The Tupac Amaru organization and various political and trade union leaders requested that the social leader Milagro Sala be benefited before the end of the year with a pardon from President Alberto Fernández, and they announced that from next Tuesday they will set up “a peaceful camp” in Plaza de Mayo so that the Head of State grants this demand.
“The political solution is for the President and our political force, and it is a pardon. The President has to pardon Milagro Sala before the holidays,” said the national coordinator of Tupac Amaru Alejandro “Coco” Garfagnini, during a press conference at the headquarters that the group has in Mexico 1396, city of Buenos Aires.
In this context, the Tupac Amaru coordinator called for a “peaceful camp” from Tuesday to Thursday of next week to demand the release of the leader, detained in Jujuy since January 16, 2016.
“All organizations that want to join this peaceful encampment in Plaza de Mayo will be welcome. We want the President to sign the pardon before the end of the year,” Garfagnini remarked.
For the leader, the recent Supreme Court ruling ratifying Sala’s 13-year prison sentence for “illegal association” and “defrauding the state” in the “Pibes Villeros” case, proves that the “Judicial Power does what he wants” and that there is “harassment and persecution” that other political figures also suffered.
“Many of those who are here like Fernando (Esteche) and Luis (D’Elía), or Amado (Boudou) and even Cristina (Fernández de Kirchner) herself were victims of this judicial persecution,” said the Tupac coordinator. .
Along these lines, the leader called for “a political decision” to be made in the opposite direction to the one made by the governor of Jujuy, Gerardo Morales, who arrested Sala “without cause or arrest warrant” seven years ago.
“We are waiting for the political decisions of the political space that governs Argentina. We do not solve it either with statements or with declarations, we solve it by exercising the power that the popular vote gave you,” Garfagnini said in dialogue with Télam.
In this line, the national deputy of the Frente de Todos (FdT) Eduardo Valdés, described the resolution of the Supreme Court as “a cowardly ruling” and that the arrest of the leader of Tupac Amaru is a “criminalization”.
“All organizations that want to join this peaceful encampment in Plaza de Mayo will be welcome. We want the President to sign the pardon before the end of the year”Alejandro “Coco” Garfagnini
“Her detention did not correspond to the right. They put her in prison for being in a camp. There is no crime of camping. Everything else is a lie. It is criminalizing a social leader. These are the things that this Court has accustomed us to, whose vice president (Carlos Rosenkrantz) boasts when he says that “where there is a need there should not be a right,” Valdes explained in statements to this agency.
Likewise, the legislator requested that there be “political decisions” by the Government in relation to Milagro Sala and agreed to the request to release the leader through a pardon.
“Today more than ever it is up to the President to pardon her. Milagro Sala cannot be in jail for another day,” Valdes emphasized.
On the other hand, the leader of the MILES Party and the Land and Housing Federation (FTV), Luis D’Elía, also called for Sala’s release.
“At this time, what Miracle deserves is pardon. We want a New Year’s Eve with Milagro pardoned,” exclaimed D’Elía in statements to the press.
For his part, the general secretary of the Association of State Workers (ATE) and the Central de Trabajadores de la Argentina Autónoma (CTAA), Hugo “Cachorro” Godoy, recalled that “this government” was elected to “turn around” arbitrariness and injustices of “neoliberal governments”.
“The request for a pardon for Milagro Sala is a way of saying ‘Mr. President, put your hands to work and resolve this great act of injustice and persecution by a judicial system that is disgusting,'” Godoy remarked.
Among those attending this meeting that took place at the Tupac Amaru headquarters were the General Secretary of ATE Capital, Daniel Catalano; deputy for the FdT Juan Marino; the former head of the Quebracho group, Fernando Esteche, the historic Peronist leader Fernando Vaca Narvaja and the vice president of the APDH, María Elena Naddeo.
The CTA group of workers, Madres de Plaza de Mayo-Línea Fundadora, Kolina, the Instituto Patria, the Popular Current and the Humanist Party also joined the demand for the release of the leader.
