CASE 27-2017: Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR)
DECREE ON THE QUARANTINE AND THE CORONAVIRUS
April 23, 2020
HAVING SEEN the Judgment and the subsequent actions of the “IACHR Case” carried out by the International Buddhist Ethics Committee, ruling the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) as Responsible for Violation of the rights of Buddhist peoples and spiritual communities, Violation of the human rights to life, peace and integrity, and Violation of International Law;
CONSIDERING:
That on September 20, 2018, the International Buddhist Ethics Committee made a Manifesto on Prison Torture, demanding the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) to investigate and prosecute Crimes against humanity committed by the Argentine government and its systematic and widespread pattern of police mistreatment and abuse, arbitrary arrests and torture carried out by the Argentine security forces, which also often resort to carrying out hundreds of extrajudicial executions with total impunity;
That in such post-sentence proceedings, the IACHR was held Responsible as an Accomplice to Crimes against humanity in the event that it decides to ignore these terrible human rights violations that have been denounced not only by the International Buddhist Ethics Committee but also by organizations such as the Coordinator Against Police and Institutional Repression (Correpi) and the Office of Institutional Violence (Procuvin);
That in the same way this Decree dictates the Responsibility of the IACHR in maintaining the impunity of Crimes against humanity carried out by the Argentine State with the excuse of quarantine for the Coronavirus pandemic;
That likewise, the non-denunciation of the criminal behavior of the Argentine State conforms a systematic pattern of the IACHR, so its omission is an act of complicity, thus committing a High Crime against the intrinsic fundamental Freedoms;
That it is recognized that the death rate from Coronavirus would not be 3.4% as reported by the World Health Organization, nor would it be 1% as studies by China and Germany suggest, but rather as important scientists from Stanford University point out the true mortality would be 0.12%, as stated by epidemiologist Ioannidis and other colleagues, thus being very similar to the lethality of ordinary flu, which means that mass quarantines are one of the largest acts of collective psychosis of history as they are totally disproportionate measures with respect to the problem they seek to remedy;
That quarantines only work when a region has been infected and it is fenced so that it does not infect the rest of the national or international population, and that is why declaring quarantine for the entire population of a country is an act of absolute irrationality since no separation between the sick and the healthy ones is being made;
That most of the quarantines have been declared by governments with deplorable health systems, given that the States have preferred to invest in weapons instead of investing in health and therefore the quarantine would not be a remedy but would only be covering up the responsibility of political leaders in having a health system that overflows and causes thousands of deaths at the mere appearance of a minor disease such as the Coronavirus;
That humanity is suffering from a serious Global Panic Attack, and more than ever needing Spiritual Health or Cure (Nirvana) from the psychological suffering produced by living a life infected by the diseases of greed, hatred and deceit that make humanity to have an obsession with rumors, superficiality and the ill of social networks, spreading the virus of ignorance, fear and separateness among the people;
That in accordance with the foregoing, the Argentine government has carried out a Coup d’état, since the executive power has taken over the State and the legislative and judicial systems have ceased to function, even de facto suspending civil rights, which is totally unconstitutional and also contrary to international human rights treaties and conventions;
That the Argentine government has allowed the local administrations of hundreds of cities and provinces to irrationally, unconstitutionally and illegally block the limits of the territories and accesses to the streets or routes to prevent access by other argentine citizens, and has even allowed these rulers to illegally force people to stay in their homes, which means that they have illegally decreed a covered-up state of siege in their cities, violating human rights established in the Argentine National Constitution by restricting them with no legal grounds, since the governors and mayors do not be legally empowered to close roads or establish borders, and they would be disobeying the Argentine National Constitution where it is stated that the citizens of each province enjoy all the rights and privileges of citizenship in the others, being the same Constitution that also establishes that all citizens enjoy the right to move freely throughout the national territory, not being able to carry out restrictions without legal basis or discriminatory norms that impede circulation;
That the Argentine National Constitution allows restricting free movement only when the President requests the Congress to declare a State of siege, which has not happened so far, thus demonstrating the illegality and unconstitutionality of the actions of the Argentine government of Alberto Fernández in the face of the Coronavirus pandemic, which in no way merits to destroy constitutional protections and human rights;
That a large number of municipalities have declared their own curfews with restrictions on movement and absolute prohibitions on leaving their homes after a certain hour, taking illegal measures with complete independence from the executive, legislative and judicial powers at the national level, and dictating measures that usually impede circulation from the afternoon, which not only is an illegal measure that does not arise from any rule, but even ignores that the town mayors do not have any power to ignore constitutional guarantees and to dictate sanitary measures that are incumbent of the national government;
That a large amount of provincial governments in Argentina made illegal decisions and prohibited access to their territories, even blocking their accesses and leaving a great number of people trapped between provincial limits, as is the case of a group of climbers who, although they passed medical check-ups, they were stranded without any food and proper hygiene on an inter-provincial route after these unconstitutional restrictions were decided, and they could not access the province of Catamarca or the province of La Rioja, reason why, by not allowing them to continue or to return, and not being allowed to set up the tents to protect themselves from the pandemic of the dengue mosquito, the provincial rulers not only committed an abuse of power but also an abandonment of person and inhuman treatment that violates basic living conditions, being part of a systematic plan that is a crime against humanity;
That dozens of Argentine citizens got also trapped on a bridge between the Argentina and Brazil border in Puerto Iguazú, unable to enter either country despite being citizens, which constitutes one of the most incomprehensible and inhumane decisions of the history of the country, leaving these people in a state of illegal and infrahuman imprisonment without food or hygiene;
That, in agreement with former Argentine Ambassador Jorge Asís, who has defined the current Argentine government as a Police State even though it appears to have a good cause, since the Argentine government has decided to maintain strict control over all of society by suppressing the fundamental rights and civil liberties, deploying all the security forces for such purposes instead of using them to combat drug trafficking and organized crime, which implies that the Argentine government contradicts the Argentine National Constitution and the Human Rights Conventions, forming an Anti-democratic and anti-republican Police State;
That the group of medical experts who advise the Argentine government to continue the illegal quarantine are part of a systematic and generalized plan of human rights violations, since the rights to work have been violated by not allowing the population to go outside to earn their food, the right to freedom of movement has been violated by requiring government permits for those who want to leave their homes, the right to education has been violated by suspending school and university classes, the right to freedom of worship has been violated by not allowing churches to function, the right to assembly has been violated for not allowing friends to gather in their homes, the right to health has been violated by generating thousands of deaths as a result of canceling consultations and medical procedures related to cardiovascular diseases that are the first cause of death in the world, the right to well-being has been violated for not allowing psychology to function, the right to defense has been violated for not allowing lawyers to operate, and the right to development has been violated for not allowing the operation of hundreds of thousands of companies, 80% of which are on the verge of bankruptcy since they cannot pay the salaries of their employees, all of which is a set of incoherent and absurd measures in a country where before the Coronavirus there was already 40% poverty and which is now facing a possible social outbreak caused by the ignorance and ineffectiveness of the corrupt political caste;
That the Argentine government during the Quarantine has carried out a generalized and systematic plan of arbitrary arrests by the brutal state repressive forces, which is a crime against humanity, reaching the scandalous number of more than 3 million people arrested or charged for the sole reason of exercising their constitutional rights and freedom of movement, but not for the reason of spreading an epidemic, which would imply that in Argentina there are more quarantine violators than Coronavirus sufferers worldwide;
That the arrest of people in the context of the Coronavirus pandemic would only be a legal arrest when it is judicially proven not only that the person is infected but also that the individual has intentionally decided to spread the virus to other people;
That the Argentine government has illegally suspended the constitutional rights of citizens in a totally irrational way to create a Police State that fights against a virus with a real mortality rate very similar to the common flu, but that at the moment of fighting the true scourges that torment the population -such as drug trafficking and crime- the police system not only does not work but is even an accomplice of the criminals, while corrupt politicians get richer every day and people get poorer every day;
That the Argentine government pretends and overacts an alleged concern for the health of the people, using the Coronavirus excuse to establish an unconstitutional regime, which is demonstrable by the position that it has maintained for decades in all matters that seriously threaten health, as is the case of smoking that causes the death of more than 120 Argentine citizens per day, which is a higher number than the current number of deaths from Coronavirus in the country, and yet the Argentine government never ratified the Convention of the WHO for tobacco control nor even promoted effective measures against this global ill;
That the illegal regime in Argentina led by Alberto Fernández and Cristina Kirchner has arrested or penalized millions of innocent civilians, while at the same time in a completely irrational way has released genocidaires and even thousands of prisoners without electronic anklet bands, under the excuse that they can get Coronavirus in prison;
That the Argentine police have illegally detained defenseless civilians, including women and children, who have later been murdered and covered up the murder with impunity, as is the case of Florencia Morales who was arrested for riding a bicycle and a few hours later appeared hanged in the cell of a police station in the San Luis region, making people to believe that she had committed suicide with her shoelaces, and, moreover, just a few days later in the same region of Argentina a minor was arrested and a few hours later he appeared hanged with his own shirt at the police station;
That the Argentine police have illegally and violently detained innocent civilians for the mere fact of walking on the street, as was the case with citizen Laura Turzanski, who despite quoting constitutional articles that allowed her to walk freely and pleading that a presidential order is not above the Argentine National Constitution, however she was violently detained and the police also told her that there is no Constitution because “we are in a pandemic”;
That Article 14 of the Argentine National Constitution gives all its citizens rights to work, to trade, to enter the territory, to transit, to association, to worship and to learning, all of which have been violated by the de facto government of Alberto Fernández;
That Article 18 of the Argentine National Constitution states that no Argentine citizen may be punished without prior trial or arrest warrant issued by the competent authority, which is an inviolable constitutional right;
That the International Buddhist Ethics Committee agrees with Javier Cremades, President of the World Jurist Association, who has stated that the quarantine implies a loss of the sacred freedom of the human being, being almost a house arrest without the determination of a judge, and therefore the Coronavirus pandemic cannot be an alibi for the governmental Power to prevail over the rights of citizens, since health protection must be carried out with measures in accordance with the Constitution and never by violating it, for public action must always respect the dignity of people;
That quarantines are unconstitutional and inefficient mechanisms to protect people’s health, since they generate economic crises and the loss of millions of jobs, with which millions of people enter poverty and misery, having worse food and worse integral health, such as the increase in deaths from cardiovascular diseases, malnutrition and homicides, making it an act of ignorance or absolute irrationality the fact that President Fernández declares that he prioritizes health over the economy when actually both elements are interdependent;
That carrying out a quarantine for the entire population -in a country that already has 40% poverty- constitutes practically an economic disaster and a kind of death sentence, which is why many specialists have affirmed that it would be wiser that only mass entertainment shows are closed and that adults over 65 be at home, while they constitute 93% of those dead by Coronavirus, which would allow a large part of the population to return to work and to education, since their lives are not in danger, in addition that this would not cause the health system to overflow;
That carrying out a quarantine only for the population over 65 years of age should not be mandatory but an optional quarantine, in which the State would provide resources and protection to those who wish to seclude themselves in their homes, otherwise a discriminatory and segregative system that it is unconstitutional would be created, in addition to the fact that a large number of elderly people would rather prefer to risk becoming infected and dying than living inhumanly and sedentary in home prison;
That the governments of the world are taking advantage of the Coronavirus crisis to establish an authoritarian regime of illegal surveillance that violates the right to privacy, beginning to destroy the republican principles and respect for fundamental rights and individual liberties, because the ones who have to decide how to live in the face of the pandemic are the people themselves and not the politicians;
That the Argentine political regime is returning to the worst of the past, which was precisely when the military dictatorships suspended constitutional rights and established an Authoritarian Police State of crimes against humanity;
Therefore, it is hereby DECREED:
ARTICLE 1.- A new extension of the Judgment against the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights must be approved in order to rectify its behavior and ethically sanction it to fulfill its functions, by declaring it an Accomplice in Crimes against Humanity and High Crimes against Intrinsic Fundamental Freedoms.
ARTICLE 2.- The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights must be reproved for failing to investigate or to promote the trial against the human rights violations involved in the Quarantine system, especially the Argentine Case and its systematic and widespread arbitrary arrests that violate the Argentine National Constitution and the American Convention of Human Rights.
ARTICLE 3.- The Vatican State and Pope Francis I must be ordered to stop imaginatively accusing those countries that do not promote quarantines for supposedly performing a “viral genocide”, which is a position that only contributes to the true pandemic of fear and ignorance, pressing governments to take unconstitutional measures like those that occurred in Argentina.
ARTICLE 4.- The International Criminal Court (ICC) should be invited to investigate and prosecute crimes against humanity committed with impunity by the Argentine government of Presidents Cristina Kirchner, Mauricio Macri and Alberto Fernández.
ARTICLE 5.- It must be confirmed the fact that those Latin American countries that have supported criminal quarantines have copied the authoritarian and undemocratic system of government in China that has historically violated the human rights of its entire population.
ARTICLE 6.- Ethical and solidarity support to citizens around the world who seek to free themselves from illegal and dictatorial quarantines must be communicated, inciting them to raise the flag of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity to infringe unconstitutional, excessive, unjust and unworthy laws that violate their human rights and intrinsic freedoms, which means a peaceful and democratic call to Planetary Civil Disobedience.
ARTICLE 7.- It must be recalled the fact that Liberty is not only a constitutional right but is also the dharmic or spiritual nature of the human being, being his or her existential Purpose that can never be abolished or suspended by any government.
Always with spirit of reconciliation (maitri),
H.E. Master Maitreya Samyaksambuddha
President and Judge of the International Buddhist Ethics Committee
Maitriyana Buddhist Community 