RIGHTS-ARGENTINA: Political Prisoners Renew Hunger Strike

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Sep 5 2000 (IPS) - The members of a leftist group in Argentina, convicted in 1989 for an attack on a military barracks, initiated a second hunger strike Tuesday. The first ended in July when the government and members of Parliament promised to review their trials, which were marred by irregularities.

Rodolfo Yansón, an attorney with the Argentinean League for the Rights of Man, told IPS that the prisoners’ determination is the result of “the non-compliance of the government and the governing coalition’s lawmakers with the promises they made.”

Yansón was referring to the July 13 agreement that put an end to the inmates’ 46-day hunger strike, an extreme measure that led to the hospitalisation of the 13, who suffered convulsions and fainting spells in addition to a general decline in health.

The Ministry of Justice and parliamentarians had promised at the time to take up the issue Aug 3, following the southern hemisphere winter recess. Their initiative called for reviewing the sentences handed down to the members of the leftist ‘Todos por la Patria’ movement, charged with the attack on the La Tablada regiment.

The July meeting with the authorities was held at the hospital of Villa Devoto prison. Some of the inmates in the group had lost as much as 20 kg.

In this second phase of the hunger strike, there are 12 prisoners participating at the men’s prison, and one woman, who is under house arrest because she is over age 70.

The strikers have been in prison for 11 years and have never had the opportunity to appeal the court’s ruling, a fact that won Argentina a denunciation from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of the Organisation of American States (OAS).

In the assault on the military barracks, 39 people died (28 attackers and 11 uniformed troops). There were also three disappearances and, according to the Inter-American Commission’s charges, the military tortured and summarily executed some of the attackers after they surrendered.

The barracks attack was followed by an eight-month trial governed by the Law in Defence of Democracy for All. The participants in the raid, who maintained their action was an attempt to prevent a planned coup d’etat, each received a life sentence.

The Law in Defence of Democracy prevented them from presenting an appeal against the ruling. Based on the OAS recommendations – made more than two years ago – the prisoners’ attorneys have tried, unsuccessfully, to pressure the government to change the law or adopt some other measure that would permit their release.

The law, as it was written, does not even allow for a review of the judicial inquiry, a fact that the OAS Commission says obstructs due process in the cases of the La Tablada assailants.

The defence lawyers affirm that, with the chance for an appeal, the inmates would be considered defendants, and as such, would have the right to count each year they have served in prison as two.

There is also the possibility that reforms would only allow a review of the sentences, and not the trial, opening the way for justice authorities – not the Executive or Legislature – to determine if the prisoners are convicts or defendants.

But legislators from both the governing coalition and the opposition refused to accept the terms of the reform, and several attempts to draft a law that could be approved unanimously have been frustrated.

For Yansón, the prisoners had really only “suspended” their hunger strike while they waited for a law to review their situation, and have waited too long to renew the fast. The attorney alluded to the series of failures by lawmakers to make progress on any bill related to their case.

First the delay was due to the labour strike by congressional employees in protest of wage cuts, then it was because of the political crisis in the Senate, whose members have been accused of accepting bribes in order to approve a law, Yansón commented.

But the reality, he said, is that “the lawmakers lack the political will to meet their commitments.”