Bolivian miners hold out against military

Press, 21 July 1980, Page 6

Bolivian miners hold out against military

NZPA-Reuter La Paz Armed mine workers in south-we Bolivia continued their resistance to the country’s new military Government. at the week-end while a leading Roman Catholic churchman called for an end to its repression of dissidents. Reports reaching the capital, La Paz, indicated there was fighting in the mining districts 288 km to the southwest, where 5000 workers blocked roads with dynamite charges and trucks, after the Armed Forces deposed the interim President (Mrs Lidia Gueiler) on Thursday. Clandestine radio broadcasts by the miners, heard sporadically since the coup, went silent at the report and there were no reports of; the fighting. La Paz, 3.2 km above sea level, was quiet after a night of sporadic gunfire, but a general strike. . called by labour unions to protest against the c-mp shut down businesses and public transport. Although the military banned trade union activity,

there was no indication that it was moving ■ to force people back to work in La Paz and other cities. ’ Hundreds of- people, including politicians, labour leaders, at least 20 journalists, and several Roman Catholic priests were reported to be under arrest. The Roman Catholic Archbishop of La Paz, (the; Most Rev. Jorge Mahrique) urged the Government to free all prisoners held without charge and “spare the people greater pain and suffering.” In a pastoral letter he said soldiers and para-military forces had raided the home of a religious order and the offices of a Roman Catholic newspaper and two radio stations, destroying equipment and arresting journalists. Archbishop Mahrique de-1 nounced the military’s use of ambulances for rounding up dissidents and other “repressive ends”. He said the regime’s shutdown of newspapers and radio stations had plunged Bolivia into a “fearful sil-

lence” that made it impossible to know the extent of the repression. Earlier reports by the Red Cross and labour union sources said at least two labour leaders and two other people had been killed in La Paz during the take-over, but the extent of gunfire echoing through the surjrounding canyon indicated a much heavier casualty toll. In a speech after his swearing-in at La Paz’s Miraflores Military Barracks, General Luis Garcia Meaz, the Army commander and new president, promised measures to stop inflation, streamline public administration, cut State spending and unemployment, promote investment and renegotiate Bolivia’s foreign debt. In Caracas, the Venezuelan Government strongly condemned the coup. The Foreign Minister (Mr Jose Alberto Zambrano Velazco) said Venezuela “vigorously rejected” the military take-over and labelled the action as aimed at “ignoring the democratic will of the Bolivian nation.”