MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Police “repression” again fashionable for Uruguay's gov.

Nobody is happy with Minister Tourne

Crime, law and order, have moved to the centre of Uruguay's public debate following several cases of small shop keepers shooting and killing in self defence or in defence of their families threatened at gun point in their premises.

Although absolved the store keepers cases involved armed minors, most of them with drug consumption or dependency records desperate for money, and has again triggered a debate in Uruguay on whether the minor's responsibility should be lowered from 18 to 15 or possibly 13 years for certain crimes. But the debate, which has become extremely sensitive, has also fallen prey of the current dispute in the country's ruling coalition with several groups calling for a "heavy hand", "repression" and even for citizens and neighbours "to arm themselves" and organize "vigilante" type block squads. The current Uruguayan Interior minister Daisy Tourné, a school teacher with a long militancy in the Socialist party of President Tabare Vazquez had repeatedly argued against that "repression" is not the solution, but rather the causes of minors' misconduct and lack of family tutelage should be addressed. "I'm sorry my fellow companion (Interior) Minister but it seems recommendable to disobey your instructions and tell people to arm themselves and organize patrols in neighbourhoods to defend their families and homes" said Senator Eluterio Fernandez Huidobro from the coalition's main group MPP. The leader of the group and presidential hopeful Senator Jose Mujica supported his fellow group Senator statements saying "let's not be cynical, this is a small country and we all know there's one gun at least in each home". He even went further and insisted that drug dependent minors should be forcibly taken from their families and interned in farms where they would be "under coercion" liberated of their addiction. "If a teenager is a junky, he snorts or injects the stuff, there's not much that can be done unless the family decides to help him. That is why I believe we must change the law, pull his ears and kick him into a farm to forcibly make him give it up", said Mujica. "Criminals nowadays have no codes, they are only speared by drugs which makes them desperate, mentally invalid, that is why they must be interned", underlined Mujica. The MPP presidential hopeful also cautioned that "crime, law and order have become something very personal, because there's fear, people are afraid, so nobody is going to pay attention not even to the Interior minister". Not to be left behind the other presidential hopeful Senator Danilo Astori said that "we shouldn't be afraid of the word repression, because repression must work, must be effective and protect good law abiding citizens". However he defended the current administration's record on law and order saying it has begun "to address the issues from several angles" adding that the Ministry of Interior must have the capacity to articulate "prevention with repression". Public security is not "strictly a police issue", because police action can't be absent "nor can social policies". The Ministry of Social Development must supply the prevention funds and the Economy ministry funds for the law enforcement departments, added Astori. However Astori took distance from Senator Fernandez Huidobro regarding weapons. "I don't like the idea of people taking arms, because if not we're inviting everybody to appeal to the armed option". But making the word "repression" fashionable again is a milestone for the ruling coalition for which it was always stood as synonymous of police actions during the 1973/1984 military dictatorship. Anyhow for the Broad Front ruling coalition the current hard line stance means a radical U turn since from its origin and when in opposition the argument was that resources should be focused mainly on "the causes of crime and not repression of its consequences". The idea behind the thinking is that poverty, misery and lack of opportunities (in Uruguay's case promoted by "conservative political parties" and their capitalist allies) are the real cause behind criminality indexes. Something conservatives would describe as a "bleeding heart" attitude. But the issue has become so sensitive that repression and law and order, are the tunes to be played, and so be it.