Onot 2 July 2013, there occurred one of the most egregious moments in the history of international law: the presidential plane of the Plurinational State of Bolivia was prohibited from flying over French, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese territories, then I was detained at the Vienna airport (in Austria) for fourteen hours.
A few weeks later, this attack on the lives of members of an official delegation, committed by supposedly democratic and law-abiding states, continues to draw indignation, while condemnations from citizens, social organizations, international institutions and governments around the world abound.
What happened? I was in Moscow, several moments before the start of a meeting with Vladimir Putin, when an assistant alerted me to technical difficulties: it would be impossible for us to go to Portugal as initially planned. However, when my meeting with the Russian president was over, it became clear that the problem was not a technical one.
‘Paris has withdrawn its overflight clearance! We can’t enter French airspace. ‘
Working from La Paz, our Foreign Minister, David Choquehaunca, managed to organize a stopover in Las Palmas in Gran Canaria, in Spain, and to put in place a new flight plan. Everything seemed to be in order … However, while we were in the air, group captain Celiar Arispe, who heads up the presidential airforce and was the pilot that day, came to see me: ‘Paris has withdrawn its overflight clearance! We can’t enter French airspace. ‘ He was as surprised as he was worried: we had been about to pass over France.
We could, of course, have tried to return to Russia, but we were risking running out of fuel. So Captain Arispe contacted the control tower of Vienna airport to request authorization for an emergency landing. I’d like the thank the Austrian authorities for giving the green light.
In the little airport office that was put at my disposal, I was in the midst of a conversation with my vice president, Alvaro García Linera, and with Choquehuanca as to how to go forward and especially trying to understand the reasons for the French decision, when the pilot informed me that Italy was also refusing us entry into its airspace.
It was then that I received a visit from the Spanish ambassador in Austria, Alberto Carnero. He announced that a new flight plan had been approved to take me to Spain. Only, he explained, he would first need to inspect the presidential plane. It was moreover a prerequisite to our departure for Las Palmas, Gran Canaria.
When I asked him for the reasons behind this demand, Carnero mentioned the name of Edward Snowden, that employee of an American company to which Washington subcontracts some of its spying activities. I replied that I only knew of him through the news. I also reminded the Spanish diplomat that my country respected international conventions: under no circumstances was I seeking to extradite anybody to Bolivia.
Carnero was in permanent contact with the Spanish undersecretary of foreign affairs, Rafael Mendívil Peydro, who it seemed was asking him to insist.
‘You will not be inspecting this plane,’ I maintained. ‘If you don’t believe what I have told you, you are calling the president of the sovereign state of Bolivia a liar.’ The diplomat left to take orders from his superior, then returned. He asked me to invite him to ‘have a coffee’ on the plane. ‘Do you take me for a criminal?’ I asked him. ‘If you want to enter this plane, you will have to do it by force. And I will not resist a military or police operation: I don’t have the means. ‘
He was certainly scared, and the ambassador distanced himself from the idea of using force though he specified that, in the circumstances, he could not authorize our flight plan. ‘At 9am, we will let you know whether you can leave or not. Between now and then we will discuss the matter with our friends, ‘he explained to me. Friends? ‘But who are these “friends” of Spain to whom you’re referring? France and Italy, no doubt? ‘ He refused to answer and left.
I took this opportunity to talk with the Argentine president Cristina Fernàndez, an excellent lawyer who advises me on legal matters, as well as with the Ecuadorian and Venezuelan presidents Nicolás Maduro and Rafael Correa, both of whom were very worried for us. In fact President Correa called me several times thoughout the day for news. This solidarity gave me strength. ‘Evo, they have no right to inspect your plane,’ they repeated to me. I knew that a presidential plane had the same status as an embassy.
This advice and the arrival of ambassadors from the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) increased my resolve to stand firm. No, we will not give Spain or any other country – especially not the United States – the satisfaction of inspecting our aircraft. We will defend our dignity, our sovereignty and the honor of our homeland, our great homeland. We will never accept blackmail.
The Spanish ambassador reappeared. Concerned, worried and nervous, he told me that I finally had all the clearances and could go. Finally, we took off …
This overflight ban decreed by four countries simultaneously and coordinated by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) against a sovereign country, under the sole pretext that we were perhaps transporting Snowden, brings to light the political weight of the world’s principal imperial power: the United States .
Until we were kidnapped on 2 July, everyone understood that states set up security agencies in order to protect their territories and their populations. But Washington surpassed the limit of what was conceivable. It violated all codes of good faith and all international conventions, and transformed part of the continent of Europe into a colonized territory. This was an insult to human rights, one of the achievements of the French revolution.
The colonial spirit, which led to the subjugation of several countries, demonstrates once again that empires tolerate no legal, moral or territorial limits. Now it is clear in the eyes of the world that such a power can break any law, violate any sovereignty, ignore any human right.
The power of the United States is, of course, its armed forces, which are engaged in various interventions and supported by an extraordinary military-industrial complex. The stages of US interventions are well known: military conquests are followed by the imposition of free trade, a singular conception of democracy and, finally, the submission of populations to the voracity of multinationals. The indelible marks of imperialism – be it economic or military – disfigure Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria, countries that were invaded on suspicion of possessing weapons of mass destruction or harboring terror organizations, where thousands of human beings have been killed without the International Criminal Court bringing any proceedings.
The kidnapping of a presidential plane and its crew – which was unthinkable in the twenty-first century – illustrates the survival of a form of racism in some European governments.
But American power also employs secret devices to spread fear, blackmail, and intimidation. Among the tricks that Washington readily uses to maintain its status is ‘exemplary punishment’, in the purest colonial style that led to the repression of the Indians of Abya Yala. It is now being used against peoples who have decided to liberate themselves and political leaders who have chosen to govern for the least privileged. The memory of this politics of exemplary punishment is still alive and well in Latin America: think of the coups d’état against Hugo Chávez in Venezuela in 2002, against Honduran president Manuel Zelaya in 2009, against Correa in 2010, against Paraguayan president Fernando Lugo in 2012 and, of course, against our government in 2008 under the leadership of the American ambassador to Bolivia, Philip Goldberg. The ‘example’ exists so that the natives, the workers, the peasants and the social movements do not dare rise up against the ruling classes. The ‘example’ exists to make those who resist bend down and terrorize others. But this ‘example’ is now leading the least privileged on the continent and in the wider world to redouble their efforts for unity and to strengthen their struggle.
The attack we fell victim to reveals the two faces of the same oppression, against which the people have decided to revolt: imperialism and its political and ideological twin, colonialism. The kidnapping of a presidential plane and its crew – unthinkable in the twenty-first century – illustrates the survival of a form of racism in some European governments. For them, Indians and the democratic or revolutionary processes in which they are engaged represent obstacles on the way to civilization. This racism takes refuge in arrogance and the most ridiculous ‘technical’ explanations to disguise a political decision born in an office in Washington, DC. So here are governments that have lost even the ability to recognize themselves as colonized, and that are trying to protect the reputation of their master.
Because where there is empire there are colonies. Having opted to obey the orders they were given, some European countries have confirmed their status as submissive. The colonial nature of the relationship between the United States and Europe has grown stronger since the attacks of 11 September 2001, and was revealed to all in 2004, when we learned of American military planes carrying supposed prisoners of war illegally flying to Guantánamo or European prisons . We know today that these presumed ‘terrorists’ were tortured, a reality that even human rights organizations often ignore.
The ‘war on terror’ reduced old Europe to the rank of colony; an unfriendly, even hostile act that could be read as a form of state terrorism, in that it hands over the private lives of millions of citizens to the caprices of empire.
But our detention, and the snub to international law it represents, will perhaps be a breaking point. Europe gave birth to the noblest ideas: liberty, equality, fraternity. It has made a significant contribution to scientific progress, to the emergence of democracy. It is now a pale shadow of itself: a neo-obscurantism threatens the peoples of a continent that, a few centuries ago, illuminated the world with its revolutionary ideas and brought hope.
Our detention could offer all the peoples and governments of Latin America, the Caribbean, Europe, Asia, Africa and North America the unique opportunity to form a united bloc condemning the dishonourable attitude of the countries involved in this violation of international law. It is also an ideal opportunity to strengthen the mobilizations of social movements, with a view to building another world of brotherhood and complementarity. It is up to the people to build it.
We are certain that the peoples of the world, notably those of Europe, feel that the aggression to which we have fallen victim also affects them and theirs. And we interpret their indignation as an indirect way of offering us the apologies that certain governments in power are refusing to give us.