Argentina's Security Minister Patricia Bullrich said Tuesday that rumours about an imminent wave of mass looting in the country are coming from groups linked to the political movement of former president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.
A 13-year-old teenager from the Qom indigenous community was shot dead on Monday evening during an attack on a supermarket in Chaco province. The bullet is believed to have come from inside the supermarket, not from police, provincial authorities reported.
"Our society needs to know that the government is working around the social situation facing Argentines, and if someone has a problem they have places to go, but it cannot be looting", Bullrich told the TN news network Tuesday evening.
"You don't get answers by going and destroying a supermarket", she said, in reference to Monday's violent events in Chaco.
"Kirchnerite groups are behind this", Bullrich added.
Argentina has sporadically experienced the phenomenon of looting since its financial crisis in 2001, particularly around the holiday season. Rumours of an imminent wave of looting as a consequence of the negative economic situation Argentina is facing have grown since earlier this year.
"In Argentina, things have to do with two concepts, which are related: order and learning to live together", Bullrich said.
CHACO DEATH
"A group of about 50 people tried to enter the supermarket. They argued with the owner, who then shut the supermarket’s doors. However, they broke windows and glass doors, and that’s when police intervened to try to clear the crowd. After a while, many more people, close to 80, returned," Provincial Public Security Carlos Barsesa told reporters.
A 13-year-old boy was shot in the chest and died shortly after, authorities reported.
Several officials from the Mauricio Macri government downplayed the reported cases of looting this week in Chubut and Mendoza provinces and the Tres de Febrero district in Buenos Aires province.
Interior Minister Rogelio Frigerio said they were "isolated acts of criminality".
"There is no expression of a massive amount of people wanting to go out to loot", Social Development Minister Carolina Stanley said.
-TIMES
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