On Wednesday evening, the Office of the President made a post on the “X” network congratulating the security forces “for their excellent actions in repressing” those he called “terrorist groups” “who tried to carry out a coup d’état.” He was referring to the hundreds of people who had gone to protest against the Bases Law near Congress. The text was grotesque but the selected terms announced a strategy of judicial persecution. It was not a reason that some of the detained people had cases opened in the Comodoro Py courts. They were placed at the disposal of Judge María Servini and Prosecutor Carlos Stornelli, who requested preventive detention for all of them and charged them with 15 crimes, including against the constitutional order. As a finishing touch, he threatened to apply, oh causality, an aggravating circumstance provided for in crimes that seek to “frighten the population” (that is, terrorism).
The day after the vote, the Minister of Security, Patricia Bullrich, supported the official communication. She said there was a “modern coup d’état.” She defined it as “permanent wear and tear to try to create a situation so that the State loses the capacity for action,” her particular way of understanding popular criticism of a law promoted by an impoverishing administration. “What happened yesterday is Kirchnerism, the left and the union organizers, who left early, we thank them, but they should be aware that they are the provocateurs of violence,” she charged. He boasted that the forces under his charge (the Gendarmerie, the Naval Prefecture and the Federal Police) acted “excellently”, “with professionalism, with prudence, but without doubting that when you have to go, attack and not let them take over Congress.” …”. Already then she slipped that she would ask that the protesters be charged with sedition.
It was obvious that the objective of the repressive deployment was to ensure that the image of a massive protest did not exist, that did not travel around the world, as happened with the march for education. The hunt reached 9 de Julio Avenue and exceeded the terms of Bullrich’s famous anti-protest protocol: not only did it try to clear the street but it also decided to empty the square with gas, rubber bullets and water cannon trucks. The officers took over the street, preventing all circulation. The square was left desolate, the wet sidewalks empty, with interspersed images of the flames devouring a Cadena 3 vehicle, which was later vandalized, while the police looked the other way.
Repressing the protest to apply the adjustment was a policy announced by Bullrich. So far in the libertarian government, every time there have been detainees in protests, legal cases have been opened in the Buenos Aires courts for disobedience and/or attacks and resistance to authority. They are the typical figures – whose sentences Bullrich wants to aggravate – that are used when the police grab people at random as a disciplinary method and mark supposedly “violent” people. This time there were 23 arrests in Buenos Aires and a dozen that ended up in federal justice. City Judge Pablo Casas declared himself incompetent and Servini/Stornelli took everything. Serious federal crimes can be charged there.
Bullrich and Stornelli (a single heart)
Around 1:40 p.m. on Thursday, the Ministry of Security released a statement announcing that “it will present itself as a complainant for the excesses in Congress.” It said that there were eight police officers and four gendarmes injured and “extensive damage”, alluding to the burned car, bicycles and containers. He warned that the complaint would not only be against the detainees but also “those who are identified by the cameras placed on public roads” and the “leaders.” He will demand the costs of the operation, he added, and specified crimes that he would ask to be charged: sedition, disruption of Congress sessions, intentional damage and the aggravating circumstance “intended for terrorist actions.” Almost an hour later, a new statement discarded the previous one: it mentioned the word complaint or complainant. Someone must have warned that if the complaint portfolio cannot involve its security forces in the “investigation” (as Judge Sebastián Casanello already stated in another case).
He then preferred to stay in charge of the investigation and thus guide the evidence. It was immediately evident that they had Stornelli as an ally. The new text had more differences: it spoke of an attempted coup d’état, of “terrorist groups” that “committed destruction” to “interrupt the sessions.” Instead of mentioning 33 “detained people” he spoke of “33 picketers.” Then, instead of saying what crimes he would charge, he explained that Stornelli was charging them, who – he pointed out – also says that he will deal with injuries to the agents and damages.
Stornelli’s opinion states that “serious and violent events were recorded in the vicinity of the legislative branch” and that “actions and conduct are being investigated, in some cases in a possible organized form, tending to incite collective violence against the institutions, to impose their ideas or combat those of others by force or fear, instilling public fear and provoking riots or disorders, at the same time as establishing themselves as a possible uprising against the constitutional order and democratic life, with the purpose of disturbing and/or or prevent, even temporarily, the free exercise of the constitutional powers of the representatives of the Upper House.” To this he adds “exercise of violent de facto means”, “attacks on authority”, “injuries to preventive personnel” plus the use of “explosive or incendiary material.” Some are serious crimes, which can carry sentences of 15 years in prison.
To this list is added the aggravating circumstance of terrorism indicated by the Government. It is article 41 quinquies of the Penal Code that says that when a crime “has been committed with the purpose of terrorizing the population or forcing national public authorities or foreign governments or agents of an international organization to carry out an act or to refrain from doing so , the scale will be increased by twice the minimum and maximum.” The same article clarifies that it does not apply “on the occasion of the exercise of human and/or social rights or any other constitutional right.” He doesn’t talk about that. As a basis, the prosecutor cites the text from the President’s Office that speaks of a coup and the chronicles of Clarion and The nation. He does not indicate any specific information regarding the people he accuses. Perhaps it is not a coincidence that the publication, on June 5, of Decree 496, which makes registration in the “Public Registry of Persons and Entities Linked to Acts of Terrorism…” more flexible.
From saying to fact
Until this Thursday night and under the accusation of Stornelli, the first 10 people (three women and seven men) reported in federal justice had been investigated, with official defense. They all asked to be released. They still didn’t have a response. Among them there is a family that sells empanadas and drinks (grandfather, daughter and granddaughter), a seller of choripanes, a 59-year-old woman who recorded the arrest of one of them, a young man who was talking on the phone leaning on a fence, others who They were simply demonstrating, and perhaps the most “serious” incident was the one attributed to someone who yelled at a police officer.
Among those arrested in the Buenos Aires area there is a woman accused of burning a Buenos Aires government bicycle and there was a man who brought a trout grenade. The Public Ministry of Defense requested the freedom of the 10 people whom it sponsors, but who are transferred to Comodoro Py.
Carlos Greco, rector of the University of San Martín, published in “X”: “I share the concern regarding the arrests of three students from our community: Sasha Iyardet, Camila Juárez and Nicolás Mayorga.” “As we stated yesterday at the National Interuniversity Council, through its Interuniversity Human Rights Network,” he added, “it causes us sadness and astonishment to relive scenes of repression that we repudiate and constitute a painful setback that attempts to silence dissident voices.”
None of the detained people, according to judicial sources, would be the author of the fire of the Cadena 3 car, previously overturned by a group of men, which the Government includes among terrorist acts. In the footage of the event, no agent is seen intervening. But some of the provocateurs are seen passing the fence to meet with police. From the room, Senator Juliana Di Tullio spoke, as many suspected and later repeated, of “infiltrators.”
The mobilization
The protesters began to arrive at the Plaza de los dos Congresos in the morning. Union groups, social organizations, left-wing parties, loose people, with a repeated idea: that the Senate listen to them, “that they do not vote on the law.” Everything was going normally. Callao Avenue had been closed since the night before. There were some people circulating. A section of Entre Ríos was blocked by hydrant trucks so that a column of Truckers would not pass. The agents also surrounded Rivadavia.
At noon a group of deputies from Unión por la Patria stood on the street in front of Congress. Like every mobilization, they were going to take a photo on one of the steps and sing the anthem. They saw a line of prefects coming, in front two police officers with a megaphone, behind another line of police, said deputy Carlos Castagneto. The legislators also formed a line and Castagneto confronted one of the agents (he is seen calmly in the videos): they filled them with gas and ended up in the Santa Lucía Hospital. Bullrich accused the deputies of generating violence and preventing the troops from acting. They will report it.
The troops later fired rubber bullets and gas at the protesters who approached the fences surrounding Congress, making it difficult to imagine Bullrich’s thesis that the people were going to take over the Senate. The violence began in the ranks of the forces, until later stones flew and fire appeared, the uniforms were blurred, the characters that generated excesses appeared that the police did not look at and the huge demonstration could barely be seen.
