Paz Castaing criticizes arrests after protest outside Cartes’ home

Lawyer and former senator Mario Paz Castaing called the police operation that ended with the arrests of two Partido Patria Querida figures outside Horacio Cartes’ home a serious matter and warned about public freedoms.

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Any act that restricts public freedoms is a bad precedent.

Asuncion councilor Pablo Callizo and council candidate Sebastián Garay were detained during a protest outside the former president’s residence on Avenida España. Castaing said that, regardless of the specific circumstances, any intervention restricting the right to demonstrate deserved close scrutiny.

He said the information available to him indicated that Callizo and Garay had been staging a protest with stuffed toys to offer passers-by. Police reportedly asked them to leave, and Castaing acknowledged that some resistance to the order may have occurred. But he questioned the officers’ response and said it was disproportionate for the incident to end with both men handcuffed and taken to a police station.

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They shook them, pushed both of them, wrestled with them, handcuffed them and took them to the detention station.

“Any act that restricts public freedoms is a bad precedent,” Castaing said. He distinguished between asking protesters to stop demonstrating outside a home and arresting them.

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I can call 911 and say: please tell these people to leave and take them somewhere else. Up to that point, I can consider things natural.

Castaing said a homeowner could reasonably call the emergency service and ask police to reduce a disturbance outside the residence. But he objected to the protesters being pursued, handcuffed, detained and placed in a cell, saying the episode should not be treated as a trivial matter.

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But pursuing them, taking them away detained and handcuffed, putting them in a cell, seems to me like something that should not be treated as a trivial matter.