Argentines unite against law helping human rights abusers
Thousands of Argentines of all ages and opposing political parties joined Wednesday to protest a Supreme Court ruling that many feared would lead to the release of convicted human rights criminals.
Argentines have been outraged by the top court’s decision last week that reduced the sentence of a human rights abuser based on a repealed law. Activists note that 750 such convicts could soon be freed with this precedent, and referred to this ruling as a “back-door amnesty.”
The so-called '2X1 law' was used by three of the Supreme Court’s five justices to reduce the 13-year sentence given to Luis Muiña for the kidnapping and torture of five people during a 1976 military operation against a suburban Buenos Aires hospital. The law was in effect from 1994 to 2001, when most dictatorship-era human rights criminals were still free.
Lower courts have meanwhile denounced it as unconstitutional and rejected requests for freedom by other convicted abusers. Congress overwhelmingly approved a bill Wednesday that would ban the reduction of jail sentences for crimes against humanity committed during Argentina’s brutal 1976-83 military dictatorship.
A firm reaction
Demonstrators marched to Buenos Aires' Plaza de Mayo square, facing the presidential offices, carrying banners with photos of those who were forcibly disappeared in a government-sponsored crackdown on leftist dissidents during Argentina’s “dirty war.” Human rights activists believe the real number of disappeared to be as high as 30,000.
Many wore white headscarves that have become a symbol of the Mothers and Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo human rights groups. During the dictatorship, they fought to recover their children and grandchildren by marching every week in front of the presidential offices.
“Fortunately, the whole society has reacted firmly,” Estela Barnes de Carlotto, president of the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, told demonstrators. Demonstrations against the ruling were held across Argentina, as well as in Barcelona and Paris.
President Mauricio Macri's Human Rights Secretary, Claudio Avruj, initially applauded the May 3 ruling but later retracted amid the political firestorm that followed. He has rejected calls for his resignation.
Speaking to the European Parliament in Brussels yesterday, former President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner - during whose tenure most of the 750 currently in prison for human rights crimes were tried and convicted - noted that Macri has always favored impunity for Dirty War perpetrators.
“This follows a long sequence of actions, starting with the president's referring to human rights as a 'scam'. They have created the institutional climate that made this ruling possible.”
At: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/argentines-unite-against-law-helping-human-rights-abusers/2017/05/10/b8757704-35e2-11e7-ab03-aa29f656f13e_story.html?utm_term=.606e397b1615
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“Your Honors: Never Again.”[/center]
= new reply since forum marked as read
Social leaders call on Pope Francis to intervene
Sunday, February 7, 2016
Jujuy governor insists Milagro Sala is guilty of coupmongering
Jujuy Governor Gerardo Morales vowed not to let up his judicial onslaught against Kirchnerite social leader Milagro Sala, imprisoned since January 16, as social leaders request that Pope Francis intercede for her release.
Morales — an ally of President Mauricio Macri — accused Sala of coupmongering for having staged a sit-in outside Government House in San Salvador de Jujuy after the Radical party (UCR) leader took office.
“They wanted to oust me. That was an institutional coup. That was a clear example of sedition,” Morales told La Nación daily yesterday before joining the president in a carnival celebration in the northern province of Jujuy.
. . .
http://www.buenosairesherald.com/article/208286/jujuy-governor-insists-milagro-sala-is-guilty-of-coupmongering
How stupid would someone have to be to swallow that pathetic lie, anyway? "Institutional coup." OMG. The Gov. sounds as stupid and as unscrupulous as Trump.
He already stole her life, her freedom. Now they decide that's not enough, they have to bring her physical suffering, too.
No one lower. That puts this regime right into the same toilet with the earlier dictatorship.
Who has the stronger spirit? This combination of photos leaves no doubt:
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Morales has "known" Milagro a long time![/center]
Very kind of you to post this information her tonight. If only someone good will come forward to get this courageous woman out of there, out of that illegal, immoral hell where she never has belonged in her life.
Published 14 May 2017
The Indigenous activist has been behind bars for more than a year despite calls for her freedom from national and international experts.
Jailed Indigenous activist and lawmaker Milagro Sala denounced Sunday that she and other inmates have been tortured and threatened to death in prison in the Argentine province of Jujuy, where she as been illegally detained for almost a year and a half.
Sala and other women prisoners voiced complaints about abuses in the Alto Comedero prison to Jujuy provincial authorities and a United Nations panel that was visiting the Argentine province in order to report on the human rights situation in the country.
The complaint, which includes “torture,” “use of isolation cells” and “constant harassment,” will be presented to the Inter-American Human Rights Commission on Thursday, reported Argentina's Pagina 12.
More:
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Argentina-Jailed-Indigenous-Leader-Milagro-Sala-Unmasks-Torture-Mistreatment-in-Prison-20170514-0019.html
By DANIEL POLITI MAY 13, 2017
Hundreds of thousands of people protested in Buenos Aires on Wednesday after the Supreme Court reduced the sentence of a man convicted of committing human rights abuses during the military dictatorship. Credit Eitan Abramovich/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
BUENOS AIRES — Worried that the men who committed some of Argentina’s most heinous human rights abuses could be freed from jail years early, hundreds of thousands of protesters took to the country’s streets on Wednesday.
The demonstrations were in response to a Supreme Court ruling this month that reduced the sentence of a man convicted of crimes against humanity during the country’s military dictatorship from 1976 to 1983.
The court’s decision led to a flood of requests for the same leniency from others imprisoned for kidnapping, torture and murder. Activists warned that the ruling could pave the way for the early release of some of the era’s most notorious offenders.
But widespread repudiation of the ruling by the public, culminating in the day of protest, which organizers said had drawn half a million people in Buenos Aires alone, forced an uncharacteristically quick and united response from political leaders here.
More:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/13/world/americas/argentina-mauricio-macri-luis-muia.html
