NATIONAL REPORT 2016 In Bolivia, the presumption of innocence does not exist in practice, even though it is guaranteed by the law. An arrested citizen is liable to suffer from torture and ill-treatment in large part due to the investigative inability and incompetence of the police and judiciary, who are obsessed with finding culprits at all costs. Indeed, the police and judiciary operate under the mantra of “if the person is innocent, bad luck.” This is illustrative of a worrying reality in Bolivia, namely, the ubiquity of torture throughout Bolivian society making it trivial in the eyes of many, but at the same time continuously denied by the State. “From the 2557 cases, women were affected in 1142 cases and children or teenagers in 601 cases.” — The Ombudsman In 2014, the Office of the Ombudsman registered a total of 2557 cases in which the right to personal integrity was violated. These cases covered crimes of torture and ill-treatment and other forms of violation of personal integrity. The Ombudsman stated that “this is the highest number during the administration and exceeds the reported 1222 cases in 2013, by more than 100 percent. From the 2557 cases, women were affected in 1142 cases and children or teenagers in 601 cases. This law is becoming one of the four most violated during my administration.”9 The figures presented by the Office of the Ombudsman are important indicators of the current human rights violations in Bolivia. The statistics, however, does not disaggregate the cases classified as torture and ill-treatment and cases that fall under cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. Moreover, it must be noted that these are the reported cases brought to the attention of the Ombudsman. ITEI and the Permanent Human Rights Assembly have documented many more cases that are not registered at the Office of the Ombudsman. With the help of the Coalition against Torture and the collaboration with the DFI database, ITEI will operationalise the use of accurate data to present more cases of torture and ill-treatment in 2016. page 7 At the moment the Coalition is supporting the case of Juan Bascopé who is a beekeeper and leader of a peasant movement from Mapiri. Juan was arrested on 17 July 2014 as the prime suspect in the ‘Apolo Case’ where three police officers and a doctor were killed in the community of Miraflores in Apolo. Upon his arrest, Juan was tortured and ill-treated for a period of three days and was brought before a judge on 20 July 2014, a mere three days after his initial arrest, and sentenced for the murders of three police officers and the doctor. He remains in prison but has filed a complaint of torture. He was provided with a medical examination by a prison doctor who, despite the visible contusions, dismissed the allegations of torture. Juan is represented by lawyers from Derechos en Accion, supported by the Coalition, and is waiting for the judge to formally close the case of his complaint so the case can be brought before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. In 2015, Amnesty International publicly condemned the Bolivian authorities’ treatment of Juan Bascopé and wrote to the Attorney-General of the State, Ramiro Guerrero, asking what steps are taken to progress in the investigation but did not receive a response. In March 2016, Amnesty International publically requested information from the Bolivian government about the acts of torture against Juan Bascopé. Furthermore, on 24 May 2008, a movement of citizens and students coordinated by the Inter-institutional Committee of Sucre, under the leadership of the Rector of the University, violently repressed the peasants of the indigenous Quechua population in Sucre, who went to La Paz to receive ambulances from the Office of the President. ITEI, with the help of UN funding, provided rehabilitation to the affected communities and produced a publication titled “De la Humillación a la Denuncia”, concerning the psychological and physical seque-lae, which was used in the judgement against the perpetra-tors. Again, no help or assistance came from the govern-ment. In March 2016, 13 of the 14 accused perpetrators were sentenced to six years of prison for being responsible for the aggression and humiliation of hundreds of indigenous people. Reparations have not yet been decided.