By Marcela Valente
BUENOS AIRES, May 29 2001 (IPS)

The president of Argentina’s Madres (Mothers) de la Plaza de Mayo, Hebe de Bonafini, said she must have been the real target of two unknown thugs who broke into her home and tortured her daughter, but declared that she was not about to give up her fight for human rights and justice.

Bonafini held the central government and authorities of the province of Buenos Aires responsible for the attack on her daughter, Alejandra Bonafini, 35, her only surviving offspring.

After Bonafini’s two sons were abducted in 1976, she created Madres to search for the victims of forcible disappearance – estimated by human rights groups at around 30,000 – during the last military dictatorship (1976-83).

“My enemies are not only members of the military. My enemy is also the government of [Fernando] De la Rúa, that of [Buenos Aires Governor Carlos] Ruckauf, the judges that do not convict, the bureaucracy of the trade unions,” the human rights activist told a news conference Monday.

Despite the attack on her daughter, Bonafini said her group would not “abandon the struggle.”

“They have dealt us many blows, they took our sons and daughters, they kidnapped three of our members, they entered our homes whenever they felt like it, they have robbed us…and here we are,” she said.

Alejandra, who lives with her mother, was attacked Friday evening when she opened the door to two men posing as phone company technicians who had come to install a new phone requested by her mother.

The two men shoved their way into the house and jammed a hood over Alejandra’s head. Then they beat her with a stick, burnt her arms with cigarettes, placed a plastic bag over her head until she fainted, and tried to rape her.

Hebe de Bonafini said Monday that she was probably the target of the aggressors, who were likely acting under orders to kidnap her. The activist, who had received telephone messages threatening her to stop accusing police and military personnel of human rights violations, was in Brazil at the time the assault took place.

The two men also rummaged through the house, especially Hebe’s bedroom, but did not take anything. Finally, after insulting Alejandra – but without issuing threats or warnings – one of them received a call on his cell-phone or walkie-talkie and responded that he and his partner would be leaving shortly.

“They did everything that is done in a torture camp: they turned the music up loud, tortured her, smothered her, burnt her with cigarettes, then turned the bedroom upside down…but we are not going to be silenced,” Bonafini stated unequivocally.

The attack on Alejandra was repudiated by Interior Minister Ramón Mestre, Under-Secretary of Human Rights Diana Conti, and a range of rights groups that expressed their indignation over the impunity with which the perpetrators acted.

According to witnesses, two men were seen in a van outside the Bonafini home, said the Madres’ lawyer Sergio Schocklender. That testimony is being investigated by the Attorney-General’s Office, which is seeking to determine whether more than two individuals took part in the incident.

In recent years, Bonafini has taken an outspokenly critical stance towards the national and provincial governments, and has had a falling-out with other local human rights groups.

The tension began to grow when those organisations, most of which emerged during the military dictatorship, agreed to the possibility that families of the regime’s victims could accept monetary reparations from the government. Bonafini rejected that possibility outright, and took increasingly radical stances.

Her main activity lately has been fighting human rights abuses suffered by minors in police stations and institutions that deal with juvenile delinquents.

“Those who attacked my daughter are the same ones who torture and kill youngsters from behind,” she claimed.

“Many people here are responsible, and I’m not going to accept any hypocritical apology from any member of the government,” said Bonafini, who added that she would not accept any bodyguards either. “If they offer me that option, I will turn it down,” she said.

Alejandra said the people who attacked her were “the same ones who took my brothers and who are still walking around free.”

Another human rights group, the Centre for Legal and Social Studies, filed criminal proceedings in a federal court in the province of Chaco Monday for the murders of 22 people during the de facto regime, in an incident in which army chief General Ricardo Brinzoni himself has been implicated.

Representatives of the organisation, backed by lawmakers, trade unionists and families of the victims, asked a judge to declare the amnesty laws passed in the late 1980s void – as already occurred in a previous case – in order to clear the way for the investigation of the “Margarita Belén massacre” and for the conviction of those who were responsible.

Brinzoni, who served as “secretary of military intervention” in the province during the dictatorship, admitted to a provincial newspaper earlier this month that the 22 political prisoners were not killed when attempting to escape, as reported at the time, but were merely shot on the roadside.

The army chief claimed that he was unaware of the incident until several years after it took place.

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