ARGENTINA-RIGHTS: Strikers Held to ‘Set an Example’

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Aug 21 1997 (IPS) - Human rights and student groups and family members demanded the release Thursday of more than 70 detainees who remained in police custody since Argentina’s last general strike, held seven days ago.

Jaime Gluzmann, a lawyer with the Association for Human Rights of La Plata – the capital of the province of Buenos Aires – called the judge’s delay in releasing the strikers, and the decision to set bail as a condition for the release of 22 women, “an attempt to set an example.”

“We believe there are political pressures for the detention to continue and for a price to be paid for the damages, in spite of the fact that many of those in custody were just walking down the street when the incidents being investigated took place,” Gluzmann told IPS.

The strike against Argentina’s soaring unemployment, currently around 17 percent, and the government’s economic model was called Aug. 14 by the Congress of Argentine Workers and the Movement for Argentine Workers, and had a high level of support, even though the powerful General Labour Confederation did not participate.

But the government described it as “the most violent” general strike held in recent years, because buses were burnt, roads were blocked and stones were thrown against public transit vehicles whose drivers did not join the strike.

One of the detainees is a woman who was hospitalised for rubber bullet wounds on her leg and buttocks. She is being held incommunicado, and according to defence lawyers is shackled to a bed with handcuffs on her wounded leg.

Gluzmann said that although the courts are investigating the detainees, who allegedly damaged property, no one is trying to find out who shot the hospitalised woman.

The police detained some 100 people on Aug. 14, 20 of whom were minors released that same evening thanks to the mediation of the Antiraid Legal Service of the La Plata Lawyers’ Association, which provides legal service free of charge to young people.

But more than 70 people remained in prison a week after the strike, on charges including public intimidation, obstructing transport, property damage, housebreaking, illegitimate deprivation of liberty and illicit association.

Several of them are activists from leftist political groups, 25 are journalism students from La Plata, and others are independent protesters who tried to take refuge in nearby houses when the police began to fire rubber bullets.

Human rights and student organisations from La Plata and the families of those in custody have held demonstrations to protest the delay in their release and the supposed bias of the office of the public prosecutor.

The public prosecutor – who Gluzmann says has “a Nazi background” – is seeking three to 10 years in prison for two protesters accused of comprising an illicit criminal association.

The courts ordered the release of 22 women, a measure that did not preclude legal action. But instead of releasing them on oath, the judge demanded that their families pay the equivalent of 300 dollars in bail for each of them.

The defence lawyers explained to the families that the measure could be appealed, because there was no reason the women should remain in prison. But their families were inclined to pay, because they did not want to delay their release, which an appeal could postpone for another week.