SUTCRA communiqué on murder of Marcelo Silvera

argentina / uruguay / paraguay | repression / prisoners | press release Monday January 15, 2018 07:08 by SUTCRA

The Union of Freight Transport and Related Branches (SUTCRA) laments to communicate the condemnable and fateful murder of a comrade and leader of SUTCRA, Marcelo Silvera, during a General Strike decreed by our union on Tuesday, January 2, 2018. [Castellano]

This murder has numerous different characteristics and has aggravating circumstances to an act of common violence, taking into consideration that while the comrade Marcelo Silvera was traveling with his wife to take their young son to a fellow comrade due to health problems, he came across a worker from the Rivera firm, Viena Transport, a driver who was using the firm’s truck, not in compliance with the union’s measure. Recognizing our comrade due to his well-known militancy, the driver carries out a harsh maneuver that obliges Silvera to brake his vehicle in such a way that his life and those of his wife and son become threatened. In these circumstances, a discussion arises regarding the route that ends at the doors of the Viana Transport firm, when Comrade Marcelo alights from his car and directs himself to tell this worker off for his attitude. Cowardly, this worker from above the truck and without ever coming down from it shoots our comrade Silvera in the chest, leaving him bleeding out on the floor of the firm’s entrance, being embraced by his wife and his 6-year old son.

The Viena Firm, failing to provide assistance and desiring to distance itself from the murder, orders the truck with the murderer in it to enter the firm’s property. Because the company lacks the decency to even call any health service by phone, the neighbors from the community are those who call the authorities, having heard the heartbreaking cries of Silvera’s wife.

SUTCRA energetically condemns and repudiates the murder of our Comrade National Director, Marcelo Silvera, and demands that his murder be profoundly investigated, and that the culpability not only for the murder but also the Viena firm, which employed an armed worker during a day of general strike. Furthermore, we wish to stress the omission of assistance rendered by the company once our comrade had been shot.

We commit ourselves to struggle daily so that the murder of our leader Marcelo Silvera will not remain in impunity, and that events such as these never recur in our beloved country.

In light of the events that have been highlighted, SUTCRA declares a national general strike out of sorrow from 12pm to midnight.