as the senior socialists
next in line for the presidencyJOrge BernAL/AgenCe FrAnCe-Presse/geTTy ImAges
Jeanine Áñez became Bolivia’s interim president after Evo Morales, accused of election fraud, r esigned and fled in November. The fiercely
anti-socialist Áñez has since presided over the detention of opponents, the muzzling of journalists and a “national pacification” campaign.BY LUCIEN CHAUVIN
AND ANTHONY FAIOLALA PAZ, BoLiviA — The knock at
Orestes Sotomayor’s door on the
outskirts of this high-altitude me-
tropolis came just as he was about
to leave for work. The 35-year-old
publisher of the Resistance, a left-
leaning online news outlet, an-
swered to find a group of plain-
clothes police officers eager to
speak with him about a “cyber-
crime.”
He accompanied them to the
station, where he was informed
that he, in fact, was the cyber-
criminal they sought. The charge:
sedition against the state, for run-
ning news stories critical of Boliv-
ia’s U.S.-backed interim presi-
de nt, Jeanine Áñez.
“My arrest is part of a much
larger effort by this government,”
said Sotomayor, who spent five
weeks in prison before he was
transferred to house arrest. “This
is no different than what hap-
pened in Bolivia during the mili-
tary governments of the past.”
Critics cite another glaring
similarity. As a right-wing, pro-
American government represses,
threatens and jails its leftist oppo-
nents, the United States has
stayed largely silent — just as it
did during the abuses of the Latin
American dictatorships it sup-
ported during the Cold War.
Washington’s response — or
the lack thereof — reflects what
analysts say is the most ideologi-
cal policy on Latin America by an
American administration since
the region’s shift toward democ-
racy in the 1980s and early 1990s.
Critics say the Trump administra-
tion has played down a wave of
repression unleashed by Áñez in
Bolivia, the killings of left-wing
community leaders in Colombia,
shootings by police in poor Brazil-
ian neighborhoods, and the al-
leged drug-trafficking links and
human rights abuses of Hondu-
ran President Juan Orlando
Hernández. All are countries run
by conservative, pro-Trump gov-
ernments.
At the same time, the Trump
administration has led Washing-
ton’s m ost aggressive campaign in
years against abuses committed
by leftist leaders, particularly in
socialist Venezuela and commu-
nist Cuba. Those abuses are
among the most severe in the
region. But critics say the failure
to also call out wrongdoing by
right-wing governments has re-
warded leaders who have them-
U.S. silent
on wave of
repression
in Bolivia
Failure to rein in ally
o n the right undercuts
criticism of left, some say