ARGENTINIAN Senator Miguel Angel Pichetto is  calling for police to use violent measures and “really beat” protesters at the G20 World Summit which opens in Buenos Aires on Friday.

The Justicialist Party senator warned that law enforcement officials had failed to stop football supporters from the rioting which led to the Copa Libertadores final being cancelled.

He blamed a “cultural leftist vision” for “building a set of values,” where police are not allowed to beat up people and defend themselves with violence and where their “operatives are questioned.”

Mr Pichetto, who is a member of the Council of Magistrates, claimed that violence was necessary to keep order. He pointed to the response by French officials to the growing protests over fuel prices.

“The French police, in the face of an event like this, do you know how they beat? They really beat,” he said.

His comments coincided with trade unions protesting on Monday over the murder of two members, allegedly by Argentinian state forces. 

Rodolfo Orellana was shot dead by police in Buenos Aires last Thursday, according to the General Confederation of the Workers of the Popular Economy (CTEP), while he and other workers were attempting to occupy abandoned land and use it to provide much-needed housing for working-class people.

Although police denied he was killed by a bullet, the attorney general confirmed the preliminary autopsy found a “firearm projectile” had entered Mr Orellana’s face. Coordinations Against Police and Institutional Repression (CORREPI) spokeswoman Maria del Carmen Verdu branded the killing a “police execution.”

CTEP member Marcos Soria was shot in the back and killed by police, according to media reports in Cordova province. The union is warning that the government is responding to legitimate protest with bullets.

In a statement, CTEP said: “Violence and police unrest are one more element of a government policy that every day generates exclusion, poverty, and hunger. Violence was exerted by the security forces on those who do not have access to land, homes and work.”

President Mauricio Macri has introduced neoliberal reform programme and austerity measures which have seen thousands of job losses and government ministries axed to pay for a $56.3 billion IMF loan.

“Once again the government responds with bullets to the legitimate struggle of the fellow workers who day by day build an organisation to fight this model of adjustment and hunger," the CTEP statement concluded