Argentine indigenous activist Milagro Sala ordered isolated, goes on hunger strike.
Jailed Argentine indigenous rights leader and Parlasur lawmaker Milagro Sala began a hunger strike yesterday over the “arbitrary decision” by the prison in Jujuy Province where she is detained to impose strict isolation measures on her and restrict visitors.
In press releases published shortly after Sala began her hunger strike, the Túpac Amaru Association she leads slammed the decision as an illegal infringement on civil rights and called for its immediate reversal. They demanded that the measure be suspended and held Governor Gerardo Morales - a close ally of right-wing President Mauricio Macri - and his Security Minister Ekel Meyer directly responsible for her well-being.
“The defence will file a habeas corpus complaint with regards to the worsening conditions of detention. This new penalty was not imposed legally and not properly notified to her or her lawyers, violating the legitimate rights of the defence to oppose it.” the organization said in a statement posted on its website.
Sala, 52, was ordered arrested on January 16 by Judge Gastón Mercau on unsubstantiated charges of “inciting violence” — a charge that was later dropped. Following two weeks of arbitrary detention, she was ordered released on January 29. "But the Tupac Amaru leader was not released," CELS lawyers noted, "because the day she was to be released, a local judge was called back from holiday in order to approve a separate warrant accusing Sala of fraud, extortion, and conspiracy."
She is currently charged with embezzlement related to government earmarks for housing projects managed by the Túpac Amaru Association that prosecutors say were never completed. Their legal brief provided no proof to that effect, however - a violation of habeas corpus.
Sala's allies instead point to her influence as leader of the Túpac Amaru Association, which she co-founded in the 1990s in order to combat peonage inflicted on the province's largely indigenous rural population by local sugar barons. She later became a close ally, moreover, of populist former Presidents Néstor Kirchner and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, during whose administrations from 2003 to 2015 numerous large planned communities were built in Jujuy under Sala's supervision and social conditions in the province generally improved.
President Macri - and Jujuy's sugar barons (particularly the Blaquier family) - are vehemently opposed to the Kirchners.
Human rights organizations including Argentina's Centre for Legal and Social Studies (the country's most prominent civil rights organization), Amnesty International, and the United Nations’ Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, among others, have called on Macri to release Milagro Sala, arguing that Sala’s arrest was made on insufficient grounds.
Sala’s lawyers also issued a statement condemning the “harassment of political prisoners,” referring to reports of mistreatment of other inmates at the prison where Sala is held. “The harassment of the 11 political prisoners on the orders of Governor Morales translates into illegitimate and arbitrary sanctions,” Túpac Amaru lawyers indicated.
“It is worth remembering that not long ago, the National Prison Service ordered the closure of solitary confinement cells since they violate the minimum standards set by the United Nations regarding conditions of detention.”
Sala’s husband Raúl Noro was also arrested on July 14 on vague charges of “incitement.”
“She is doing OK,” Noro told the Herald in an interview shortly before his arrest. “While she is not being held in very inhumane conditions, her jail isn’t in good shape like those in the rest of the country. They were without hot water for 20 days and were forced to take showers even when the water is cold. So these are the type of problems she faces,” he said.
At: http://buenosairesherald.com/article/219814/milagro-sala-goes-on-hunger-strike
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