MINISTER FOR Foreign Affairs Micheál Martin has been right to press for an international inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the death of Michael Dwyer, the Irishman killed along with two other men by a police squad in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, in the early hours of April 16th. After initially resisting calls for such an inquiry President Evo Morales now says he will facilitate it. Mr Martin has emphasised that while from a consular point of view he has a legitimate right to inquire about Mr Dwyer’s death as an Irish citizen, there is no suggestion of interfering in Bolivian affairs or destabilising its government.
There is indeed much that requires investigation about the affair. The Bolivian government says the group, led by Eduardo Rozsa Flores, a Bolivian citizen of Hungarian origin, was planning to assassinate Mr Morales on behalf of right-wing separatist movements in eastern Bolivia. Mr Morales has been in conflict with such groups throughout his political career as a representative of the indigenous Indian majority, largely based in the mountainous western part of the country. The new constitution adopted last year paves the way for elections next December, reinforcing the resentment in the richer east, which expects it will have to pay for Mr Morales’s redistribution programme if, as expected, he wins. So there is ample scope for political conflict and even some potential for violence.
That does not justify the rush to judgment by Mr Morales and his vice-president, Alvaro Garcia Linera, about what happened. As the public prosecutor involved said last week, there is no evidence to show the group were “mercenary terrorists” as they have been accused. The circumstances in which they were killed and two associates arrested are highly confused. Suggestions they were shot while resisting arrest are certainly not proven. Nor is there any clear evidence about their intentions. Michael Dwyer’s family and friends insist that nothing in his young life suggests he was capable of being involved in such a conspiracy. The assumption made in Santa Cruz media that they were merely playing war games and were set up by the state intelligence services is held as dogmatically as beliefs held in the capital La Paz that they were a group of assassins.
An international inquiry would address many of these issues, although it could not be a substitute for Bolivia’s due legal process. It should, however, ensure that the process will be more transparent and careful than otherwise it would be, less subject to Bolivia’s fevered preelectoral atmosphere and internal politics. Mr Martin’s contacts with Bolivian ministers suggests Irish authorities will have full access to, and disclosure of, all papers and reports connected with the incident and he commended the diplomatic co-operation extended by them.
This is undoubtedly a murky business in a highly charged political setting. Rozsa Flores’s background in Hungary and Croatia suggests he was no innocent or romantic abroad, but possibly was quite capable of involving himself in a paramilitary campaign. An international inquiry will help clarify the matter.