Thomas Becker

Thomas Becker is an attorney and activist who has spent most of the past fifteen years working on human rights issues in Bolivia. As a student at Harvard Law School, he was the driving force behind launching Mamani v. Sanchez de Lozada, a lawsuit against Bolivia’s former president and defense minister for their role in the massacre of indigenous peasants. After graduating, he moved to Bolivia, where he has worked with the survivors for over a decade. He was part of the legal team that held seven government officials accountable for genocide in their trial before the Bolivian Supreme Court. In the United States, Becker and his co-counsel obtained a $10 million jury verdict for family members of those killed in “Black October,” marking the first time a living ex-president has been held accountable in a U.S. court for human rights violations.

Becker’s human rights work has included investigating torture and extrajudicial killings of Adavasis in India and Sahrawis in Western Sahara; documenting war crimes in Lebanon, Palestine, and Israel; exposing death squads in Honduras, Colombia, and Mexico; investigating femicides in South America; and serving as a nonviolent bodyguard for the Zapatista guerrillas in Chiapas, Mexico. When he is not practicing law, Becker is an award-winning musician and songwriter who has recorded with Grammy-winning producers and toured throughout the world as a drummer and guitarist. He also is a mountain climber who has summited peaks all over the world, including Mount Everest.