August 21, 2019. AFP
Presidential frontrunner Alberto Fernandez and running-mate Cristina Kirchner led calls by dozens of Argentine personalities Tuesday to free Brazil's jailed leftist icon Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
Human rights activists,
lawmakers, trade unionists, artists and scientists signed a petition published
in the left-leaning Pagina 12 daily.
They included Nobel Peace
laureate Adolfo Perez Esquivel, president of the Grandmothers of the Plaza de
Mayo Estela Carlotto and the leader of the Families of the Disappeared, Lita
Boitano.
"It is a very big clamor
for freedom in the face of an injustice, such as the detention and conviction
of Lula da Silva, which implies that Brazil continues to be in a state of
emergency," said Nicolas Trotta, the rector of the Metropolitan University
for Education and Labor, one of the organizers of the petition.
Fernandez, the favorite to
unseat President Mauricio Macri in upcoming elections, visited Lula last month
in Curitiba prison in southern Brazil where he is serving a nearly nine-year
sentence for corruption and money laundering.
Fernandez blasted President
Jair Bolsonaro last week as "misogynist, racist and violent" after
the Brazilian leader said a leftist victory in October elections would spark an
exodus of Argentines to Brazil.
Lula, who was the favorite to
win last year's presidential election in Brazil before he was jailed, has
continued to insist he is an innocent victim of a political conspiracy to
thwart him returning to power.
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