Bolivian riot cops gas, beat wheelchair protesters

A group of protesters in wheelchairs who gathered in La Paz to demand legal recognition of disability along with monetary benefits were met by a line of riot cops with shields and batons and gas. The photos of the ensuing violence are shocking. The demonstrators had been on the road since Nov 15, and they reached the capital on Feb 19.

Disabled Protesters Vs. Riot Police

(Image: Reuters/DAVID MERCADO)

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Antinous / Moderator

Evo, you got some splainin’ to do.
- MB44
  
  Cheeky
- niktemadur
  
  You hit the nail on the head.
  What the hell? My impression for years has been that Mr Morales was much, much cooler than this. In fact, this looks like the mirror opposite of Evo.
guanto

Photos show the tear gas thing but not one instance of police beating protesters, quite the opposite in fact.

No idea what really happened and I’m the last one to justify police violence, but the title doesn’t agree with the photos and there’s no text to explain what’s going on.

Anyone have an actual, credible article that could shed some light on this? (I can’t seem to find anything substantial in Bolivian newspapers.)
- ghoti
  
  Some more background on the issue:
  
  http://upsidedownworld.org/main/bolivia-archives-31/2876-people-with-disabilities-demanding-rights-and-payment-in-bolivia
  - guanto
    
    I know; I’d just like to know what happened at that particular event (clashes with police).
    - ghoti
      
      Sorry. Misunderstood.
      
      The protesters were trying to march to the Plaza de Armas in front of the Presidential palace when they ran into a police barricade, which they attacked pretty violently. The police used tear gas and tasers to try to disperse the crowd. The police have blamed “infiltrators” for the violence, which resulted in dozens of injured protesters and seven arrests.
      
      Currently the protesters are occupying the area surrounding the Plaza and negotiating the amount of the monthly stipend and the release of the detainees. They want about $432 / year while the government is offering $140.
      
      Sources:
      http://www.elcomercio.com/mundo/Policia-Bolivia-reprime-manifestacion-discapacitados_0_651534930.html
      http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/notas/832239.html
      http://internacional.elpais.com/internacional/2012/02/24/actualidad/1330114895_157979.html
      - guanto
        
        Thank you!
        
        (The title of this post could be a lot more accurate though.)
http://twitter.com/martchand Martain Chandler

Real news and the Onion become interchangeable. Jon Stewart is our most trusted news reporter. Laughing and crying now occur simultaneously.
Teller

This can’t be Evo’s doing, he’s The World Hero of Mother Earth™.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  I actually think that Evo is one of the more honest politicians in the world, but between this and the rainforest road, he’s seriously lost his mojo.
  - Guido
    
    He might also be the dumbest. According to him, we’re gay because we ate too much chicken with hormones. Unlike Bolivians. And chicken with hormones also makes you bald. And the Bolivians fought against the Roman Empire too. And… well, I could go on.
thecleaninglady

What I see is a disabled man banging against shields held by minimum wage workers.
Daemonworks

Certainly not the best photo one could hope for to go with that headline.
Mantissa128

Nuestra Señora de La Paz. “Our Lady of Peace.”
Philip Tiffin

Yeah shows the wheel chair guy beating the police
http://twitter.com/zeroanaphora แอ็ะปปี้

Those streets look familiar. I highly recommend the movie También la lluvia (Even the Rain), about massive Cochabamba protests in 2000 against a water multinational that was stealin’ people’s waters.

(Not sure how close La Paz and Cochabamba are, but same area at least.)

Come for Gael Garcia Bernal’s hotness, stay for an expose on modern colonialism!
pigeon

So, not one photo of a police officer actually striking a protester.
- Joel Phillips
  
  Indeed.
  
  We can be more thorough:
  
  - Picture 17 shows what could be a police officer striking a protester with a shield, but, to me, looks more like the officer trying to pull back his shield after the protester has grabbed it (as happens in picture 6).
  
  - Pictures 10 and 15 show a woman and man who appear to have been affected by an irritant, which it’s reasonable to believe is tear gas.
  
  - The tear-gassed guy in picture 15 is shown in picture 16 beating a shield-bearing line of police officers with his crutch. So either the gassing happened after he did this, or it was light enough that he was able to recover pretty quickly.
  
  - The tear-gassed woman in picture 10 is shown in picture 18 confronting a shielded line while an officer seems to be attempting to move her wheel-chair back. So she may have been gassed unjustly, but probably not indiscriminately.
  
  - The “physically disabled man” in picture 11 is subsequently shown, in pictures 12,13 and 14, jumping on the bonnet (hood) of a police Toyota land cruiser and smashing its windscreen with a large brick.
  
  There’s some (maybe even a lot of) bad policing in the world, but these are not photos of it.
francoisroux

Honestly people in wheel chairs don’t want to be treated differently and they are actually participating in the demonstrations no less then their more mobile brethren, So I can’t see why it’s should be considered any worse if they get a bit of a beating and tear gas coming their way.

Not that I’m saying the beating or tear gas should be happening in the first place, anything but, but don’t patronize disabled people, they don’t like it.
- guanto
  
  Not sure I’d say that.
  
  But: these folks are not just wheelchair users but “people with different disabilities,” some apparently quite able to jump on police cars and smash them with rocks.
  
  Again, not happy at all that they clashed but being attacked by an angry mob (that is angry for very good reasons, no doubt) wielding metal rods, rocks and crutches seems like a very good reason to use tear gas to try to disperse them.
  
  (BTW: Bolivian newspapers quote those folks as saying that they will “radicalize their actions” — crappy literal translation on my part — starting immediately.)
- http://burntheflag.ca Jardine
  
  “Treat us equally!” – disabled people
  *sigh* “Fine. Tear gas and beatings for everyone!” – Cops
Bevatron Repairman

The narrative isn’t quite complete here — was that steel barrier put there by police and up-ended by the protestors or the other way round? I see no need for riot police in general not least deployed against the disabled, but I’m not getting the whole sweep of the encounter.

Second, the guy in 11-14, with seriously dystrophic(?) legs who still climbs up on a police jeep and bashes in a police jeep’s window — I want that guy on my side in a bar fight. What a badass.
Rah El

If I just assume for a moment that riot police really attacked peaceful protestors with tear gas and batons, this only shows they are not so much different from the cops being deployed at Occupy-protests. Or our german police:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,720735,00.html
http://www.facebook.com/bill.mcgeachen Bill McGeachen

Sorry, I thought we were looking at pictures of Oakland.