MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Santa Cruz police remove picketers from oilfields

Police in the southern Patagonian province of Santa Cruz arrested Thursday more than 50 people in the course of ending a takeover of a Repsol YPF oilfield. But radicals and relatives from the detainees claimed many protesters were beaten.

Santa Cruz Interior minister Roque Ocampo said that in the course of removing protesters from the plant owned by Spanish-Argentine Repsol YPF in Cañadon Seco, following a court order, "police seized 60 Molotov cocktails, fuel-filled bottles and sharp bladed weapons" from demonstrators.

But the Santa Cruz Workers' Party said "unemployed" youth who "had been demanding work for several days" were subjected to a "brutal repression".

Detainees were taken to a police station in Caleta Olivia, some 50 kilometers from Cañadon Seco.

"Once at the station, the workers were brutally beaten, generating reactions from the relatives who had come to demand their release. Police then did not hesitate to attack relatives and arrested even more people" allege the Workers' Party in a release.

Minister Ocampo told the press police were complying with a court order when they cleared the plant of protesters.

Since Thursday last week leftist activists and picketers have been blocking provincial roads leading to Cañadon Seco demanding jobs from the oil industry.

Last Tuesday protesters occupied Repsol YPF facilities, blocked access to the plant that removes water from the extracted crude and pitched tents inside. Repsol YPF dominates Argentina's hydrocarbons and fuel mark.

Santa Cruz province is the stronghold of former governor and now Argentine president Nestor Kirchner.