Claudia Bazán wife of Jose Rosales condemned to perpetual for fighting in 2006
I am Claudia Bazán wife of Jose Rosales condemned to perpetual for fighting in 2006.
I come to denounce how the situation in Las Heras is. I want to tell everyone that LH is still militarized; they keep on chasing us, they continue to persecute us. According to the video of the former president, they did not condemn the guilty ones of a policeman murder, they condemned workers that the only thing that wanted was a better life for their family, to bring a bit more bread to their home.
Well I want to tell you what it was like to live after a sentence. It has been very hard, very hard. The cops stood up outside the house. A month after the conviction they went and stopped outside my house and they were standing there and we were terrified inside.Once, for Three Kings Day, the Three Kingswere in a van delivering treats to the neighborhood kids and we heard the siren and went crazy. We thought they were coming to take my husband. And so we live with the terror that they come and take him away and we cannot do anything.
During the trial I realized that if we were alone, we were not going to get very far. So it was that my husband on the first day of the trial arrives alone, without even a defense lawyer; they put an official defender and I will never forget it. She took him to an office after the first audience ends and she tells him to blame himself, saying he is guilty of the policeman death and that she was going to claim that he was under the influence of alcohol in order to reduce the sentence.And my husband says no, he was not going to blame himself for something he had not done because the only thing he had done that night was to go out and fight for his rights, to a better job, for a better salary. That was what the official defender Cvitanich told him at the time. I believe that if my husband had been weaker at that time today, he not only would have been convicted but he would be behind bars as well.
The sentence of 12/12, as I always say, that far from intimidating us showed us that indeed we could go out and we altogether could get out. That is why I decide to return here and I decide to go out and fight once more for my family and for my comrades. What I want is we all unite our forces so that we can fight altogether because if we do not go out and fight for everyone, fighting one by one we will never get ahead.
We are not struck by what is happening in the country today. It does not catch our attention as Gendarmerie killed Santiago Maldonado, it does not catch our attention how they killed Rafael. All they went through we have already gone through. Well I want you to know that there in Las Heras, nowadays you cannot go out and claim anything.
The comrade Ampuero of ATE who always accompanied us some time ago, he went out to the square to claim for the same for a better position, for a salary and they took him by the hair. the police grabbed him and took him from the hairs of the square. The square was full of kids, full of families enjoying the day; supporting and they took him away.
Today the town remains militarized. To get an idea, the gendarmes stay at the hotel of the YPF oil company.You cannot make any kind of claim because they automatically do not even give you time to communicate your claim. They send the police, they hit you with sticks and then you are prosecuted. You cannot claim for gas, you cannot claim for light because they immediately they open a case and prosecuted you.
That is why we with Comrade Omar come to ask for everyone's support and we want the fight to continue because after 12/12 I do not know if we have been forgotten, but there was a dispersion of all the organizations that accompanied us at that time. We want that if these organizations can unite again to accompany us since this year will be hard for us. Possibly in April we have a subpoena for a cassation hearing in Río Gallegos where the trial after the conviction was derived.
So, well that is comrades what I want to tell you more than anything. Thank you