RIGHTS-LATAM: Activists Seek Dialogue with Military

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Sep 18 2000 (IPS) - Prominent Paraguayan human rights lawyer Martín Almada suggested a conference for human rights defenders and members of the armed forces in Latin America to discuss disturbing recent developments.

The Paraguayan National Human Rights Commission sent a formal request to César Gaviria, the secretary-general of the Organisation of American States (OAS), urging him to propell the idea of a gathering of military officers and activists.

At a seminar on “Authoritarianism, Repression and Memory” held last week in this Brazilian city, Almada — who shot to fame in 1992 with his discovery of the “Archives of Terror” on the outskirts of Asuncion, Paraguay — mentioned a recent letter to which he had access.

In the letter, a Paraguayan officer said he was sending the Ecuadorean army a list of names of “subversives”, and suggested that a regionwide Latin American list be drawn up.

The several tons of records contained in the “Archives of Terror” documented “Operation Condor” — the coordinated repression of real or suspected opponents carried out by the de facto military regimes ruling much of South America in the 1970s and 1980s.

According to Almada, the recent letter, which identifies members of the “landless” and “homeless” squatters’ movements, human rights and women’s rights activists, and investigative journalists as “subversives”, points to a continuation of that crackdown on dissent in a sort of “Condor 2”.

The activist suggested a meeting with the armed forces to insist that human rights groups be allowed to see the list of names of supposed “subversives”, and to urge members of the military to take part in social programmes aimed, for example, at assisting homeless children and protecting the environment.

It is important for members of the armed forces in Latin America to take courses on human rights, such as those currently imparted to many police forces in the region, Almada added.

He also urged that former dictators like generals Alfredo Stroessner — who ruled Paraguay with an iron fist from 1954 to 1989 — Jorge Videla in Argentina, Gregorio Alvarez in Uruguay and Hugo Banzer, currently president of Bolivia as the result of free elections, be brought to justice.

The evidence found in the “Archives of Terror” should serve as the basis for trying Stroessner and other military officers accused of torture, disappearances and political assassinations, the human rights lawyer argued.

Stroessner is currently living in Brazil, where he was granted political asylum — a “legal absurdity” that should be corrected because the former dictator has been fugitive from justice since 1991 and is facing murder charges in Paraguay, said Almada, who delivered new documents to the president of the human rights commission of the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies, Marcos Rolim.

But the former Paraguayan dictator should be tried in Brazil, as the conditions do not exist in Paraguay, said the activist, who described Luiz Gonzalez Macchi as an “illegitimate president,” while pointing out that other senior officials played an active role in the Stroessner regime.

González Macchi was chairman of the Senate at the time he was named president in March 1998, after vice-president Luis María Argaña was assassinated and then-president Raúl Cubas resigned.

President González Macchi’s father was minister of justice to Stroessner for 30 years, observed Almada, who underlined that power in Paraguay has remained in the hands of politicians with links to the dictatorship.

The human rights lawyer said he feared a new coup d’etat in his country, due to the unstable situation created by González Macchi’s lack of legitimacy, and the fact that Vice-President Julio Cesar Franco, who won the August elections held specifically to fill that post, is a member of the opposition.

“González Macchi should resign, for the health of democracy in Paraguay,” Almada insisted, adding that Paraguay’s partners in the Southern Cone Common Market (Mercosur) — Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay — should push for that for the sake of the trade bloc’s stability and growth,.

He also called on the OAS and the United Nations to investigate the murders of 34 reporters in the framework of Operation Condor, in order to provide guarantees for journalists working today to clarify human rights violations.

Since early this year, Almada himself has been living in the United States, as a visiting professor at a university in the state of Arkansas, for fear of becoming the target of an attempt on his life in Paraguay, where he is facing lawsuits triggered by his loud denunciations of human rights abuses.

The “Archives of Terror” also indicate that the Interpol (International Police) was an accomplice of the Latin American military dictatorships, he told the Rio de Janeiro seminar.

He also pointed to evidence of a “Pre-Condor” phase in the late 1950s and the 1960s, in which the Brazilian armed forces played a key role, providing training in repression to their counterparts from other South American countries.

The Brazilian army’s training of many officers who later played leading roles in cracking down on opposition in their countries was provided in the context of the “national security doctrine” then in vogue, Almada added.

He cited a document signed by Chilean Colonel Manuel Contreras Sepúlveda, the head of the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet’s (1973-90) notorious National Intelligence Office (DINA) in the 1970s.

In the letter, Contreras asks Pinochet for “budget allocations for the DINA officers taking anti-guerrilla courses at the training centre in the city of Manaos, Brazil.”