Argentina: Milagro Sala Taken to Court Despite Doctors' Order

In Argentina, members of the Committee for Milagro Sala’s Freedom condemned the court’s “campaign of harassment” against the leader of the Tupac Amaru movement Thursday, after she was taken directly from the hospital to a judicial hearing, despite her doctors’ rest order.

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Sala had to be transferred to a hospital Tuesday after complaining about intense pain abdominal during a court hearing. She was transported to the Pablo Soria Hospital that day and discharged Thursday.

Doctors ordered ten days of absolute rest to recover, but the judges summoned Sala to the court upon her release.    

This is the third time Sala has been hospitalized in a month.

The committee argued the court’s actions violate the Indigenous leader’s rights and threaten her deteriorated physical health, which worsened during the arbitrary transfer from house arrest to federal prison earlier this month.

Sala protested the transfer, which was later reversed by a Supreme Court ruling, by staring a dry hunger strike. Sources in the court claim she is facing liver problems that might be related to the hunger strike.  

During Thursday’s hearing, Sala urged Argentines to join the march organized by public education unions “Homeland yes, colony no! Let’s continue fighting for our homeland and defend university professor, the university must be public and for all.”

Sala, leader of the Tupac Amaru organization, has been in preventive detention since January 2016.

She is being investigated for an alleged illicit association, fraud, and extortion, crimes she was charged with days after being detained for allegedly instigating violence during a protest she didn't attend in early 2016.

Milagro Sala is a renowned activist, who is seen as President Mauricio Macri's first political prisoner. She created the Organization Tupac Amaru, which provides housing and other services to informal workers and popular sectors, she served as an Argentine legislator between 2013 and 2015 and was later elected by the Front for Victory Party, led by former President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, to Mercosur’s Parliament.

The United Nations, Amnesty International and several other human rights groups have demanded Sala’s release and called her detention “arbitrary.”