The commemoration of the “Day of the Fallen in the Struggle for the Defense of Democratic Institutions” was held on the 14th.
The act was held in the Plaza de la Bandera and the speaker was the former Colorado deputy Daniel García Pintos, who asked for the release of the prisoners in the Domingo Arenas prison and at the same time that next year the act be headed by President Lacalle Pou .
Present at Thursday’s commemoration were former President Julio María Sanguinetti and Senator from Cabildo Abierto, Guillermo Domenech.
In his Twitter account, the Colorado deputy Gustavo Zubía said: “Right now the day of the fallen in the fight against subversion is being celebrated. My respect to all of them and to family, friends and comrades who remember them. They were killed in DEMOCRACY. A key point not to forget”. And he added: “If he is from the left, does he not commit homicides, does he plan homicides, does he not plant bombs and kill people? He doesn’t laugh at democracy like they did? Today it is easy to talk about love and peace, after organizing deaths and making a documentary telling it..
How difficult it is to see the beam in one’s own eye». For his part, Domenech said on the same social network: «50 years ago we attended the funeral of those who died in defense of the Republic. Today we honor them and renew our commitment. Except for the honorable presence of President Sanguinetti, politics was only present through legislators from Cabildo Abierto. And the rest?”.
Members of the “Association of Relatives of Political Prisoners” were present at the event. April 14 had been named by the dictatorship as the “Day of the Fallen in the Struggle against Sedition” and in his first government, Sanguinett changed the name to “Day of the Fallen in the Struggle for the Defense of Democratic Institutions”. ”.
On April 14, 1972, blood and fire began. In the early hours of the morning, in Rivera and Soca, the vehicle in which Deputy Commissioner Oscar Delega of Department 5 of the Police Intelligence Directorate and Agent Juan Carlos Leites were traveling was machine-gunned, both dying on the spot.
Hours later Corvette Captain Ernesto Moto was machine-gunned in Las Piedras and around noon the former Minister of the Interior and former Comptroller of Secondary Education, Armando Acosta y Lara, was shot on leaving his house, who died before reaching the Military Hospital. The so-called Joint Forces began an operation on that day where six Tupamaros would fall under the bullets.
Speaking to the press, García Pintos said that “now to our political prisoners, who were the ones who defended the institutions, all of them old.
They are prosecuted for common crimes but they speak of crimes against humanity.
They can’t go to wait for a grandson after school.
That’s terrible. People who did not commit any crime. Because they apply common crimes to them that prescribed 20 years ago but they still go to prison while the investigations continue. And since the process is slow, prisoners die.” At the same time, he requested that there be “a law that explains what it has to be according to what the Penal Code must have in order to be respected. That’s a bill. It has to be law.
And today there is a majority in Parliament, and we have to put that majority to work”. «It is the State that must recognize what they did for our dead, defending democratic institutions and the Republic. It must pay tribute to its employees, who gave their lives to defend us all »he limited and maintained that next year President Lacalle Pou should preside over the act.
In his speech he maintained that “fifty years have passed since the tragic events that occurred on that fateful morning of April 14, 1972, when enlightened terrorists violently broke into a democratic society and treacherously and ruthlessly murdered public servants who were complying with their sacred duty to defend the country.
Chess pieces García Pintos referred to the global situation at the time, pointing out that “the American continent was involved in the largest global conflict in the history of mankind, which was the cold war. That war has been cold only for its two main protagonists, but quite the opposite for the rest of the world, since it was seeded with numerous low-intensity conflicts that operated as moves on the chessboard in which it was transformed. He noted that “those who were the chess pieces in our country, decided that the time had come for the final assault on power and began their offensive with a simultaneous attack on people who, in one way or another, they considered their enemies.”
For the former deputy today «the perverse logic of keeping alive the flame of resentment and confrontation was resorted to which, as we see now, almost 40 years after the return of democratic institutions, the only thing that has happened is a greater division in society, wasting essential energies in the development of our beloved country, in an exhausting and senseless confrontation».
After describing the process of the different terrorist organizations of the 1960s, García Pintos said that although this is a day of homage to the fallen, there was also solidarity with “those compatriots who are political prisoners, with the aggravating circumstance that many have died in prison or as a consequence of them ».
“We state that our prisoners have been tried and prosecuted, in many cases based solely on the testimony of witnesses of dubious reliability, without providing evidence to substantiate their claims,” he said.
He noted that “the defenseless state of political prisoners is the consequence of a plan that has devised the perfect storm so that their rights are systematically subjugated.” In this sense, he indicated that the relatives have taken as a basis the definition of the parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe in 2012, which establishes when a person will be considered a political prisoner. And he stated “the judicial structure was modified with the assignment of courts that understand the old code of the process, and a special prosecutor’s office for “against humanity” was created by law, although the supreme court of justice understood that there were no such crimes. They are accused without evidence, guiding witnesses for events that occurred more than 40 years ago, for indications or testimonies that do not constitute evidence. The Uruguayan judicial system was not prepared, nor is it ready for the creation of a prosecutor’s office for “against humanity.”
