Alive appearance of Santiago Maldonado!
The state is responsible!

Last Tuesday over a hundred persons attended to the rally at Puertadel Sol to demand the alive appearance of Santiago Maldonado.

The chosen day was nothing casual, it was the commemoration of the 45th anniversary of the massacre of Trelew, in which the repressive forces of the murderous Argentinean state killed 16 political prisoners. Andrea Benites from AEDD remembered this massacre by naming each one of the murdered comrades.

Comrades from AEDD, Casapueblos, The Union Workers Solidarity, CGT, CRT, Pan y Rosas (Bread and Roses), Anticapitalistas, Plataforma de Argentinos en España (Platform of Argentinean in Spain), DemocraciaObrera, among others.
During the entire rally there were present our 30.000 arrested-disappeared in the last military dictatorship, as well as those disappeared in “democracy” such as Julio Lopez, Daniel Solano and Luciano Arruga.

After some of the organizations there spoke, we could hear an audio message that Sergio, brother of Santiago Maldonado, sent us, as he is disappeared for 22 days now. “We keep on waiting for an answer of the government” he denounced, and at the end he addressed all of us who were in Madrid. “I want to thank you for rallying and demonstrating, demanding the alive appearance of Santiago. I send you a warm hug from Argentina and we hope to have Santiago with us soon.”

The government of Macri, Bullrich and the judge that ordered the repression to those who were claiming for the freedom of Jones Huala and against the plunder of the lands that transnational companies such as Benetton do, are the responsible for Santiago Maldonado’s disappearance. We are not before an “excess” as some people want us to believe. They gave the order for repression. They made him disappear. The government and Bullrich are protecting and covering up for the kidnappers. They are responsible. We accuse them of illicit association.

This is demonstrated by the "search" set up by the justice which is a great provocation against the families of Santiago, the Mapuche community and all the working and popular organizations that struggle for their alive appearance. From the day of the repression and the detention and disappearance of Santiago until today, the government has dedicated itself to intimidate and criminalize the struggle for the land of the Mapuches that Santiago accompanied and took as his own, accusing them of "terrorists." As the Kirchner administration did with Julio López, justice was devoted to deflect the investigation into the family. That is why its judges gave the order to open the house of Santiago and even went out to say that they did not want to collaborate.

Enough! The government, Bullrich, the judge and gendarmerie are the ones who have to say where Santiago Maldonado is.

We call on all human rights organizations, workers' organizations, students and workers' parties to surround the Argentine embassies around the world with the emergence of Santiago Maldonado.
The fight for Santiago is inseparable from the fight for the appearance of Julio Lopez, Daniel Solano, the 43 normalists who disappeared in Mexico, for the freedom of Jones Huala and Agustín Santillán, for the acqquittal of the oil workers of Las Heras and for free all the fighters from prisons of capitalist regimes. It is part of the struggle for the trial and punishment of those responsible for the assassination of Darío Santillán and Maximiliano Kosteki, of the 34 Marikana miners in South Africa, and many martyrs of the working class.
One class, the same struggle over borders!

International Network for the Freedom of Political Prisoners of the World and Justice for Our Martyrs

We reproduce the statement read at the end of the rally in Madrid:

We demand the alive appearance of Santiago Maldonado

Santiago Maldonado is disappeared

On Tuesday, August 1st, after the brutal repression in the Mapuche community, the Lof in Cushamen Resistance (Chubut), perpetrated by the gendarmerie, following orders from the national government through the Argentine Security Minister, Patricia Bullrich and directed by the Chief of Staff of that ministry and former defender of genocides, Pablo Noceti, Santiago Maldonado was arrested and disappeared. The evidence is conclusive, there is a video in which the gendarmes are seen acting with excessive violence, and more and more eyewitnesses confirm that Santiago was surrounded by Gendarmerie agents, beaten, put up in a van and later transferred with unknown direction.

There are a very dangerous events, both of savage repression of Mapuche communities, such as Corcovado in 2009, as well as the case of a "disappeared" Luciano González, in Cerro Centinela, shortly afterwards, who was beaten by members of special forces, and whose remains appeared 4 years later.

The application of forced disappearance as a method that generates terror is painfully known and used in Argentina. On August 18th, eleven years have passed since the second disappearance of Jorge Julio López. But in the repressive increase against those who struggle and especially the genocidal harassment against the native peoples, today in August 2017, again as it was in the dictatorship, a comrade, in this case Santiago Maldonado, is publicly arrested and then disappeared.

We accuse the offensive plan by the government to expel our original brothers from their ancestral lands, and continue to surrender them to large corporations such as Benneton. This appropriation and theft of land for the benefit of the large landowners, is attempted to hide accusing terrorists who in their legitimate defense resist this new dispossession of their land, and are charged with fierce arguments, such as have begun a separatist war. The Argentine state, the national and provincial governments, launched the cornering the Wichí referent Agustín Santillán and the lonko Mapuche Facundo Jones Huala. Santillán has been detained since April 14 by the government of the province of Formosa, and has begun a hunger strike in response to the policy of dispersing prisoners, and to be relocated where his family can visit him. Huela was arrested in Bariloche on June 27 and had to lift the strike he was holding because his comrades urged him against the serious physical deterioration he was suffering. The state of health of these referring Wichí and Mapuche is extremely delicate, from here we demand the immediate freedom of both. We also point out the repressive coordination of the national government with the governors, of different political parties, but with identical positions with large corporations.

Yesterday the Argentine state carried out the “Campaña del Desierto” (Desert Campaign, TN) and with it the genocide and theft of land to the Mapuche-Tehuelche people in the south. It was necessary to justify the premeditated dispossession for the powerful families of Buenos Aires to carry out their enterprise. The excuse was: the Indian Raid.

Today, the Argentine State is launching a new “Campaña del Desierto” to criminalize the descendants of the Mapuche-Tehuelche and to forcefully evict them when a few hectares of land are recovered from the millions who were taken from them by blood and fire. The excuse is: Mapuche terrorism.

The State and the government are responsible, in the face of the misunderstanding if not silence or defamation, are facing the abduction and disappearance of Maldonado. The judge in charge of the case, deflected the investigation blaming the Mapuche community and making searches in their territories, trying to extend the doubt that they -the Mapuches with whom Santiago Maldonado was actively in solidarity- were the ones who had kidnapped him. The same judge ordered the search of the house of Santiago and his family. The repressive strategy enunciated by several members of the government, the defense of the Gendarmerie at all costs, and the defamation and insults on the motives of struggle of the original peoples, make clear the government-state complicity in order to keep unpunished and protected those who kidnapped Maldonado and perpetuated his disappearance.

Santiago was arrested by the Gendarmerie and the Argentine Government must respond where he is.

Santiago Maldonado is a Detained-Disappeared and the seriousness of this imposes the need of a political and social response to the implementation of kidnapping and disappearance of social fighters. We cannot tolerate increased the damn remnants of genocide, since there is no justice for the 30,000 disappeared, nor for the nearly 400 appropriate minors. For all this, it is indispensable that each and every one of the archives of the dictatorship be opened, whose only existence is the impunity and complicity with which the post-dictatorial governments have ignored ignominiously.

We join the mass demonstrations and rallies in Argentina and in the world, demanding the Apparition Alive now of Santiago Maldonado, as of all the disappeared during the constitutional governments, Jorge Julio López, Luciano Arruga, Daniel Solano... and we tell Macri’s government that the disappearances are responsibilities of the State and of each government that participated in these disappearances; that they are crimes against humanity; that they do not prescribe. We tell them we do not forgive, we do not forget, we do not reconcile.

ENOUGH OF THE FORCED DISAPPEARANCE OF PEOPLE!
ALIVE THEY TOOK THEM, ALIVE WE WANT THEM!

APPEARANCE ALIVE OF SANTIAGO MALDONADO NOW!

FREEDOM TO SANTILLÁN, JONES HUALA AND ALL THE ORIGINATED BROTHERS AND SISTERS PRISONERS AND ALL POPULAR PRISONERS.

ACQUITTAL OF HERAS OIL WORKERS AND TIERRA DEL FUERGO WORKERS AND OF OVER 5,000 PROCESSED FIGHTERS.

THE STATE, THE PROVINCIAL GOVERNMENT AND THE NATIONAL GOVERNMENT ARE RESPONSIBLE

Hundreds of signatures and endorsements have come (and still do) from human rights organizations, shop stewards’ commissions, union representatives, and workers from Argentina, Chile, Peru, Bolivia, New Zealand, and Syria.