Friday, June 28, 2013
Conclusions about how the public trial in Caleta Olivia comes developing so far:
Each step unmasks that what existed in Las Heras was a police organization based on systematic terror, directed by the owners of the oil companies and endorsed by the Government; it had the aim of crushing and punishing the heroic oil workers and their struggle for wages and dignity
An operation is exposed that reminds the Videlista era, at the hands of the police and legitimized by the judiciary dome -under the command of the imperialist oil companies, their junior partners the Kirchnerite bourgeoisie and the UCR.
The veil has fallen; you: policemen, judges, corrupt politicians and imperialist bosses ARE ALL MEMBERS OF THE PLOT BEING PREPARED FOR LYNCHING THE WORKERS!
From June 17 in Caleta Olivia (the city that concentrates the whole of the oil production in the North of Santa Cruz), South of Patagonia, the humiliating impeachment is developing against thirteen workers of Las Heras, falsely accused of being the "instigators of the labor uprising", "responsible for serious injuries to police officers" and "the death of one of them". When in fact all the townspeople suffered a fierce repression at the hands of the police sent by the oil companies, and amidst those bloody events against the people the radio-command officer of the police, Jorge Sayago fell dead.
This trial, as evidenced by these early sessions, is completely fraudulent. It is blatantly evident that it has been fabricated by the Government and its judges, and ordered by the imperialist oil companies established in the basin of the San Jorge Gulf (Santa Cruz and Chubut). In those years, these octopuses were led by the Repsol and British Petroleum, which looted the Argentinean oil in association with the Pan American Energy (society of the rancid bourgeois Bulgheroni and Cristóbal López). It is already clear that this trial has been planned to punish and terrorize the entire working-class who dares rebel against looting, the super exploitation of workers, and the bosses’ paid agents of the trade union bureaucracy.
The very same "police witnesses" declared to ignore the evidence allegedly found in the raided homes of the workers (the police had entered the houses by force, without a warrant) that was shown in the court; the denial of the intelligence service officers (all of them declared they had seen none of the accused the day of the events in question); the police witnesses acceptance about having taken all the data they had from the defendants from the phonebooks; all that shows that we are here before a vile hoax framed by the directories of the oil companies, giving orders to corrupt and murderous police and judges who legitimized those perverse and cruel actions against the workers.
Demands that motorized the fight throughout the North of Santa Cruz in the summer of 2006, were the rejection of the application of the profit-tax to wages, the exigency of the generalization of the benefits of the oil collective agreement for all the oil workers and "equal pay for equal work". And with this struggle flag workers unified their ranks and rebelled to organize a strong body of delegates, with their assemblies, roadblocks and four pickets in the accesses to the deposits which grouped at least 4000 activists. Thus they endangered the millionaire interests of the oil companies, the Spanish monarchy, imperialist vultures and their partners of the native bourgeoisie.
The response of the bourgeoisie arrived, with a real blow at the hands of the police and the bosses’ terror, supported in the gendarmerie which, with brutal repression, got out the workers of the roadblocks and with task groups and intelligence services persecuted workers up to their homes, house to house, to crush the fight. Moreover this brutal police-bosses operation was deployed out of what the bourgeoisie calls its 'legitimacy', i.e. of its own laws. It has already become clear that the bosses with their police first imprisoned, savagely repressed, kidnapped and arrested workers’ delegates, without any warrant, to then judges – behind the scenes- validate all acted by the police, as it was the brutal repression to the workers on the roads. Therefore the arrest of Navarro and other delegates in the road was a true "quick kidnapping". Then there came the judges and corrupt politicians to try to legitimize the proceedings by these vigilante gangs under the direct orders of the oil companies in the region.
This is what is becoming increasingly clear in this frame-up of this Puppet Court against Las Heras suffering workers. They detained them, they kidnapped them, tortured them, with a paramilitary band, with the methods of the already known "task forces" (similar to those during Videla’s dictatorship. NT.) Without even the warrant of the bourgeois Justice to do so, a “justice” that always came afterwards to legitimize those criminal actions.
A Governor as Acevedo, Chief of the SIDE (SIDE is the Servicio de Investigaciones del Estado, that is the internal political police. NT) ... murderous policemen - who had already punished savagely defenseless women and children a year earlier, when in front of the M & S Oil company they were demanding decent work - show the impunity with which, in the province of the Kirchners, these vigilante gangs move. This has a name and a surname; you like it or not, it is a Videlista-like scheme, in Santa Cruz, under orders from the oil companies.
Unfortunately, with all leaderships of working-class organizations looking the other side, allowing it to develop, a Calvary has been imposed on the oil workers and their families in the South of the country.
The conclusion would be that this democracy for the rich to survive, to defend the super profits of the oil companies and for all the Argentinean bourgeoisie to carry forward their super business, after strangling the revolution of 2001, the ruling classes had to remove all "democratic" wrappers concealing their domination and organize a clear crackdown over the working class as a warning. The fact is, if the fight program of Las Heras workers would have unfolded and succeeded; it could have spread like wildfire throughout the Argentine working class. The bourgeoisie and imperialism cannot allow that, they need slave workers capable of withstanding the most terrible work conditions, as they have now imposed in this Argentina maquila.
The defeat of Las Heras meant that Rio Gallegos (capital of Santa Cruz Province, NT) teachers ended with their heads trampled by the luxury 4-runners of the politicians; it meant the impunity with which the gangs of the UOCRA hit all workers; It meant the ever more spread actions of groups of thugs, paramilitary and 'irregular' bands, attacking workers in struggle under the orders of business bosses. In this democracy for the rich, the bosses are who call directly their hounds of prey so they defend them their property. Hounds of prey paid by the tax extracted from workers wages. All those Santa Cruz fighters lived firsthand the treacherous actions of the armed gangs of the likes of those that killed (young unarmed PO militant) Mariano Ferreyra in Buenos Aires.
In Las Heras was standing then, as shown in these sessions of the Court, a politico-police command, headed by the high officers of the provincial police, under the command of Wilfredo Roque and headed by officers Iñigo, Sandoval and Leal (as stated in testimony by the police Inspector Inostroza, deployed on June 28). The judges signed the warrants after being executed the raids and repressions, legitimizing the operations as notaries-amanuensis of the oil companies. The high officiality of the police mandated by the Kitchnerites took the commanding post and prepared an “Operation Terror” against the exploited targeting Las Heras. Police troops from all over the province were launched to hunt down six leaders of the struggle, among them Mario Navarro (the local representative of the oil workers, NT). On the evening of February 7, 2006 when Navarro was speaking on radio Soberania, a local broadcaster, was kidnapped by a police commando without search warrant of the radio or any arrest warrant that weighed upon him. They acted the same as the band of kidnappers who abducted Blumberg’s son (an infamous criminal case in Argentina, NT); only here the crime was compounded by the participation the police officers of Santa Cruz, transformed into a true “task group” (the name given to the groups of military and civilians that kidnapped, tortured and made disappear people during the 76-83 dictatorship in Argentina, NT) as those running in the ESMA (Escuela de Mecánica de la Armada, School of Mechanics of the Navy, one of the most sadist and active places of kidnapping, torturing and disappearing people in the above mentioned period, NT), in the ' 70s.
Immediately the police and gendarmerie troops rushed to militarize the main entrances of the desolate town of Las Heras, and the exploited masses are forced to take to the streets, with the uncertainty of the whereabouts of Navarro. They limited themselves to reaching the precinct peacefully, demanding only the freedom of Navarro and the end of repression. For Videlist Judges and torturers of the oil companies, anyone who went to claim for Navarro’s freedom was committing "crimes", when in reality, all those who had kidnapped him and all those who were inside the police station, were a gang of torturers and kidnappers who acted as true paramilitary groups on behalf of the State.
Such bosses-police putsch in the North of Santa Cruz took horrific dimensions. So they tried to give a veneer of legality. Appears fascist judge Leone Ruata. She put herself at the head of the siege, with the reinforcement of troops of the national gendarmerie.
They imprisoned and tortured 90 workers, who were taken from their homes at gun point. The repressive forces swept everything in their path and beat entire families, pregnant women, sick persons, babies and elders included; while others arrested the workers directly in their workplaces, as the companies INDUS (owned by Katich, Endichs, Davies), Astra Evangelista; M & S OIL, OLEOSUR and other contractors of Repsol. They left six workers prisoners suffering from incommunicado detention and torture for three years and a half, without trial or sentence upon any court. They were then "released under bail" since 2009, where they were forced to report to the Court every Monday at 8 p.m., among other coercive measures.
For this reason, although it is being clear that all “evidences” against the comrades are a real fabrication by the police officers, judges and politicians under the orders of the oil companies; although no witness has appeared so far that recognizes all the operative carried forward by themselves -they do not even know or identify any accused among those whom they made testify under threats and torture-; WE KNOW that the bosses’ justice —as a Pandora-box— hides among its claws the possibility of “finding” the culprits of Sayago’s death among workers who fought for their freedom and their dignity as such; in that way, the spurious justice can save its police band that operates under the orders of oil company bosses and a political power that guarantees it.
As always in these cases, stopping the hand to justice will depend on the strength that we can sustain in the struggle for the defense of our comrades, the first who dared to deal with these corporations.
Comrades who were detained have suffered great injuries, which this Court has tried to hide. There are workers that have lost their testicles and their kidneys have been severely injured during interrogation under torture, which was completely hidden. Police did all these barbarities in warehouses of the municipality without judicial control, no defense was allowed to protect the detainees during the police inquires.
Seven years later, this REAL ILLICIT ASSOCIATION tries to clean 'crime' scene by putting together a parody called public trial where they are incriminating thirteen workers (with the charge of Aggravated coercion and homicide).
The unmasking of the Videlista Court
Since its inception the trial has been a show of force and ostentation of the bourgeoisie, who laying hold to that institution, prominently reactionary which is the judiciary, notes its circumstantial political victory to the exploited and reminds them that it begins to take revenge and will be relentless.
The harrowing scenes in the days of the trial, are testimony of hell and humiliation for working-class youth and their families, who see before their eyes and feel on their nerves the subjugation that impose on them the worker-bashing judges with Videlista language, while shielded by troops of the Argentine gendarmerie (border police, NT) and Prefecture (coastal police).
In such a climate of torment, defendants and their families clench their teeth, bitterly tearful, and some of them even faint feeling their impotence and hate before to so much ignominy of the bourgeoisie. The circus mounted by the bosses, the police and the judges has no limits, the brutalities and irregularities in the legal field have been so disparaged during these sessions that the parade of "witnesses" against the accused workers —the same murderous provincial police officers that were beating and torturing the defendants and other fellow workers— could not even remember the events and much less recognize evidence or any of the thirteen workers sitting on the bench.
Who ordered kidnap and capture the worker leaders, on the evening of February 7, 2006? Who “outlawed” the right to strike of oil workers? Who gave the power and control to the police officers: Roque, Iñigo, Sandoval and Leal, so they could intimidate with fascist methods the entire exploited population of Las Heras? Judges Olivera and Monelo? They only legitimized afterwards that operation as Lembeye and Ruata de Leone did later. It would be interesting to cross phone lines of those days, from judges and politicians, with the directories of the oil companies… and so you can see how they were every day and minute connected with the management of the oil companies, giving orders, and its judges and politicians running them. As it was clear in this Court, they didn’t even care any longer about formalities.
Martinelli (UCR) —Las Heras Mayor in 2006—and Cotillo —Kirchnerite Mayor of Caleta Olivia— with the agreement of Acevedo the Santa Cruz Kirchnerite Governor and former head of the SIDE... were they who flocked to the provincial legislature in the first week of February 2006, so they approve delegating public policy functions in that military police Quartet so that it delivered a true state of siege? No one knows this, or will be known in this Court because the State of siege was a factual one, imposed by a police putsch, under orders from their "bosses" the oil companies. The State of siege placed an entire town in an open sky jail, without right to even speak.
This correspondent has been surprised by so many colleagues of Argentinean left asking: “how can there be fascist judges in bourgeois democracy?” It seems a joke: listen to this people, who claim to be Socialist, saying such nonsense. Don’t they remember Operation "Independence" that massacred workers, students and peasants in Tucumán with Gen. Bussi at its head with the current Commander in Chief of the Army of CFKirchner (Gen. Milani) as an Intelligence Advisor? Was that Operation not asked for by Luder, the Peronist President in democracy?
As about López Rega, under 3rd Perón's "democratic" Government, did he not assemble the so called AAA (Argentinean Anticommunist Association) to massacre recklessly the best worker leaders of Argentina? Wasn’t there a fascist putsch (Feb 27, 1974, NT) mounted with Brigadier R. Lacabanne and Lt.Col. Antonio D. Navarro (Cordoba Province police chief, and former chief of the Military Police of the 3rd Army Division, with HQ in Cordoba City, NT) to dislodge Cordoba’s Governor Ricardo Obregón Cano, leader of the Peronist left, and imposing a regime of terror in Córdoba -completely liquidating any vestiges left of the "Cordobazo"? (The Vice governor Atilio López, a union leader was assassinated by the AAA lately in the same year, NT)
These worshipers of the sacrosanct democracy of employers and their puppet institutions that conceal the ferocious dictatorship of capital, will they realize any time that this democracy for the rich defends it by preparing generals’ sabers, colonels’ guns and the truncheons of policemen? The vanguard, will understand quickly what we say, because it is already suffering it firsthand.
Seeing the face of these judges, pressed, when their witnesses did not even corroborate the evidence planted by the same witnesses and judges... seeing the face of Judge Lembeye and her screams of "don’t take photos, don’t take photos," when comrade Bilbao lay passed out for about 20 minutes in the courtroom without ambulance… You could realize once more the degree of farce of this Court which is nothing more than an Inquisition Tribunal of the oil companies against the workers.
Lawyers of the bourgeoisie who were "defending" the oil workers are suddenly gone and have left comrades abandoned to their fate. Certainly the advocates of worker organizations will solve this problem immediately. Surely they should take the case of the companions.
It is necessary to make an alert. The judges made the “good” police officers declare before the court, to numb us and then they will make come the "bad" ones so they do their task and compromise the workers. No confidence in this Court or in any of their rulings! The struggle for the acquittal of the companions will be won on the streets. For that the full weight of worker organizations should be at the service of this fight.
Increasingly it is clearer than the rising and the revolt of the slaves is not a crime, IT IS JUSTICE.
And it will come. In a different Court where the policemen, judges, corrupt politicians and oil companies who put together this inquisition are seated on the bench.
If the judges do not condemn bosses, corrupt politicians and officials who steal; workers do not believe in justice, don't recognize their courts and do not accept their sentences.
Trial and punishment to all the oppressors of the people! We do not forget or forgive.
Correspondent from Las Heras
