Relatives of prisoners for demonstrating against the Bases Law They called for a rally, this Tuesday at 4:30 p.m., in the Plaza de Mayo, to demand the freedom of all those detained. They demand that the justice system carry out a process that respect democratic and constitutional guarantees. “They are not criminals, as they are installing. “They are citizens with a conscience who went to demonstrate.”summarized Margarita, the mother of Nicolas Mayorga, when making the call at a press conference at the door of Serpaj. Political leaders from the left and Peronism came to the place, who in these hours are trying to add sectors to the call. It is also being activated by the unions to which several of the detainees belong – such as teachers -, the university environment, since among the prisoners there are five students, and social movements.
For family members, The urgent objective is to obtain the releases; Since this week is short due to the holiday and next week will also be short, they feel the risk that the process will be prolonged. Judge María Romilda Servini de Cubria, based on an accusation presented by prosecutor Carlos Stornelli, on Friday denied the release of 16 of the 33 initial detainees. Then Stornelli insisted and asked the Court of Appeals to re-arrest the protesters who had been released. All this under the accusation that they rose up against “the constitutional order.”
The accusation lacks evidence; On the contrary, what is observed in the videos of the arrests is that These were random arrests.and what is most worrying is that they were in tune with what the office of President Javier Milei proposed on the day of the march, when He accused those who protested in front of Congress against the Bases Law of being “terrorists.” Last Wednesday, such a qualification sounded like something delusional; Today there are 16 people deprived of their liberty and kept in federal prisons based on this criminalizing speech from an opposition demonstration.
At the press conference, family members spoke about who the prisoners are and how they were detained. They told how they themselves went through five days of terror – with waiting at the door of police stations, sit-ins at the Comodoro Py courts, visits to prisons (“a tortuous journey”) and they talked about their children, parents, brothers and colleagues, a way of trying to prevent them from continuing to be objectified. Claiming for “the prisoners of the Bases Law” can be a dangerously abstract way of talking about the very serious situation posed.
“They are not terrorists”
Margarita, Nicolás Mayorga’s mother, said that he studies at the University of San Martín and works at Telefé. He is a companion of two other UNSAM detainees, Camila Oliva and Sasha Lyardet. “Nicolás is in a group of neighbors in the San Martín neighborhood, he goes to help a popular soup kitchen, with Camila; he has a solidarity side, he also collects clothes or food.”
“They went to demonstrate against the Bases Law peacefully. At one point, when the repression began, they separated from their group. They were detained near the UADE (that is, at the height of 9 de Julio Avenue, very far from the Congress). They did not resist authority as they were accused of, they did not throw stones, they identified themselves. They are students, they are not criminals as it is claimed. They were not there when the car exploded, nor were they participating in those actions,” he stressed. . For Margarita, the judicial case has a single objective: to spread fear so that “people do not express themselves, so that they do not go out into the streets.”
Grisel Lyardet is Sasha’s sister. Since Friday, she has responded to all calls from the media and spread what happened on the networks. Her sister was also with Camila Oliva at 9 de Julio Avenue, when her friend fell and she stopped to help her. At that moment three motorcycles intercepted them, climbing up the sidewalk, where they were arrested. “I ask Judge Servini de Cubría to start studying the case. Everything is unfair: there is no evidence that finds Sasha and Camila doing anything. They are all accused of serious crimes, with high penalties… it is completely unfair “.
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Silvia, Camila’s mother, reported that the six women imprisoned in the Ezeiza prison were told that they would be transferred to common pavilions and that they could be separated, a possibility that terrifies them. “Cami and the boys are a sign of what is coming if we don’t stop them,” she warned.
Ramona Tolaba’s daughter was also at the door of Serpaj. She said that her mother, 56 years old, works cleaning houses and that she went alone to the march against the Bases Law. “She was on Avenida de Mayo, talking to a retiree, when they arrested her.” Like other relatives, Ramona’s daughter asked that if anyone has videos of the arrests, they should be sent to her. The fact is that the judicial case has such an irregular procedure that it is as if the burden of proof had been reversed: the detainees are forced to prove their innocence.
Although everything indicates that the accusations are not going to be sustained, the problem is how much they will have to endure; They have already been imprisoned for six days. María de la Paz Cerruti’s father spoke about the consequences: “it seems unbelievable, but when you are in this situation you realize that they can fire you from your job, a job of twenty-odd years, when she wasn’t a crazy person or anything, she was only exercising her normal rights,” he said.
Another relative warned: “the idea of a coup d’état (installed by the press office of President Javier Milei) was transferred to the judicial system” in a very serious precedent. “There is evidence that our relatives are not terrorists and that in some way reassures us, but what we are experiencing is horrible, because the Constitution and the rights of everyone are being ignored. What happens with these causes is going to set a precedent in terms of human rights. That is why if there are people who have videos of unjust and arbitrary detentions, we ask them to bring them to the families or human rights organizations, because they are the only evidence we have to counter this discourse. “Innocent people are being criminalized. Even those who were released remain charged.”
The accusations made by prosecutor Stornelli are not a minor thing: public intimidation, incitement to collective violence, crimes against the Public Powers and the Constitutional Order, attack and resistance to authority and disturbance of order in sessions of legislative bodies.
Political and union support
At the meeting at Serpaj there were political figures from the left and Peronism. The former Minister of Infrastructure, Gabriel Katopodis, the national deputies Paula Penacca and Mónica Macha, their colleagues from the Ciudad Victoria Montenegro, Berenice Iañez and Andrés Lablunda, for Peronism. On the left were, among others, Myriam Bregman, the national deputies Nicolás del Caño and Cristian Castillo, the Buenos Aires legislator Cele Fierro, the piquetero leader Eduardo Belliboni and Gabriel Solano.
Besides, Human rights organizations (Grandmothers, Mothers, Relatives, Children, APDH, Cels, among others) and the CTA were called to go to the square.
On the street, which during the press conference had traffic cut off due to the number of people who gathered, groups of workers and university students also assembled to organize how to spread the call to gather in the Plaza de Mayo.
In Villa 21.24 in Barracas, for example, the teachers at the secondary school where Juan Spinetto teaches put together flyers for their classmate. “Juan is a lawyer and a teacher in several middle schools. He went to the march with his union, Ademys. When the police repressed his entire column, they lost concentration and they arrested him when he was in San Telmo, five blocks from arriving at his house. He arrested without justification,” said Melina, one of her co-workers. Ademys and UTE are two of the unions that have been supporting the demands for the release of the detainees.
Also students from different universities (Florencio Varela, Unsam, Hurlingham) called for the rally in the Plaza de Mayo.
The protest in front of the Casa Rosada will begin at 4:30 p.m. The claim will continue on Wednesday with the delivery of a petition for the freedom of the prisoners to Judge Servini de Cubría. The Mothers, the Grandmothers (all national human rights organizations) and also international organizations and figures joined the petition; At the close of this edition it had gathered more than 40 thousand signatures.
