Controversy over isolation centers in Formosa 2:58
(CNN Spanish) -
Argentina's Human Rights Secretary, Horacio Pietragalla, arrived in the province of Formosa on Wednesday after reports of human rights violations in isolation centers for patients with covid-19.
In a press conference this Thursday, the official said that it was possible to “verify that a series of isolated events occurred that generated the repudiation of people who saw their freedom violated”, but said that “we cannot talk about crimes against humanity, centers clandestine detention or forced disappearance ”.
LOOK: Formosa: "There is complicity of the Government with the policy of detention centers"
Pietragalla, who arrived in Formosa at the invitation of the provincial government, which for its part had already expressed its rejection of the complaints, said that measures will be taken regarding the situation in the province.
He explained that the information collected during the visit will be processed to "draw up conclusions and recommendations to the province," according to a statement from the Argentine government.
In addition, there will be “a follow-up together with the technical teams”.
However, after the complaints filed with the Argentine federal justice and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, a new complication is added after some patients reported that the night before Pietragalla's arrival the local government had deployed a relocation operation of patients housed in these centers.
Fernando Ríos, a patient with coronavirus who is isolated in the Cinquantenaire Stadium, told CNN that the night before the arrival of the Secretary of Human Rights "they began to transfer all the people."
"We were more than 150 and we were between 15 and 20 people," explained Ríos.
The man continued with the story and described that "they transferred the people who were on a list, they made them gather all their clothes, they took them outside and from there we did not know anything else."
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The authorities did not respond to CNN's repeated inquiries to the Government and Community ministries of Formosa about the alleged mass transfer of those housed in the Cinquantenaire stadium.
In Argentina, each province has autonomy to design and execute its own health policy.
Formosa implements an isolation that forces people who have coronavirus and their close contacts to comply with the quarantine in state centers and not in their homes.
A spokesman for the National Health Ministry told CNN that he will not comment on the severity of the measures adopted by Formosa.