By Marcela Valente
BUENOS AIRES, Jan 8 1998 (IPS)

Human rights organisations in Argentina came out Thursday against President Carlos Menem’s suggestion to erect a “monument to national unity” on the site of a clandestine prison where more than 4,000 people were tortured and killed during the 1976-83 dictatorship.

Menem proposed demolishing the old Navy School of Mechanics (ESMA) in Buenos Aires, which served as the main illegal prison during the de facto regime, and raising a flagstaff on the site in order “to leave behind past antinomies.”

The military school, currently closed, will be reopened in Puerto Belgrano in the province of Buenos Aires.

The clandestine prison was headed by former Admiral Emilio Massera, convicted for his role in the repression but later pardoned.

After being tortured, alleged subversives and opponents of the regime were removed from ESMA and thrown live into the sea.

According to some 40 survivors who testified in the trial in which the former chiefs of the armed forces were convicted, the three-story officers’ club, garret and basement served as a prison, torture chamber and infirmary.

A number of children who were born there and illegally adopted are still being sought by their biological families, and custody battles have been waged.

“The aim is national conciliation, just forgetting that the navy tortured and killed more than 4,000 Argentinians there, without the state adequately trying and and convicting the perpetrators,” Emilio Mignone, the president of the Centre of Legal and Social Studies, whose daughter figures among the ranks of those who ‘disappeared’ during the dictatorship, told IPS.

“We are not expressing our opinions on the transfer of ESMA because it is not our concern,” he added. “But we are opposed to a monument to national unity being built, because we believe that the site must remain as a symbol of state terrorism and in memory of the holocaust that took place there.”

Menem announced his idea Wednesday, just 24 hours after a group of legislators submitted a draft law to annul the legislation that amnestied more than 1,000 members of the armed forces who committed human rights abuses under the de facto regime.

Only the historic War School would be left standing on the site, alongside a flat public area sporting a flagstaff and flag.

The Mothers and Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo – groups of women seeking the fate or whereabouts of their disappeared children and grandchildren – called the idea a “provocation.”

The Permanent Human Rights Assembly, the League for the Rights of Man, the association of relations of victims of the repression and the Peace and Justice Service headed by Nobel Peace Prize winner Adolfo Perez Esquivel responded to the proposal with statements like “it is tragic”, “horrific”, “a low blow”, “there can be no reconciliation without truth and justice” and “it is just one more show of insensitivity.”

Menem said a monument that “fully expresses Argentinians’ wish for reconciliation” should be erected on that site – the same argument used to justify the 1990 pardons of the former military chiefs who had been convicted for committing human rights violations during the dictatorship.

The human rights activists and listeners who phoned in to radio stations Thursday were unanimously against transforming the notorious site into a public area to be used in parades and official ceremonies with visiting heads of state.

Menem said he saw a similar place on his last visit to Mexico.

Defence Minister Jorge Dominguez and Justice Minister Raul Granillo were the lone official voices heard defending the project Thursday.

Secretary of Human Rights Ines Perez said she was unfamiliar with the details of the project, but added that she would back the president’s final decision, which would “surely be the right one.”

Dominguez justified the decision saying it was necessary to turn a negative symbol into a place of free public access.

Granillo accused those who rejected the project of standing in the way of national unity. He compared the proposal with the Memorial Park created on the site of the federal government building in Oklahoma City, USA, which was bombed.

But the alleged perpetrators of that terrorist act were tried and convicted, analysts pointed out. On the other hand, the wounds left in Argentina by the repression, which claimed around 30,000 lives, are still gaping because the former military chiefs were pardoned, and more than 1,000 other members of the security forces were exonerated 10 years ago by the laws of “due obedience” and “final stop”.

Ragmar Hagelin, the father of Dagmar Hagelin, a teenage Swedish girl who ‘disappeared’ in Argentina during the dictatorship, said Thursday in Sweden that raising a flagpole on that site would be an offence to the relations of the victims, who have seen all possible routes towards finding out the truth and properly engaging in their mourning processes closed.

Dagmar Hagelin was shot and killed by former captain Alfredo Astiz, sentenced to life in prison in France for the murders of two French nuns in Argentina.

Astiz lives at liberty in Argentina, although he cannot leave the country without being arrested by Interpol and turned over to France. He is frequently verbally or physically abused in the streets or when visiting restaurants or discotheques.

Massera was forced to leave a restaurant in December when a group of customers pointed out his presence to the owner and the entire restaurant.

The project submitted to Congress by a group of centre-left lawmakers Tuesday would repeal the two amnesty laws that let the members of the armed forces who allegedly kidnapped, tortured and ‘disappeared’ people off the hook.

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