Argentinian indigenous leader Milagro Sala. Photo: Adrián Pérez/File photo.
The Jujuy court has finally approved the transfer of Milagro Sala to the Italian Hospital in La Plata, Argentina, so that she can receive treatment for the thrombosis that has been affecting her health in recent months. The decision was made by Carlos Cattán, the judge of the Penal Court of Jujuy, Argentina, after a hearing for “humanitarian reasons” that took place on Thursday, September 28, at the request of the defense team of Sala, the politically persecuted indigenous leader of Argentina’s Tupac Amaru indigenous organization.
According to the defense team of Sala, “the court has just authorized the transfer of Milagro Sala to La Plata so that she can receive treatment for her deteriorating health condition as a result of her illness and so much confinement and harassment. … it is a collective achievement of a struggle that the movement never abandoned. It is a good news after so much ordeal. Now we have to get Milagro cured and continue fighting for her freedom.”
Coco Garfagnini, another Tupac Amaru leader, informed the news outlet Página 12 that, currently, “the transfer is being resolved” and that it is very likely that “next week, Milagro will be in La Plata, so that she can be hospitalized and receive the treatment she needs.”
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Sala requires an emergency surgery. The complex generalized edema that she suffers can only be treated in four health centers in Argentina, and none of them is in Jujuy, which is why her lawyers have been demanding her transfer to one such specialized hospital in La Plata.
Urgent hearing
Sala’s transfer was approved on Thursday, after a judicial hearing for humanitarian reasons that was urgently requested by her defense, after her health condition worsened.
The hearing was presided over by the Judge Carlos Cattán of the Penal Execution Court of Jujuy, who resolved the transfer based on the last report of the medical board of the provincial judiciary, where the experts stated that the procedure that Sala needs cannot be performed in the jurisdiction.
On June 27, 2022, Sala was transferred from her home in Barrio Cuyaya, in San Salvador de Jujuy, where she is under house arrest, to a private clinic in the capital of Jujuy, after doctors diagnosed her with deep vein thrombosis. Since then, her health has been deteriorating.
“The judiciary acted on the verge of an emergency”
According to Tupac Amaru leader Garfagnini, Milagro Sala’s team is resolving her transfer so that she can be treated as soon as possible. “I estimate that next week she will be in La Plata so that she can be hospitalized and receive all the treatment she needs,” he said.
“The truth is that the Jujuy judiciary, which is the judiciary of [Jujuy governor] Gerardo Morales, acted on the verge of an emergency.” Garfagnini said. “The death of Milagro would have been politically catastrophic for Morales, although I think that, subconsciously, this is what he was looking for all this time.”
“It is a judiciary that serves the powerful, very similar to that represented by the National Supreme Court,” Garfagnini added, referring to the provincial judiciary of Jujuy that, in the last eight years, “carried out a process of persecution and harassment against Milagro, the social organization Tupac Amaru, and its members.”
However, Garfagnini remarked, the message that remains after so many years is that “they could not destroy Milagro Sala, because the members embraced Milagro’s cause, which is an absolutely just cause, and when a movement embraces just causes it is victorious.”
“Milagro was on the verge of death and is still in a delicate situation,” he continued. “What saved her life is the Tupac Amaru movement that continues to fight for her freedom and for just causes, against all the media defamation and harassment. This is a positive message that we should repeat for other just causes that also exist in Argentina, such as ending poverty and hunger.”
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/SC/DZ/SL
