IN 2019, Bolivia’s left-wing president, Evo Morales, of the Movement for Socialism (MAS) stood for re-election. 

Morales won most votes, but there were mass demonstrations by right-wing Bolivians against the result, inspired by claims of voting fraud. 

The Organisation of American States (OAS) ruled there had been “serious irregularities” in voting. 

Some anti-Morales demonstrations were violent, but the army and police sided with them, joining the protests. 

The head of Bolivia’s army said Morales should step down. Morales called it a “coup,” but stepped down to avoid more violence.

Then-Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn also condemned the “coup” against Morales.  

Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab attacked Corbyn for supporting Morales as “unbelievable” because Bolivian “people are protesting and striking on an unprecedented scale. But Jeremy Corbyn puts Marxist solidarity ahead of democracy.” 

Even liberals like Guardian diplomatic editor Patrick Wintour raged against both Morales and Corbyn, saying: “Whatever his record as president, ballot stuffing is wrong. So this take on Bolivia by the Labour leader is truly startling.”

Right-wing Bolivian Jeanine Anez formed a “caretaker” government in 2019. In the 2020 election, Bolivian voters showed they supported the MAS all along. 

New MAS president Luis Arce won outright with 55 per cent of the vote. There are two reasons for this. 

First, MAS has improved many Bolivians’ lives. Second, Anez’s “caretaker” government did all the nasty things a coup does: she launched a “national pacification” campaign with the police rounding up supporters of MAS.

MAS’s 2020 return shows Corbyn was right, Raab and Wintour wrong. But recent human rights reports show they were shamefully wrong. 

An OAS group of experts investigating human rights report this August reiterates what the United Nations reported in 2020. 

Ousting Morales meant using torture and murder to shut up the opposition. At least 20 peaceful demonstrators were shot dead. Many more were tortured.

The UN found “torture or other forms of ill-treatment by the police, including death threats, electrocution, asphyxiation with plastic bags, beating with rifle butts, stress positions, food and water deprivation, sexual taunts and mock executions.”

The OAS experts give more details about detainees being verbally assaulted, as “shitty MAS-istas” told to ask for help from “their father Evo” before they sent down the “dark alley” — running the gauntlet between two rows of cops who beat them.

It’s grim, but British Tories and “liberals” sided with Bolivia’s vicious, racist right, mostly just to score anti-Corbyn points.