Bolivian deputy minister killed by miners

Riot police fire tear gas during clashes with miners in
Panduro, La Paz department, Bolivia. PHOTO: AFP/Aizar
Raldes
Bolivian miners kidnapped, tortured and beat to
death a deputy minister who tried to negotiate with
protesting workers on Thursday, in what the
government condemned as a brutal murder.
“All signs indicate that our deputy minister, Rodolfo
Illanes, has been cowardly and brutally murdered,”
Interior Minister Carlos Romero told a press
conference.
Illanes, who has served as deputy interior minister
since March, had gone to a highway blockade in the
western highland town of Panduro in an attempt to
mediate with miners after days of violent protests.
“He was harassed, tortured… he was beaten to
death according to the information we have,”
Defense Minister Reymi Ferreira said.
Illanes had earlier told local media by telephone
that “I am in very good health… safeguarded by
peers, so people do not hurt me.”
But reports later came in that the 56-year-old
former criminal lawyer was dead.
“We saw the lifeless body of Deputy Minister
Illanes,” Moises Flores, director of a mining radio
station, told a local radio outlet.
President Evo Morales was “deeply shaken” upon
receiving the news, Ferreira said on private
television station Red Uno, before breaking down in
tears.
He said that authorities were attempting to recover
the body, and in a separate statement reported that
about 100 to 120 detentions had been made.
The ringleaders who killed Illanes had been
identified, he said, adding that the act “cannot go
unpunished, and must be taken to court.”
Labeling the killing an “unprecedented criminal
act,” Romero as well called on Bolivia’s justice
system to “clear up the murder and establish
responsibility.”
Miner demonstrations turned violent this week with
protestors demanding mining concessions and the
right to work for private or foreign companies.
Romero said Illanes had been convinced that they
“could be persuaded and urged into a dialogue with
the government… but he was intercepted.”
Bolivia’s attorney general announced that five
prosecutors had been sent to Panduro.
Illanes’s bodyguard escaped the scene after being
stripped of his gun, and had been admitted to a
clinic in La Paz.
– Days of violence –
Two workers were shot dead Wednesday in mining
protests on Cochabamba roads, according to
prosecutors.
In clashes over the last three days, approximately 20
police have been injured and two remain captured
by miners in the central city of Cochabamba,
according to official data.

Bolivia’s mining cooperatives are allied with the
country’s president, and hold positions in the
executive and in Congress as senators and deputies.
Before the murder, miners had agreed with the
government to start negotiating Friday morning at
Bolivia’s vice presidential headquarters, on
condition they open up blocked roads.