Brutality returns to Argentina's streets as police moves in on peaceful demonstrators

[sandensea]

Police used water canon and batons against peaceful protesters in Buenos Aires as they campaigned to know the whereabouts of ‘disappeared’ human rights activist Santiago Maldonado.

Journalists have called Friday night events an attack on the free press as police arrested reporters covering the protest. Thirty people were detained - including seven reporters - and 23 were wounded, according to the Buenos Aires Press Union (Sipreba).

Maldonado was last seen at an indigenous-rights demonstration in Patagonia on August 1. Police deny arresting him, and there are no official records showing he was detained.

Human rights campaigners, union leaders and left-wing groups gathered under the slogan "Donde está Santiago?" (Where is Santiago) as they called for President Mauricio Macri's government to do more to find him.

Maldonado's disappearance last month has sparked fury and fear among people in Argentina, who have compared it the up to 30,000 'disappeared' under the military dictatorship between 1976 and 1983.

Security Minister Patricia Bullrich faced calls to resign after giving false testimony in Congress last week and later divulging the name of a man, Ariel Garzi, who had been at the site of Maldonado's disappearance and was under witness protection.

Bullrich's top adviser Pablo Nocetti, a former defense attorney for some of the 2,400 officers charged with dictatorship-era abuses, admitted being at the scene of August 1 incident. "The police are not the same as 40 years ago," Bullrich said.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) urged Argentina to take "the necessary measures to determine the situation and Maldonado's whereabouts" as well as to report on the investigation of the facts.

The IACHR has also condemned the right-wing Macri administration for its arbitrary detention of indigenous activist Milagro Sala, who was granted house arrest last week after the IACHR verified she had been mistreated in prison and on July 28 ruled she be released.

At: http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/850194/argentina-protest-santiago-maldonado-police-brutality-mauricio-macri

Protesters call on Bullrich to reveal Santiago Maldonado's whereabouts. "One of the officers might have gotten out of hand," she admitted to a congresswoman.

[Judi Lynn]

1. If the witness didn't go into hiding immediately after they beat down Santiago Maldonado,

he's going to disappear, as well.

Patricia Bullrich was brilliant in her observation these police are not the same as the torture and murder loving police of the Dirty War. Of course they aren't, they are different ones, doing the same things. They know nothing will happen to them if they are publicly known as the murderers who also torture.

The only ones given to torture and murder are other cops or soldiers during a dictatorship.

The people are wise to remember Argentinian fascists love nothing better than to infiltrate groups of protesters, then make sure they get tortured to inform on the others, and they all get murdered. They need to be intensely cautious.

The violent Argentine fascists were so "into" fascist violence they continued for decades to work with covert right-wing organizations throughout the Americas, teaching and assisting in the lowest, most vicious torture techniques employed against political opponents.

[sandensea]

2. Bullreich would if she could.

Provocateurs were reportedly used to trigger a police reaction. Those detained were then threatened by police with being "disappeared too."

And the police aren't the only ones; pro-Macri civilians have now taken to framing threats in terms of the Maldonado case as well.

This recently happened to a Tango orchestra who mentioned him during an intermission, only to be forced to cut their show short after right-wingers in the audience began threatening them and others in the audience.

The leader of an indigenous protest against a land-grabbing lumber company in Jujuy Province reported being told that "you'll disappear just like Maldonado, you mullet-headed Indian." Must be one of Morales' pals.

[Judi Lynn]

3. It really does irritate a person hearing an ethics-free fascist flaunt his filthy racism to others.

The need to resort to looking down on someone due to his/her skin color is as low as you can go, isn't it? Then to insist that person you dislike accepts your devaluation of him/her is an insult which can't be answered properly and leave two people standing!

I've heard the European-descended interlopers in Bolivia also insist upon insulting First Nation people there, as well, always making sure to call them "Indians."

It makes a person hope to be around when their karmas finally overtake them!



F'r example, spontaneous human combustion.

Had no idea things were moving so fast. It sounds like the tone set in place at the arranged, choreographed not-so-spontaneous "protests" which went on for so long before the conservatives in Brazil's Congress got up the nerve to impeach Dilma Rousseff. You remember the photos our friend from Brazil posted here showed professionally designed signs being carried calling for a return of their own dictatorship.

The Tango orchestra event sounds completely sinister. Sounds as if there are very distinct rumblings, like the fascists starting to believe they have the momentum to make a move for it.

Deeply disturbing.

[Marksman_91]

4. Oh my god, so brutal...

Meanwhile, in Venezuela, over a hundred people were killed during protests this year, and thousands were arrested on trumped-up charges. Some even were given the order to be released but the narcs running the national guard and police won't release them since they obey the PSUV's orders only.

Hypocrisy at its finest.