( dpa )- Six members of the human rights organization Mothers of Plaza de Mayo occupied the Buenos Aires Cathedral and went on a hunger strike Tuesday, to protest the municipal government's failure to deliver funds that had been granted to them by the national government.
Organization president Hebe de Bonafini , 79, who was on hunger strike, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa that the municipal Housing Institute should hand them the nearly 1 million dollars in national funds.
The national government periodically grants the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo Foundation funds to pay the salaries of some 1,300 people who work for the benefit of disadvantaged members of the community in poor areas south of the metropolis.
She said construction companies and the head of the Housing Institute, Roberto Apelbaum , were holding the funds.
"We are building homes for half the price they ask, and making it plain how they steal," said de Bonafini , an outspoken, decades-long left-wing activist and human rights campaigner.
She denounced pressures to force the women out of the cathedral.
"They closed off the cathedral toilets and we had to improvise one, behind the altar," she said.
De Bonafini said the women will not leave without the money.
The head of the municipal Banco Ciudad, Carlos Machi , admitted that the funds are in the bank he leads, but noted he cannot release them without Apelbaum's signature.