Estela de Carlotto, president of Abuelas de Plazo de Mayo, criticized the “indiscriminate repression” exercised by the security forces in the vicinity of Congress while the senators were voting on the Bases law sent by the government of Javier Milei, and warned that “there are still many innocent people detained.”
“This can not be happening. What we are watching seems like a fiction movie. We have to stop this and we have to stop it in a good way. What are the deputies and senators for? So that they defend the freedom of their people,” Carlotto emphasized in statements to Radio 10, who considered that at this time “there is a lot to correct.”
Carlotto considered that people “have to organize” to prevent situations in which, in contexts of social demonstrations, people are repressed and detained indiscriminately. “We all have the right to think and accept or disagree with what is done in a democracy,” he stated.
The incidents that took place outside Congress days ago left 33 detainees at the disposal of federal judge María Servini. Prosecutor Carlos Stornelli accused them of serious crimes against public order, sedition and the aggravating circumstance of terrorist actions and asked for their preventive detentions. In this regard, Carlotto stated that “terrorists are those who carry out acts of terror”, referring to the operation ordered by the Security authorities, and not those arrested by the police.
The charged crimes are “injuries, simple or aggravated damage, fire and damage, public intimidation, incitement to collective violence against institutions, organizations or membership in groups whose objective is to impose their ideas or combat those of others by force or fear, “crime against political powers and constitutional order, aggravated attack against authority, resistance to authority and/or disturbance of order in sessions of legislative bodies, with the possible aggravating circumstance of article 41 quinquies of the National Penal Code.” That is, terrorist actions.
For the social leader, “Argentina is going through a very delicate and horrible moment because we are in a democracy in quotes.” Although he recognized the legitimate assumption of the Government, he assured that “this man (President Javier Milei) said white and does black, and he is not complying.” And in that sense he noted: “He travels, he communicates with the people he loves, he does not take into account the popular will of his people, but his own, and he is a total individualist.”
Questioning this type of attitude on the part of those who hold public office, he referred to the role of the legislative branch. “That’s what senators and deputies are for, to regulate; justice is what has to act; and we are the ones who have to give ideas without putting obstacles in our way,” he emphasized.
For the president of Abuelas, these irregularities should be “reported to the appropriate party” since “the Army is not there to beat people or take anyone to prison, but rather it is there to take care of us.”
Furthermore, he insisted that “democracy must be defended from what is aberrant and illicit”a democracy that – he highlighted – is the longest in history and that “these people (by the new government) are staining it.”
“We are in a very delicate situation. We have to be careful with young people and take care of them, because they are the ones who risk the most, but they are also the most vulnerable victims. So I believe that each of us from our place, we have to take care of freedom of expression, freedom of action, and respect for the constitution and all the laws that exist in our country,” De Carlotto highlighted. Finally, he called on the people to “be united” and “fight for the country we dream of in peace and harmony.”
