Supreme Court confirms 13 year prison sentence against social activist Milagro Sala

“It was bound to happen,” said Milagro Sala on AM750 she thought right after finding out her 13 year prison sentence had been confirmed by the Supreme Court. “Even when they tell me I’m a ‘black smug coya’, I’m never going to shut up.”

Milagro Sala is a prominent social and political activist from the northern province of Jujuy who led the Tupac Amaru Organization, named after the indigenous leader. She was imprisoned, for allegedly committing the crime of instigation for protesting against measures by the Jujuy administration, led by Gov. Gerardo Morales, in 2009. 

It was just Sala who had played a key role in social advocacy during the Cristina Fernandez government. Amnesty International declared that Sala was being criminalized “for peacefully exercising her rights to freedom of expression and protest.” Alliances between the Morales government and the local justice were thoroughly denounced and proved in the years following her detention. 

But Milagro Sala hasn’t been free ever since, and is now complying with house arrest. 

Thirty-three months after Sala’s defense requested its intervention, the judges in the Supreme Court published their decision on the “Pibes Villeros” case, where she was accused of leading an illicit association involving politicians from Jujuy and fair trade activists to fraud the State. 

In the ruling, the judges Rosatti, Lorenzetti, Rosenkratz and Maqueda established that the case was under the Jujuy justice jurisdiction, not subject to review under extraordinary appeals: “the decisions that the highest courts in each province makes are not subject to review by way of extraordinary appeal”. With their decision, the justices of the highest national court confirmed the 13-year prison sentence. 

“They’ll never forgive us for teaching comrades with the color of our skin to stand up for their rights and against those who always stepped on our heads,” said Sala in AM750. In the interview, she also criticized the silence from prominent Frente de Todos leaders like Sergio Massa and Wado de Pedro. “They helped Morales a lot,” she said.

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