RIGHTS-ARGENTINA: Inmates Reach Day 74 of Hunger Strike

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Nov 17 2000 (IPS) - Thirteen inmates in Argentina, sentenced 11 years ago to life in prison for attempting to take over a military barracks, reached day 74 of their hunger strike Friday, demanding a review of their trial, as called for by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR).

Now extremely weak, suffering headaches and nausea, the prisoners – found guilty of the 1989 attack on La Tablada barracks – have been hospitalised. Their families say they are just skin and bones and suffer irreversible physical deterioration.

The government, Congress and judicial authorities, however, continue to delay their response to the inmates’ demands.

The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo and other human rights groups organised a rock concert Thursday in solidarity with the hunger strikers that included the participation of numerous bands.

The concert was held outside the government palace in the plaza that gave its name to the mothers of those who disappeared during the country’s most recent dictatorship (1976-1983).

“The Argentine State is apparently more willing to decree our death than to comply with the law,” wrote one of the fasting prisoners a letter concert organisers read to the crowd.

In the same year of the attack on La Tablada, which left 39 people dead – both civilians and members of the security forces -, the participating members of the leftist All for the Fatherland Movement were sentenced to life in prison.

The trial was conducted according to the stipulations of the so- called Defence of Democracy Act, which does not allow defendants to seek legal appeals.

The prisoners denounced at the time that the military troops killed some of their group after they had surrendered, had tortured others, and that three of their group had disappeared. But they were unable to provide sufficient evidence at the trial to back their charges.

The Movement sustained 28 fatalities in the attack 11 years ago and the three disappeared are still unaccounted for.

A few years after they were sentenced, the inmates’ attorneys brought their case before the IACHR, a body of the Organisation of American States (OAS), which conducted a detailed review that confirmed there had been disappearances, torture and summary executions during the clash at the barracks.

The IACHR exhorted the Argentine government to review the sentences and to compensate the prisoners in some way.

Argentina’s successive governments have refused to respond to the IACHR demands, which have the support of writers, artists, scientists and religious leaders around the world. Given the authorities’ inaction, the inmates began a hunger strike last May that lasted 47 days.

Their protest was suspended after winning an official promise to handle the case in parliament in such a way that would allow them to commute the sentences or launch an appeal. But the government did not keep its word, leading the prisoners to relaunch their hunger strike 74 days ago.

President Fernando de la Rúa has sent a bill to Congress that would allow the prisoners’ demands to be handled by the courts, but the lawmakers, from both governing coalition and the opposition, have delayed discussion on the issue.

The hunger strikers’ attorneys said they are not demanding compensation or the commutation of their sentences, but want the opportunity to appeal the court’s ruling and carry out a new trial that includes the new evidence about what took place in January 1989.

The Movement’s activists affirmed they attacked the barracks when they learned that the regiment was planning a coup against then-president Raúl Alfonsín (1983-1989), who had already faced two military rebellions during his term in office.