This article is reproduced in slightly edited form from Orinoco Tribune, with thanks.
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Cristian Díaz is a key name in Argentina’s solidarity with Palestine. If you have not heard of him, it is simply because, in this kind of society, there is an attempt to hide from view all those who put their body or intellect at the service of a just cause.
Eight months ago, Cristian was detained in the Marcos Paz prison, accused of neither more nor less than “racial hatred”. He is there against all judicial logic, his lawyers’ requests that he should be released, or at the worst kept under house arrest, while awaiting trial having been repeatedly rejected. Thus we see the value given to human rights by our democratic rulers.
In today’s Argentina we see every day how genocidal figures from the military dictatorship live in freedom or are ‘imprisoned’ in their family homes. They are even allowed the luxury of taking a summer ‘getaway’ or of organising festivities at which, in addition to having fun, they conspire.
By contrast, Cristian’s nightmare, which has now turned him into a political prisoner, began on 14 June when a group of police officers, several of them hooded, responded to a complaint filed by the head of security at the Israeli embassy. They burst into his home armed to the teeth, as if they were expecting to encounter the vilest of murderers.
As usually happens in such cases, the task group that responded to the ‘progressive’ former minister of security Aníbal Fernández applied all possible violence in their raid. Having turned the house upside down, they seized a Palestinian flag (hardly an unusual item for those who uphold the noble cause of the Palestinian people) and a few notes in Arabic – a language that Cristian had been studying for a long time, when his job as a metalworker allowed it.
With this arsenal of ‘evidence’ that they did not really need, since the Mossad man had already marked Cristian as an ‘enemy’, the police and the justice department merely subordinated themselves to the zionists’ accusation. And it is worth remembering that this occurred during the time of the previous ‘national and popular’ government, not under the fascistic direction of President Milei.
We met Cristian recently during a prison visit organised by the Permanent Assembly for Human Rights. Our first impression was a confirmation of the perverse ease with which people are sent to prison who refuse to think or speak as the authoritarian regime – disguised as ‘democracy’ – would like them to.
Eight months have passed since Cristian was incarcerated – all because the branch of the justice system that is supposed to be examining his cellphone has been postponing this task indefinitely. Obviously, those who are in service of power care little about the people who suffer the consequences of their decisions. As a result, Cristian has lost his job and his home; he is in very bad shape financially; and, if it were not for the solidarity of the Lawyers’ Guild, the Committee for Solidarity with the Palestinian People (APDH) and the League for Human Rights, which send him food, his suffering would be even greater.
In our talk, while feeling outrage at his having been imprisoned merely for defending the freedom to think and express an opinion and for expressing solidarity with those who are suffering injustice, we felt that Cristian radiated a strength and confidence that the authorities have not be able to break.
As Che maintained, and as was symbolised on Cristian’s red t-shirt, holding true to our ideals can bring difficulties and even deep pain. But at the same time, it nourishes our dignity and humanity. Several times while we were talking, Cristian’s face darkened as he spoke about the thousands of young children murdered by the occupation in Gaza, and about the desperate mothers fleeing phosphorus bombs as they tried to protect their babies.
He also insisted on the love of the land and everything it means to a people that has been fighting for its independence for more than 75 years.
It is moving to listen to a humanist christian, sensitive and extremely serious in his beliefs, and to discover that a man of 40-something years old knows very well that he is innocent and is determined to keep fighting for his freedom.
These are difficult times, there is no doubt. Here in Argentina especially, where fascism seeks to make a place for itself in the institutions and among significant segments of the population, and where the hunger of our people is advancing rapidly.
On the other hand, in Palestine, more than 30,000 have been murdered by imperialist cruelty in the last four months alone. These are moments that test our revolutionary ideas; that remind us of the need to embrace the prisoners of our struggle.
Cristian is one of them, and we must make him feel that he is not alone in his struggle to prove that ideas, like the revolution itself, cannot be imprisoned.
Despite all attempts to suppress them, these ideas continue to flow, intact, for the love of Palestine and of all humanity.
