17 July, 2014Hugo González Chirico, president of the CEPAR Workers’ Cooperative (Cootrapar) and FETRAMPAR, affiliated to IndustriALL Global Union, has now completed two months on hunger strike but his health has significantly deteriorated. His children, Hugo and Rolando González, said he is only taking water and that he is now very weak.
The doctor said that continuing the hunger strike for another five days could result in irreversible damage to the union leader’s health. Visits have to be very short and often with no communication because Chirico suffers painful retching if he tries to speak.
Chirico is still at the union office, located in front of the company’s offices in the town of Villa Hayes. It is hoped that the Paraguayan Senate will intervene in the next few days and ask the government to take steps to protect his health.
Chirico’s struggle continues despite his deteriorating health. He will not stop his hunger strike because he feels he is still being persecuted. He was taken into custody for a couple of hours on 8 July to answer charges regarding the alleged illegality of a strike in 2010. Chirico made a statement in court at about 9am. He was only shown an arrest warrant two hours after he was detained.
Chirico said he had been detained because of complaints he has made against Enrique Riera Escudero, a member of the Judicial Council, and the Argentinean businessman Sergio Taselli, who benefited from privatisation of the steelworks, although the contract was immediately rescinded due to a failure to make the investments stipulated in the pre-sale agreement.
Chirico accused Riera Escudero of fraud over alleged investments of $20 million. He also said that they withdrew $7 million from ACEPAR to pay for unusable machinery and non-existent work in 2008 without providing receipts. This included the acquisition of obsolete and polluting machinery worth no more than $300,000 for a total of $2.9 million.
Chirico is still on hunger strike after 60 days to call for the return of the 33% of shares owned by workers, which were taken from them by the Horacio Cartes government, which announced it would take responsibility for reviving the steelworks but leased it out to a Brazilian company. He is also calling for the punishment of the people responsible for asset-stripping ACEPAR, compensation for the dismissed workers and for those affected by the plant’s toxic emissions.
IndustriALL’s regional office is carefully monitoring Chirico’s state of health and providing the support and solidarity he needs in his quest to achieve a fair outcome to his struggle and that of the dismissed workers.