MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Argentina: Terrorized pregnant indigenous women hide in forest fearful of police raids that snatch their babies

Wichi women live in subhuman conditions in the Formosa tropical woods

Some eighty pregnant women from the Argentine indigenous Wichi people in the northern province of Formosa, ruled by Kirchnerite governor, Gines Insfran, hide in the forest fearful of having their babies snatched or forcefully taken to provincial hospitals where they are submitted to cesarean surgery.

The sub-human conditions in which these eighty Wichi women survive, with no water, power or medical attention, were exposed by Buenos Aires television, including interviews with the victims, faces covered, undisclosed locations, in which they explained why they decided to hide away leaving families and settlements. Random and night raids by the provincial mounted police snatch the newly born, and women about to give birth, and drive them in ambulances to Formosa city, alleging sanitary prevention measures because of the pandemic.

In Formosa pediatric and neonatal clinics, babies are exposed to Covid 19 tests and women forced to give birth including caesarean surgery if necessary. Babies have to travel alone because such are the ambulance transportation protocols, and mothers without their babies are returned to the tribe in indigenous reservations that lacks basic services, water, power, medical attention and schools.

Wichi settlement members have been warned that if complaints about living conditions are revealed, their daily food packs delivered by the provincial government will be stopped.

The excesses and brutalities to which Formosa residents are exposed by governor Gines Insfran, considered a loyal Kirchnerite militant, who has ruled the province for the last twenty five years through corruption and patronage, and who president Alberto Fernandez visited and praised as a governance example and the most efficient in containing the pandemic, have been repeatedly denounced by international human rights organizations such as Amnesty International, UN, InterAmerican human rights commission and Human Rights Watch, but with no echo from the Argentine government or human rights organizations (including Mothers and Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo and Peace Nobel Prize Adolfo Perez Esquivel, currently on the pay list of the Kirchnerite governments).

The impoverished province, which originally belonged to neighboring Paraguay, and was part of the bounty Argentina collected following the Triple Alliance war in 1870, is highly dependent on federal government funds, since close to 65% of residents work for the provincial government. Mandarin Insfran, master of lives and souls in Formosa, also impeded some 8,000 residents from returning to the province for months, alleging pandemic precautions. Likewise with outside media.

Following an Argentine Supreme Court ruling some of the “outcast” residents were allowed to return home, with further bureaucratic hurdles, while the most important media of Argentina was granted access to the province, obviously with 24 hours police escort.

Last week when Insfran announced the return to a complete lockdown, people, particularly from the private sector said enough, and ignoring the resolution took to the streets for the first time in 25 years to peacefully protest. The demonstration was ferociously repressed with rubber bullets, tear gas, water cannons, and the arrest of some ninety people including several women, journalists and council members, and minors, all of them when released showing injuries caused by rubber bullets fired at short range.

The government of president Fernandez, his cabinet chief and human rights minister, criticized the “institutionalized violence of the police”, but also condemned the vicious campaign by the opposition and ill intended groups against the great efficient governors Insfran. International condemnation from human rights groups followed with a strong waning from the United Nations.

Since then peaceful non violent protests have continued every evening in the Formosa capital, private businesses remain open, and people ignore confinement rules and stroll along the river side park. Insfran has replied with fully armed police parades singing allegiance to the governor and his governance.

But now another chapter of Mandarin Insfran terror governance has been exposed, this time against Wichi indigenous women and babies. It comes only hours (March 8) after the Argentina provincial governors, including Insfran, signed with president Fernandez a resolution in support of gender equality, respect for human rights and to protect women from violence.

March has not been kind with president Alberto Fernandez, besides the VIP vaccination scandal in the Health Ministry, it has emerged that K vaccination parlors are active in many provinces, cities and towns under Kirchnerite control, likewise the governor of Corrientes province suffered a road accident and was discovered to be transporting a batch of Covid 19 vaccines for relatives and friends; Justice minister Marcela Losardo, one of his most trusted advisors and private associate resigned, (although with an envious exit bonus, ambassador before Unesco in Paris); inflation is well above target; IMF talks are delayed and there are unexplained costs in the purchase of the Russian Sputnik V vaccine.