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Jonatan saved his life only because of the solidarity of a neighbor. In the early morning of December 26 last an as-yet unidentified woman set her ranche on fire from the Nueva Pompeya neighborhood while he slept inside. A man passed by, observed the fire, alerted him and they were able to put out the fire. If not, Jonatan, what he lost the few belongings he had, it would be one more in the increasing number from people on the street who die for one violence that organizations already qualify as “systematic“.” This is not an isolated case, there is permanent violence, “they told Page 12 from the Popular Assembly for Homeless People (APPSC), which in 2021 collected at least 33 acts of violence with 23 deaths throughout the country.
“I had nothing left. I had a mattress, clothes, and I kept what was on. It The only thing I ask is justice because I have no problems with anyone “, Jonatan said before the press on Wednesday morning. Although the event occurred in the past Sunday 26 around 4.45 In the morning, just this Wednesday the video of the security camera that captured the scene came to light. In the images it is observed how a woman approaches the avenue of Avenida Cobo at 1200 and out of nowhere starts setting fire to the car with Jonatan’s cartons. The 31-year-old man sleeps there with his wife, but that day she was not there.
“A man came and told me he is setting fire, I had the fire in my face“Jonatan continued his story. Indeed, in the video you see a man who approaches the place and runs the cards, already in flames, to wake up Jonathan and alert him about what was happening. “My baby wakes up because she saw a lot of fire through the window. I ran down and two boys were trying to turn it off, “said Pablo, the another neighbor who came down from his house to put out the fire to perceive the smoke that began to rise through his window.
“I took out the hose we have here and started turning it off, If I don’t have the hose, everything will catch fire“Pablo added in statements to Channel 9. After lighting the fire, the camera captures how The woman runs out and heads towards Del Barco Centenera street. At the end of this edition, the Buenos Aires Police were still seeking to identify her within the framework of a case that the Justice opened ex officio. Jonatan, whose feet were burned by the attempt to put out the fire, assured that I had never seen the woman.
“There is a systematic violence against homeless people. It is permanent and organizations have made it visible. Violence often comes from the security forces, but in recent years there has been a considerable increase in social violence, carried out by people from the community“Jorgelina di Iorio, a member of the APPSC, told this newspaper.
At the end of 2021, the Assembly published the results of the “Unified Registry of Violence“, a national cartography carried out in conjunction with a team from the Faculty of Psychology of the UBA coordinated by Di Iorio. The survey showed that last year there were at least 33 acts of violence against people in street situations throughout the country. Of that total, 23 people died, 10 victims of hate attacks and 13 for “neglect or lack of assistance“by the State.
“Those are the ones we collect but surely there is an underreport, because there are cases that are not known. The Registry seeks to give shape to a lot of facts that the organizations have been denouncing, to transform that anger into a collective complaint. But it is also an exercise in dignity, to show that it is worthwhile for these people to be recognized, that their lives count“said Di Iorio, a psychologist and researcher at Conicet.
“The complaints about these violence took even more force from made from slaughterhouses“Di Iorio recalled. The reference is to what happened in May 2019, when two men got out of a car under the bridge of General Paz and Juan Bautista Alberdi and they set fire to two people sleeping there. On that occasion the people they could save their lives. On July 4, 2020, a woman died burned in the low highway of Virrey Cevallos, between San Juan and Cochabamba, Constitución neighborhood.
But the cases they are not limited to the City of Buenos Aires. Between August and September of last year, only in the span of ten days, they lived four acts of violence in different parts of the country. On August 25, in Jujuy, a group unexpectedly attacked a 21-year-old man in a street situation and stabbed him leaving him wounded. On September 4, an agent of the Tucuman Police shot a defenseless man with rubber bullets. Also that Saturday the 4th, in La Plata, a man went set on fire while he slept on the public highway, with burns to 12 percent of your body. In Rosario, meanwhile, Luis, 58, he died after being set on fire.
“The use of fire implies burn like waste. There is something symbolic and at the same time very material: burning it as if it were a garbage bag. That is the social value assigned to these people, who are also blamed for a situation of extreme marginality that is structuralDi Iorio pointed out.