Pubdate: Fri, 18 Jan 2002
Source: Reuters (Wire)
Copyright: 2002 Reuters Limited
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine)

SEVEN DIE AS BOLIVIAN COCA FARMERS CLASH WITH ARMY

LA PAZ, Bolivia (Reuters) - Seven Bolivians died, including a policeman and 
soldier tortured and murdered by "narcoguerillas," as poor farmers 
protested an army crackdown on the illegal sale of coca leaves, police said 
on Friday.

The two officers' bodies where found at dawn on Friday in Bolivia's 
tropical Chapare region, 435 miles southeast of La Paz, after another five 
Bolivians were killed in riots this week.

The deaths were the latest in a long drawn-out U.S.-backed government 
campaign to eradicate coca, the raw material used to make cocaine but also 
a major source of income for many peasants and chewed by some as medicine 
in this Andean nation.

Witnesses said the two victims were abducted on Thursday from an ambulance 
which was then set on fire in an attack a government source blamed on 
"narcoguerillas," a term used for left-wing rebels who work as drug 
traffickers.

Since Tuesday, farmers have set several trucks on fire near a coca market 
that had been shut down by authorities in the village of Sacaba, prompting 
bloody clashes with police which killed another five farmers and officers.

Bolivia gets valuable aid from the U.S. government in return for its 
successful eradication program in recent years.

Farmers in the Chapare region, one of the largest coca-growing areas in 
Bolivia prior to the crackdown on its cultivation, have protested a law 
making it illegal to sell coca produced in the region.

Officials from the government of President Jorge Quiroga, which allows only 
limited growth of the leaf in other regions, traveled to the city of 
Cochabamba for negotiations with the farmers to be mediated by human rights 
organizations.

Farmers want to be allowed to legally grow small plots of coca in Chapare, 
where Quiroga has mobilized about 5,000 troops since November to complete 
the eradication of illegal coca fields it says are used for drug trafficking.

A member of Bolivia's Congress from the region has called in recent months 
for the coca farmers to form their own "army" to combat the government's 
actions.
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MAP posted-by: Terry Liittschwager