Human Rights Organizations Alert Inter-American Court on Political Prisoners in Argentina

They highlighted the political and judicial persecution of opposition leaders and the delay of trials for crimes against humanity.

May 17, 2019

Human Rights Organizations Have Asked the Inter-American Court of Human Rights "adopt the measures it deems appropriate" against "the seriousness of the problem of political prisoners" in Argentina and "the violation of fundamental human rights" in the country.

They also discussed with the international organization that exists a delay in the causes of crimes against humanity, a worsening of the repression of social protest and an increase in cases of institutional violence.

Human rights organizations took advantage of the presence of the Inter-American Court in the country, which holds its 61st session in Buenos Aires, to meet the president of the international tribunal. Eduardo Ferrer Mac Gregor and judges Eduardo Vio Grossi, Elizabeth Odio Benito and Ricardo Perez Manrique, as well as Argentinean Raúl Zaffaroni.

The delegation of these bodies has been integrated into the Argentine League of Human Rights, to the Permanent Assembly for Human Rights and to the initiative of justice, to the Movement. Ecumenical Human Rights, the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, the relatives of missing persons and detained for political reasons, Family and companions of the 12 of the Holy Cross, founding line of the mothers of the Plaza of Mayo, Center for Legal and Social Studies, Department of Peace and Justice and HIJOS Capital.

At the meeting, he was denounced "the persecution of leaders and activists opposed to the government as well as by their children ".

"This is a situation that we think is serious because it involves a violation of constitutional guarantees, due process, and which reflects the policy of this government to use legal cases to persecute opponents ", According to the lawyer Luz Palmás Zaldua, a member of the Argentine League of Human Rights, who, together with the Forum for Democracy and Freedom of Political Prisoners, has sent a special letter about it to the secretary of the Court, Pablo Saavedra Alessandri, according to published Página 12.

These groups have warned the international organization that the situation of dozens of people imprisoned "without proving" such a judicial decision "undermines the validity of the fundamental guarantees of the people enshrined in the Inter-American Convention on Human Rights. . "

According to the badysis of the reporting bodies of the report to the IHR Court, this "virulence" lies in the use by the executive branch of the judiciary to "persecute and punish the militants and leaders of the IHR." opposition, in order to disable organizations and projects opposed to the oficialismo ".