Evo Morales announces on TV and Twitter that controversial changes to criminal code will be scrapped.
Bolivia’s president has announced that his socialist government will repeal recent changes to the penal code that introduced severe restrictions on religious freedom.
“We have decided to repeal the Criminal Code to avoid confusion and so the Right stops conspiring and doesn’t have arguments to generate destabilization in the country, with disinformation and lies,” tweeted President Evo Morales Ayma. He also went on television to confirm the announcement, one that fell on the 12th anniversary of his becoming the Andean nation’s first indigenous leader.
Authorized last month, the new penal code criminalized evangelism alongside terrorism. Its Article 88 stated that “whoever recruits, transports, deprives of freedom, or hosts people with the aim of recruiting them to take part in armed conflicts or religious or worship organizations will be penalized 5 to 12 years of imprisonment,” according to a translation by Evangelical Focus, a media initiative of the Spanish Evangelical Alliance.
The amendments to the code had also permitted abortion during the first eight weeks of pregnancy and expanded punishment of “recklessness, negligence, malpractice” in all careers—worrying professionals from doctors to journalists.
As CT noted last week, many Christians spoke out about the harmful effects that could come from these changes. This month, members of FIAJC (the Inter-American Federation of Christian Lawyers) visited Bolivian embassies in a number of Latin American countries, delivering a public notice warning of the religious freedom dangers posed by the new penal code.
“We are mobilizing throughout Latin America with our lawyers from FIAJC and we will keep following the ...
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