MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Police disperse march against property bill with tear gas, rubber bullets and water cannon

According to police sources, the Federal Police arrested three people and the Buenos Aires City Police another nine, all charged with assault and resisting authority

Twelve people were detained on Thursday during clashes outside Argentina's Congress, at a demonstration called against the Inviolability of Private Property bill being debated in the Senate.

According to police sources, the Federal Police arrested three people and the Buenos Aires City Police another nine, all charged with assault and resisting authority. The Security Ministry deployed some 820 officers from federal forces and the city police under its anti-picket protocol.

Casualty figures remain provisional. Four officers were reported injured, among them a gendarme struck in the head by a stone and taken to the Churruca hospital. Among demonstrators, at least two were hit by rubber bullets, several were affected by tear gas and one man sustained a serious eye injury. The Buenos Aires Press Union and the Association of Press Photographers also reported that a photojournalist suffered a head wound with heavy bleeding and was treated at the Argerich hospital; the cause of the blow has not been established.

Accounts of how the clashes began diverge. According to EFE, the demonstration proceeded without incident until security forces, positioned behind the barriers, began firing tear gas, rubber bullets and water from cannon trucks. Other outlets say confrontations started after a group brought down one of the barriers. La Nación placed the turning point at around 5 p.m., after nearly six hours of peaceful protest, when Federal Police used gas against those pressing on the fencing. A patrol car's windows were smashed, waste containers were set alight and pavements were damaged at several intersections in central Buenos Aires.

The rally began at midday despite rain and brought together the CGT labor federation, both CTA union groupings, the UTEP grassroots workers' union, teachers' unions, Peronist and left-wing organizations, students and unaffiliated citizens, under the slogans “The homeland is not for sale” and “The land is not for sale, not to be burned, not to be evicted from.” Simultaneous demonstrations took place in La Plata, Rosario, Córdoba, Mendoza, Tucumán, Bariloche and Ushuaia.

The protest went ahead even though the governing bloc had withdrawn the previous day the chapter easing rural land purchases by foreigners. “We want this law not to prosper, not only the part about land but also the burning of forests and rents,” Sergio Alarcón, a member of a Peronist organization, told EFE. Deregulation Minister Federico Sturzenegger defended the withdrawn chapter and said he regretted its exclusion.

The Senate approved the bill in the early hours of Friday by 37 votes to 33, after also dropping the chapter amending the Fire Management Law. The text retains the reforms on evictions, expropriations and the Real Estate Property Registry, and now goes to the Chamber of Deputies.