MAS deputies used textual information from Wikipedia for "defenders of democracy" bill

The project is in the Constitution Commission. The drafters are Congressmen María Alanoca and Zacarías Laura.

The bill proposed by two deputies of Movimiento Al Socialismo (MAS) that declares the inhabitants of Senkata, Sacaba, Montero, Betanzos, Ovejuyo and Pedregal as defenders of democracy, due to the conflicts of 2019, in the justifications part contains excerpts from Wikipedia and the text of an opinion article from Le Monde.

The copy of the quotations is inserted in the part of background and justification, and several spelling errors are evident. In the section entitled: "Sacaba mourned its dead for the massacres of the Government of Facto and in Defense of Democracy", the first two paragraphs are faithful copies from Wikipedia.

"On November 15, a strong contingent of coca growers' groups sympathetic to MAS tried to enter the city of Cochabamba. During the confrontations with the police, the security forces of that country seize a large amount of money, firearms and explosives from these protesters, supporters of the Movimiento al Socialismo (sic)," details the text of the MAS bill, according to ANF report.

The bill is before the Constitution, Legislation and Electoral System Commission of the Chamber of Deputies. The drafters are MAS deputies María Alanoca and Zacarías Laura.

The following reads: "After several confrontations with the police, six deaths and 115 wounded were reported. On the 16th of that same month, the Minister of Government, Arturo Murillo, stated that most of the deaths came from the demonstrators themselves. Proof of this is that the Bolivian Institute of Forensic Investigations (IDIF) confirmed that the eight protesters were killed by 22 and 9 mm caliber firearms and some were shot in the back while confronting the authorities. None of these calibers corresponded to the regulation weapons of either the military or the police, casting doubt on the qualification of these as 'massacres'," reads the text of the law profile.

Both paragraphs are excerpts from Wikipedia that are published in the article Massacres of Sacaba and Senkata. The free encyclopedia recalls the events that took place in November 2019, when Evo Morales resigned from the presidency and then Jeanine Añez took over.

Another paragraph of the MAS bill says: "While new elections could have allowed the country to decide if, and how, it wanted to turn the page regarding the Morales era, Bolivia is right now governed by Añez, an ultra-fundamentalist senator close to Camacho, who has proclaimed herself president. She has surrounded herself with soldiers, leaders linked to racist organizations and employers' representatives. None of them has been elected to the office they hold. This is called a coup d'état. 

This text is an excerpt from an opinion article by Ranaurd Lambert, December 2019, published in Le Monde, entitled A coup d'état too easy in Bolivia.

The proposed rule of the pro-government legislators provides in its sole article: "The city of El Alto, Senkata, Sacaba, Montero, Betanzos, Ovejuyo and El Pedregal are declared Defenders of Democracy of the year 2019, which sought to be snatched by extreme right-wing groups".

This legal body profile pretends to be based on four international reports, but does not mention the Interdisciplinary Group of International Experts (GIEI), which concluded that there were indeed massacres and extrajudicial executions.