Uruguay: they could punish up to two years in …

Amid a deep health crisis, the worst time since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, the Senate of Uruguay progressing with a reform of the Penal Code to punish up to two years in prison for those who violate health standards and violate quarantine.

The legislative project is being promoted at a time when the country ruled by Lacalle Pou is experiencing a sharp increase in Covid-19 cases, which have reached more than 160,000 this week with nearly 2,000 deaths. The initiative, approved by committees and It will be debated in the premises next Tuesday, justifies the maximum penalty “when the act is declared a health emergency”.

“Anyone who, by violation of sanitary provisions, endangers human or animal health will be punished from three to twenty-four months in prison.Reads the text of the regulation which has a good chance of being approved.

One of the main promoters of the measure is the Attorney General of the Nation, Jorge Díaz, who, at the start of the pandemic, raised the need to modify the offense of infringing health measures. The objective is to transform it into a “crime of danger”, to allow the judiciary to prosecute all those who violate the quarantine, within the framework of the health emergency.

For its part, the Broad Front has already anticipated that it will not accompany the measure. Senator Charles Carrera said, in dialogue with Telam, who will vote against from the modification to the offense of violation of sanitary provisions since they consider that “to make this modification, the State must face situations of social vulnerability”. At the same time, he assured that the suggestions made by the deputies of his party were not taken into account by the party in power.

Another of the proposals made by the opposition is that this is a difficult crime to prove and that the amended article can be used to criminalize some people who have no means of subsistence and have to go to work.