By Natalia Kidd
Buenos Aires, Mar 13 (EFE). – The Argentine government on Thursday defended the police repression during a protest in of pensioners, asserting that the protest was an attempt to destabilize the government.
On Wednesday, Argentine soccer fans, unions, and social organizations ed the protest in of pensioners, who have been protesting every Wednesday at the gates of Congress to demand an update on pensions.
The demonstration ended following harsh police repression with more than a hundred people arrested and about 50 injured, including several police officers and a photojournalist, who was seriously injured after being hit by a gas canister.
The Argentine Minister of National Security, Patricia Bullrich, said Wednesday’s events around the parliament were of “extreme gravity,” adding that demonstrators armed with knives and guns were prepared to “generate violence.”
In a press conference, Bullrich claimed that authorities were called to “disperse the violent (protesters),” adding that she considered the police operation was “adequate.”
She also announced that the national and local governments would file a t criminal complaint against the detainees “for sedition, for going against the security forces, and for attacking and resisting authority.”
Bullrich pointed to Leandro Caprioti, a fan of the Chacarita Juniors soccer club, as the “main organizer” of the march, which was also ed by fans of other clubs.
She also said that some of the demonstrators left the headquarters of the municipality of La Matanza, whose mayor, Fernando Espinoza, who belongs to the opposition party, she accused of “allowing the organization” of violent protesters.
Likewise, she claimed that another group of violent protesters gathered at Lomas de Zamora, also governed by the opposition.
According to Bullrich, “This was all organized with the aim of destabilizing the government, and they are going to try to do it all on Wednesday.”
“It was a march organized by squads, by barra bravas, by violent leftist groups, by different sectors that seek the total and absolute destabilization of our government,” she insisted.
President Javier Milei’s government also questioned Judge Karina Andrade, who ordered the release of 114 prisoners, arguing in her ruling, that “Fundamental constitutional rights were at stake, such as the right to protest, the right to demonstrate in a democracy, the right to petition the authorities, the right to freedom of expression.”
Photojournalists protest
Among those injured during the protest was photographer Pablo Grillo, who was hit in the head by a gas canister and remains in serious condition in a Buenos Aires hospital.
In solidarity with Grillo, Argentine photojournalists held a “camarazo” at the gates of Congress this Thursday, where they held up their cameras to denounce the actions of the security forces and demand that Bullrich be removed from her position.
Bullrich said she was “very sorry” for Grillo’s condition, but reiterated that whoever fired “the non-lethal weapon, a gas grenade, used it in the right way.”
“It bounced off a barricade with fire that the violent militants had made. It bounced back, that’s why it changed direction and hit the militant photographer who was there,” she said. EFE
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