Human Rights Secretary Horacio Pietragalla accused the government of former President Mauricio Macri of having “responsibility” for the death of journalist Sebastián Moro, allegedly murdered in Bolivia, for having “collaborated” with the de facto administration of Jeanine Áñez and “favored the coup against a democratic and brotherly government”, in reference to Evo Morales.
“If today Sebastián (Moro) is not with us and there was a collaboration of the government of Mauricio Macri in that military government, there is also responsibility of Macri for the death of Sebastián and of each citizen who lost his life in those months,” Pietragalla pointed out. in a tribute made this afternoon in the Eva Perón room of the Senate.
Organized as a debate talk on Journalist’s Day, the call reiterated the demand that the Bolivian Justice investigate the death in suspicious circumstances of the Argentine journalist, who died on December 16, 2019 in La Paz a week after being found semi- unconscious and with marks of a beating.
At that time, in the first days after the coup, Moro was writing for Página 12 and working at Prensa Rural and Radio Comunidad, the weekly magazine and radio station of the Confederación Sindical Unica de Trabajadores Campesinos de Bolivia (CSUTCB).
Along with Pietragalla, the journalist’s sisters, Penelope and Melody Moro, were at the tribute; the Bolivian ambassador to Argentina, Ramiro Tapia; National Senator Anabel Fernández Sagasti (Frente de Todos-Mendoza); his peer from Jujuy Guillermo Snopek (FdT) and deputies Hugo Yasky and Leila Chaher, also from the ruling party.
“I want to repudiate the role of the national government of Mauricio Macri for having collaborated with that military dictatorship (due to the management of the former de facto president Áñez). That government favored and supported the coup against a democratic and brother government like that of President Evo Morales,” Pietragalla pointed out in his speech.
And he repudiated the “collaboration of the governor of Jujuy, Gerardo Morales, who, without a doubt, in the months prior to the coup (of November 10, 2019) enabled the airports for internal flights from Jujuy to Bolivia,” he pointed out.
“We demand that the Argentine Justice give an answer to what happened in Jujuy and about the weapons that arrived in the days before the coup in Bolivia,” the Secretary of Human Rights claimed on the other hand.
He was referring to the announcement made on Monday by the Argentine ambassador in La Paz, Ariel Basteiro, when he reported that the current government of Bolivia had discovered 40,000 ammunition in the possession of the Bolivian Air Force that had arrived from Argentina through smuggling.
In addition, Pietragalla considered that “support such as that given to the military coup in those years has to be repudiated” and urged “not to look the other way” in the face of the demand that the Argentine Justice investigate “the role of Jujuy governor Gerardo Morales, who was not passive,” he said.
Finally, the official added that “when these subjects arrive who come to loot the state, we have to thank those journalists like Sebastian and congratulate them because they did not hide what happened in Bolivia.”
The accusations against the Macri government were repeated by most of the speakers who were present in the Eva Perón Hall of the Senate.
For example, the Bolivian ambassador, Ramiro Tapia, questioned that Macri had not enabled Argentine airspace for the passage of the plane that was taking Morales into exile, “as if he were the owner of the sky.”
Instead, the diplomat reproached, “the government of President Macri had the audacity to use a Hercules plane to bring military weapons to Bolivia so that they could face each other between brothers.”
The ambassador also blamed the former Minister of Security of Cambiemos, Patricia Bullrich, whom he criticized for “denying what had happened” with the shipment of ammunition and repressive supplies in a Hercules plane from Argentina.
“The government of Argentina (due to the management of Cambiemos) never had the morals to admit that they carried war weapons. Neither forgetfulness nor forgiveness. Justice for the bad rulers who confronted us between brothers,” Tapia emphasized.
For her part, Penélope Moro, Sebastián’s sister, recalled her career and stressed that “her life was not a waste”, although she later warned that she had to “lose a brother to bring this claim” to the Senate of the Nation.
“Since Sebastián is not here, not only because of the criminal management of the murderer Mauricio Macri, the (journalistic) coverage of the trials against humanity has ended. Although today we have a full democracy, these coverages were not resumed,” he reproached.
Before settling in Bolivia, Sebastián Moro covered for Radio Nacional the hearings of the trials against humanity that took place in Mendoza, his province of origin.
Moro’s other sister, Melody, demanded “truth and justice” and described her brother as “the first fatal victim of the coup that was carried out in Bolivia in complicity with the Argentine government commanded by Mauricio Macri.”
“Neither forget nor forgive. We demand truth and justice,” he insisted.
Lastly, Fernández Sagasti exhorted those present to deal with excessive information “which does not allow us to sit down and reflect” -as he warned- with a “critical attitude” towards the media, and in this sense he valued the example of the figure of Moro, when proposing that “more Sebastian is needed”.
“On Journalist’s Day, Sebastian was a militant of truth, criteria and reflection,” he stressed, later recalling that the Cambiemos government has four defendants in the case “for carrying weapons with a Hercules plane to Bolivia,” in allusion to Bullrich, former chief of staff Marcos Peña, former foreign minister Jorge Faurie and Macri himself.
“That must be said in every place where we are. A government that defends democracy is not the same as another that helps in the slaughter, the sacrifice of a people that for centuries struggled to have rulers that resembled their people. They did not tolerate that and, of their own brothers, like the government of Argentina, collaborated with the massacre, among others, of our Seba”, accused the senator for Mendoza.
In Bolivia, the judicial case that investigates the circumstances by which Sebastián Moro was killed is labeled with the crime of homicide and is processed in the 10th Court of Precautionary Instruction in Criminal Matters of La Paz.
