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By Luciana Bertoia

Mónica Mego, a 36-year-old Peruvian trans woman, walked into a prison in Buenos Aires province and today lies paraplegic in a hospital bed in La Plata. She has been detained for almost a year without a conviction, accused of drug dealing. After months of pain and pleas for the Buenos Aires Penitentiary Service (SPB) to provide her with medical attention, she became paralyzed and incontinent. She filed a torture complaint against the SPB—which reports to the provincial Ministry of Justice under María Eugenia Vidal—but her complaint stalled. Simultaneously, prison officials took action against a public defender for visiting Mónica, allegedly accompanied by a journalist. This investigation is progressing rapidly and has already been handled by three prosecutors. Various organizations assert that this is a case of torture that the provincial government is trying to prevent from being investigated, prompting the intervention of the Buenos Aires Supreme Court.

Mónica's complaint was filed with the La Plata Attorney General's Office on July 5th of this year. It was submitted by Aníbal Hnatiuk, a lawyer with the Buenos Aires Province Court of Cassation. In a couple of pages, Mónica recounted how her life crumbled in less than a year, since she was deprived of her freedom. The kidney pains began in October of last year, when she was detained at the Olmos Detention Center. The Buenos Aires Penitentiary Service's (SPB) treatment consisted of administering ibuprofen. She noticed a growing lump and also how the prison guards failed to keep their promise to take her to an outside hospital for treatment.

READ MORE: Calls for dismissal of charges against a trans woman accused of drug trafficking due to her vulnerability

When she was transferred to Unit 32 in Florencio Varela, Mónica could barely walk. Her cellmates went on a hunger strike to demand that the SPB (Buenos Aires Penitentiary Service) provide her with treatment. The SPB's response was to put her in solitary confinement and leave her unattended for hours. On May 21, a fellow inmate who worked in the medical department tried to help her up, but Mónica collapsed. "My body completely died," she wrote in her complaint.

The next day, she underwent surgery at San Martín Hospital in La Plata. The lump she noticed was an epidural abscess caused by untreated tuberculosis . When she left the operating room, the doctors told her she would never walk again: she would have to live the rest of her life in diapers and with a catheter.

Days later, they took her back to Olmos. They left her in a bed without turning her over, and bedsores formed, leaving her vulnerable to multiple infections. An additional torment for someone living with other chronic conditions.

Prison, a device for dying

“What happened to Mónica is something we had been warning about since 2017, when four of our colleagues who were deprived of their freedom ,” says Claudia Vásquez Haro, president of Otrans.

Pamela Macedo Panduro died on January 1st while detained in Penal Unit No. 32 of Florencio Varela, Province of Buenos Aires.

The organization is about to release a federal investigation, conducted with support from the International Trans Fund, detailing the suffering of transgender people in prison. “The report will show how detention conditions, mistreatment, torture, and death worsened during these four years of Macri's presidency,” she says. Ninety-five percent of those interviewed reported having suffered mistreatment, verbal or physical violence from security forces at least once. In prisons, there is a triple discrimination – Vásquez Haro explains –: being transgender, being a migrant, and being poor.

They demand justice for the death of a trans woman detained in Florencio Varela

According to the latest report from the CPM, as of December of last year, there were 94 transgender women detained in Buenos Aires prisons. Most of them are housed in Unit 32 in Florencio Varela. The rest are distributed between Unit 44 in Batán and Unit 2 in Sierra Chica.

READ MORE: Historic ruling: house arrest for a trans man to "prevent cruel treatment"

The trans population in prisons grew by 36 percent between 2017 and 2018 – fueled by the hardline rhetoric. Until last year, 86 percent of detained trans people were in custody awaiting trial. That is, without a sentence or sentence review. As happened with Mónica.

Justice demands justice

On Friday, the president of the Buenos Aires Supreme Court, Eduardo de Lázzari, signed a resolution directly targeting Attorney General Julio Conte Grand. On one hand, he demanded information on the status of the complaint filed by Mónica from the hospital . On the other, he urged all authorities involved in the case not to obstruct the work of human rights defenders.

Mario Coriolano, a public defender, visited her while she was in a bed at Olmos prison. He did so at the request of the National Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CNPT), which considered that the neglect, mockery, and harassment Mónica suffered could be classified as a case of torture. Coriolano ended up being reported by the head of the Buenos Aires Penitentiary Service (SPB), Xavier Areses, for allegedly allowing a journalist to enter the prison—a feat that would be practically impossible, since the SPB itself controls who enters and leaves the prisons.

“ Monica’s case is a landmark because it exposes the most brutal and stereotypical aspects of the justice system: those perpetrated by a sector of prosecutors, the judiciary, and the SPB ,” Coriolano tells Presentes . “From a gender perspective, there is an intersection of vulnerabilities. She is a trans woman, Peruvian, and that led to her being falsely implicated in a drug case.”

De Lázzari's decision came after the Provincial Commission for Memory (CPM), the CNPT, and the Episcopal Vicar of Solidarity of the Diocese of Quilmes received submissions before the highest provincial court.

The CPM filed two habeas corpus petitions regarding Mónica's situation and requested precautionary measures from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), which extended the request to the entire trans community deprived of their liberty in the province of Buenos Aires. It is likely that these petitions will be repeated in the coming weeks, and that new organizations will join in support of the claim.

[READ ALSO: Historic ruling: there will be an exclusive pavilion for detained trans and transvestite people]

Monica is currently under house arrest at the San Juan de Dios Hospital in La Plata, but the organizations that follow her case have been demanding that she be transferred to the El Dique Hospital in Ensenada, because it is the ideal medical center to treat chronic illnesses.

“It is crucial that these situations do not happen again. The State’s response for Mónica must be restorative,” demands Ignacio Di Giano, director of the Complaints Reception Program at the CPM. “This girl walked in and, at best, will leave in a wheelchair .