The wife of a worker at Zanon has been kidnapped and beaten.

This morning, the wife of a comrade in the Zanon factory was

kidnapped and assaulted. According to her statement, made at the

Public Prosecutor’s office: today at 11:30 a.m., when she was leaving

work in the city of Centenario, four men in a green Falcon forced her

to get in. "We know where you work, we know your husband works in Zanon,

and that you leave your son with your mother-in-law." With those words,

the kidnappers began their attack on her and specified that the message

was for Godoy, López, Pedrero, and the rest of the members of the Ceramic

Workers Union. The verbal threats we have repeatedly received recently

have now progressed to physical violence. "This has to do with the Zanon

factory," they told her while they were torturing her with a sharp cutting

instrument.

They struck her in the face and they cut her face, her chest

and her arms. The wife of the Zanon worker also said that while they

were assaulting her, the men warned her, "It’s going to be very bloody

for the union," and they said they had to cut her face, because it had

to be bloody when she returned to the members of the union. The kidnappers

threatened all the Zanon unionists when they told her, "If the unionists

were unwilling to leave the ceramics factory, we would all have to live

there, because they were going to kill us all on the street, and someone

was going to die."



We workers at Zanon understand that this represents the

continued escalation of threats against the Children’s Rights Defense Counsel,

the deputy Jesús Escobar and against the workers of Zanon. We

understand that this began with a speech by Manganaro, the provincial

Minister of Security and Labor, when the new gang of police assumed

their duties at the end of last year. On that occasion, the Minister

was clear when he labeled those of us who oppose and struggle against

the policies of the Sobisch government as "criminals." He used military

language, calling the workers who demonstrated, "irregular troops,"

that the police had to chase. Yesterday the same Minister claimed that

this whole situation had to do with a conspiracy by SIDE [the State

Intelligence Secretariat], based on an anonymous accusation by former

agents of SIDE in the legislature.



We workers of Zanon have not ruled out any explanation.

During this tense situation we are very near a resolution of the

conflict at Zanon and we have many possibilities of finding a

favorable outcome, after three years of struggle and workers’

management. But those in power and the absent entrepreneurs

[who abandoned the enterprise, stripping the enterprise of its machinery

and profits] are not going to surrender easily. They are using these tactics borrowed

from the dark years of the dictatorship to try to break us and

defeat us. Therefore, today more than ever, we reaffirm our commitment

to struggle, and we reaffirm that regardless of the source of these

threats and aggressive acts, the responsibility for what is happening to us,

to our families and to all the fighters in Neuquén, rests with Governor

Jorge Sobisch. We are calling all organizations to a meeting

tomorrow, Saturday, at 11 a.m. in the Sindicato de Judiciales (SEJUN)

[the union of lawyers and court employees] to decide what steps to take.

Raúl Godoy, General Secretary: (0299) 154-052657

Alejandro López, Union Secretary: (0299) 154-016923

Carlos Acuña, Press and Media Secretary: (0299) 155-837111

Mariano Pedrero, Counsel for the Ceramic Workers Union: (0299) 154-013849