Uruguay closes borders and controls crossings with the army – News

The Uruguayan parliament on Sunday approved a law that limits the constitutional right of assembly and establishes the closure of borders, in both cases temporarily, as a way to contain the spread of the new coronavirus, local press reported.

The standard was sanctioned early in the morning by the Chamber of Deputies, after prolonged debate, immediately after the bill received half-Senate sanction.

The initiative was referred to Parliament by the executive, with a “serious and urgent” character, and was the subject of arduous debates in both chambers due to opposition from center-left Frente Amplio (FA) .

The FA, whose lawmakers voted against the sanctioned law, proposed an alternative bill to regulate the constitutional article guaranteeing the right to assembly.

The sanctioned norm limits “temporarily, and for reasons of general interest, the right of assembly”, which Magna Carta warns and which can be “unknown” only by virtue of a law, and only in the insofar as it conflicts with public health, safety and order ”.

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The adopted measures will be in effect from the enactment of the law until January 10, local media reported.

“We are witnessing that between two and three compatriots die per day, yesterday (for Thursday) we exceeded 500 cases and we regularly exceeded the limits that we had proposed”, declared the vice-president, Beatriz Argimón, in defending the initiative. debate yesterday in the Senate.

He added that the meaning of the initiative of the Executive is to establish “for a short period the possibility that in the circumstances where meetings are held where the health aspect is not taken into account, the exhortation that this does not happen can be achieved “.

Argimón said that “the constitutional guarantees are intact” because “the setting is exceptional”, and stressed that the priority is “to reduce the number of infected compatriots, to reduce the number of compatriots in intensive care (intensive care beds ) and reduce deaths “. by Covid-19.

“We present a different point of view to approach the same problem; We must try to avoid the crowds, but we are going the other way, ”said Senator Charles Carrera of the FA.

He explained that his party’s alternative proposal was to “empower the health police so that they can act and define the protocols to give certainty to all workers in the country.”

Uruguay has added 11,950 confirmed cases of coronavirus since the start of the pandemic, of which 4,142 people had the ongoing infection (44 hospitalized, all in intensive care) and 109 have died, according to the latest official report, released last night by the national emergency system (Sinae).