RIGHTS-ARGENTINA: Pointing the Finger at Human Rights Violators

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Feb 26 1998 (IPS) - Human rights groups in Argentina have begun to draw attention to the homes of those responsible for serious abuses during the 1976-83 military dictatorship, to warn their neighbours that they are living alongside torturers.

The relatives of “disappeared” victims of the de facto regime have been periodically gathering outside the homes of the officers and former members of the armed forces, who are free thanks to amnesty laws and a presidential pardon.

The activists have pasted up posters with the faces of the repressors and background information on them, and have painted graffiti reading “murderer” and “torturer.”

The identification of the individuals, which is based on legal records and data gathered by the groups, has surprised their neighbours and brought responses of indignation.

The third demonstration, staged outside the home of retired officer Jorge Radice Wednesday, unleashed the strongest reaction.

Radice, who has been accused of abducting and torturing people, was the personal secretary of Emilio Massera – one of the members of the military junta which staged the 1976 coup, who was sentenced but later pardoned.

Radice also administered a real estate agency created to reap profits from property stolen from “disappeared” victims of the dictatorship.

“It think it’s perfect that they point them out. I didn’t know who he was, but now I do, and I want him to leave the neighbourhood, or even better the country,” said a student who lives near Radice.

“I congratulate the mothers who are doing this. I don’t want to walk among” torturers and murderers, a 70-year-old woman said between tears.

Radice was to appear in federal court Thursday to provide information on the whereabouts of the remains of Rodolfo Walsh, a journalist and writer who was abducted and killed in 1976.

Although the members of the military implicated in human rights violations have been amnestied, Walsh’s family brought the case in order to locate his remains and his last manuscripts.

Former navy captain Alfredo Astiz testified in connection with the same case before being stripped of his rank last month after justifying the “dirty war”. Astiz actively participated in abductions and murders, and was sentenced – in absentia – for homicide by a French court, which means he cannot leave the country without being seized by Interpol.

Radice is a less well-known figure. Most of his neighbours were surprised and angry that a human rights violator lived quietly among them with his wife and children.

When he left home Thursday, the former officer said he lamented for the sake of his neighbours that the building had been plastered with posters of his face. While he did not deny having worked in one of the so-called “Navy Task Groups”, he did deny involvement in torture, abductions and robbery.

He also denied having administered the real estate agency that sold property of the victims once it had been transferred to the names of the repressors, in spite of existing proof of his participation in such activity. The navy is estimated to have amassed 70 million dollars in stolen cash and goods during the dictatorship.

As a sign of his innocence, Radice said he never tried to hide, but always lived under his own name in that same building. But Tati Almeida, a mother of “disappeared” victims who has been actively taking part in the new tactic to point out human rights abusers, said that was evidence of impunity, rather than innocence.

“That’s why we are carrying out this campaign, because if the courts and the laws have allowed impunity, at least society condemns them from a moral standpoint,” she stressed.

A member of the “Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo” rights group, Almeida said that several neighbours had broken out in tears and hugged the activists, thanking them for their work in verifying the truth.

Others said they had been victims – to a varying extent – of the regime, and expressed their fear at having to live and walk among people who committed such appalling crimes.

Radice, like Astiz and around 1,000 other members of the armed forces accused of human rights violations, was let off the hook by the laws of “due obedience” and “final stop”, which closed their cases. The former military chiefs spent a few years in jail before being released by a presidential pardon.

The question of human rights violations and impunity has picked up new momentum this year, in spite of the more than 20 years that have passed since between 10,000 – according to official figures – and 30,000 people – estimates by human rights groups – were “disappeared” by the de facto regime.

Almeida warned that “many more” human rights abusers would be pointed out to their neighbours over the next few weeks.