Very Urgent Press Release: Fascist Attacks on People’s Organizations

VERY URGENT PRESS RELEASE:
Thursday 10.30HS press conference in the obelisk of Buenos Aires Then we march to the house of Córdoba, Callao 332


We reproduce below the communiqué of the organizations that were victims of an attack in Córdoba yesterday. We repudiate the attacks against the march protesting the national government’s agreement with the IMF. 


Fascist Attack on People’s Organizations

Yesterday, February 8, the Argentine people held mobilizations throughout the country against the agreement between the National Government and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). 

The mobilization in Córdoba was historical, with a broad, united and militant protest in which more than 20 thousand people joined. The protests repudiated the targets, the structural adjustment, and government policies that will worsen hunger and unemployment. 

In a coordinated, simultaneous, and clearly premeditated manner, however, groups of hooded persons carrying firearms appeared at different points of the mobilization.

They intimidated the participants and caused different types of incidents. 

We know so far the facts about the protests of Polo Obrero in Vélez Sarsfield in April 27, where a group of hoodeds also brandished weapons and tried to hit the participants. 

In Yrigoyen and Obispo Trejo, there were similar incidents in the front ranks, where a car with hooded people displayed guns and fired them in the air. The same happened in one of the protest columns in front of Plaza Velez Sarsfield. 

Dozens of organizations have joined protests to condemn the debt payment, stating that the Argentine people will sustain the fight for a national political alternative to the scam that the IMF and national government want to impose on them. 


Despite the enormous mobilization, there was little media coverage. Without such coverage, these attacks will be emboldened in trying to discipline and paralyze the people’s free expression in the streets.

According to the facts that we have gathered, the attacks that were organized at different points of the mobilization have wounded several participants, caused some to be hospitalized, and a community organizer of 15 years was left in need of severe intensive therapy. 


We do not rule out any hypothesis about the instigators of the attack, but we demand that the government of the province conduct an investigation into the serious events that have occurred. 

We emphatically assert that these events violate democratic laws about the right to hold popular and massive protests in the streets.

These actions do nothing but redouble our commitment to the struggle so that the crisis does not further burden the working people, but those who generated the crisis in the first place. 


We call on the entire people, on social, political, trade union, and human rights organizations and on the media to make visible and repudiate what happened yesterday within the framework of the fight against the national government’s agreement with the IMF.


PO-PTS-IS-MST- Libres del Sur-Fol-PRML-OLP R and L-N.MAS-MARABUNTA-VOTAMOS LUCHAR- CUBA ★ MTR( ILPS)- NUEVO MAS-COR POLO OBRERO