The government is showing once again up to what point it is willing to go to implement the adjustment plan. Thousands of workers, retirees, and students; unions like the UOM, CTA, ATE, CTERA; political, social, and Human Rights’ organizations, gathered at the Congress once again to state we are not willing to let them rob our elderly – just like we weren’t on last Thursday, when we forced the cancelation of the voting session after hours confronting the repression.
By PSTU-Argentina
The fear they appealed to did not stop us. Neither did the absence of the CGT leadership that once again left workers on the streets on their own.
Far from reducing the repressive measures before the defeat suffered on Thursday, Macri’s government went further, using tear gas and rubber bullets, not to disperse the demonstrations but to hurt people. There are many wounded, some of them seriously, like a comrade injured with a lead bullet who was about to bleed out, and another one that lost an eye.
As if this was not enough, they continued repressing when we were already leaving because we could not handle the gases anymore, and they carried out a brutal hunting, detaining over 50 people.
The same ones that shamelessly shot against the demonstration, where there were also many elderly defending their right to a dignified retirement after years working, are now leading a campaign against “the violent ones” on the demonstration.
They specifically accuse the PSTU and a comrade that appears firing a free-sale fire-work, normal in demonstrations, to discredit the massive mobilization and cover up that there were 50 detainees, as well as the brutality of the police repression that shot against everyone, no matter gender or age, and literally aimed to crush the demonstration (there is a video of a Police motorcycle running over a comrade which was already injured, lying on the street).
Who are the violent ones? The ones that repress over and over again to shut us up, or the workers making use of whatever they have handy to defend themselves from the violent repression that was impeding us to leave the Congress Square?
It is publically known that Sebastián Romero was FIT candidate, besides being a well-known labor and popular activist. He led protests like the right of housing together with his neighbors and defended the jobs in General Motors when the US multinational implemented 350 suspensions-layoffs. He was always in solidarity with many other working-class struggles.
This press campaign and the request for detention by a prosecutor do not target the PSTU and Sebastián, only. They target all those flags that we always defended in unity with other organizations and sectors and that the government is trying to eliminate.
In the same way goes the “witch-hunting” that the government and the media aim to unleash against Sebastián, the PSTU, and anyone that mobilizes for our rights.
We make the government and the security forces responsible for anything that might come out of this campaign, in many cases coming from dark figures that vindicate the military dictatorship.
Thus, we call the political, social, Human Rights, and anti-repression organizations, as well as deputies, unions, Federations, etc., to repudiate the detention order and the media campaign, and to surround Sebastián and all comrades that are still detained with solidarity and to raise in their defense. To do so is to defend the right of all workers to demonstrate and defend themselves from the repression.
They call us violent, but there were thousands of families that lost their jobs, their homes, their possibility of study. This type of violence is implemented by the economic plan of the government that attacks the workers’ lives and takes poverty and hunger to a limit through the implementation of these reforms.
People are tired of this, went to demonstrate, and received back more hunger, rubber bullets, and tear gases.
From the PSTU, we denounce the brutal repression by the government, and we demand the immediate freedom of all detainees. We denounce the campaign orchestrated by those who generate social violence like hunger, misery, and unemployment on a daily basis.
Also, we call to remain on the streets against the reforms and the plan of this government, who exercises violence every day against workers, retirees, and their families. We need to prepare the struggle to defeat the Social Security reform, the labor reform, for Bullrich to leave, and to defeat the government’s adjustment plan.
