Former Argentine president Cristina Fernández announced this Wednesday that she has filed a complaint before the United Nations Human Rights Committee, a body of independent experts that will oversee the application of Civil and Political Rights regarding her corruption conviction.
“I announce today that I have submitted an individual communication to the United Nations Human Rights Committee,” said the former president, sentenced to six years in prison to be served under house arrest and lifetime disqualification for having awarded multimillion-dollar road works to a partner and alleged frontman during her two administrations.
In an open letter, Fernández stated that she turns to the United Nations panel guided by “a deep civic sense and institutional respect” and by “the indignation” caused by the “illegalities” of which she says she is a “victim,”
“I do so with the conviction that International Human Rights Law is a conquest of humanity precisely for moments like this: when a country’s internal mechanisms cease to protect people from abuses of power”, she pointed out.
According to her, lawyers Javier Borrego, from Spain, and Rafael Valimm from Brazil, will be in charge of taking the case to the UN. “Their experience, academic authority, and commitment to the rule of law will contribute to this specific case being examined with the legal rigor it deserves,” she emphasized, stressing that “all Argentine judges” involved in her prosecution “will be subjected to the scrutiny of International Human Rights Law.”
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“There they must answer not before a government nor a political party, but before the universal principles of judicial independence, due process, equality before the law, and effective protection of fundamental rights,” Fernández stressed.
In a letter in which she presents herself as a victim of the use of justice as a political weapon and attributes her situation to a campaign against her condition as a female former president, Fernández insists that she will not “bow down” before “those who believe they can win through persecution and fear.”
“They will never be able to break my convictions nor my commitment to Argentina. I will fight until the last day for the recognition of my innocence. I will fight because I know that the truth always ends up making its way. I will fight because I deeply believe in justice when it acts independently and with respect for the law,” she emphasized.
She concludes her letter insisting that Argentine citizens “deserve to live in a Republic where no one is persecuted for their political ideas, where no woman is discriminated against for exercising leadership, and where Human Rights are a reality for all and not a privilege for some.”
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