ARGENTINA: Families of Bomb Victims Urge US to Avoid Vengeance

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Sep 17 2001 (IPS) - The families of the victims of the 1992 and 1994 bombings of the Israeli Embassy and a leading Jewish social organisation in Argentina expressed their solidarity Monday with the relatives of those killed in last week’s attacks in the United States, and urged that country not to take the route of vengeance.

The condemnation of last Tuesday’s attacks and the call for restraint were issued by Memoria Activa (Active Memory), an organisation created by the families of victims of the 1992 and 1994 bomb attacks in Argentina, while its members marched to demand justice – as they have done every Monday for the past seven years – in the square in front of the Buenos Aires courthouse.

Memoria Activa, whose positions often differ from those taken by the rest of Argentina’s Jewish organisations, holds its weekly gatherings with the support of lawmakers, human rights activists, artists, writers and personalities from a number of areas.

One of those attending Monday’s march was the elderly Nair Amoedo, a member of the human rights group Madres (Mothers) de Plaza de Mayo, which is demanding the truth about the fate of their sons and daughters, who were “disappeared” by Argentina’s 1976-83 military dictatorship.

Wearing a white headscarf, the symbol of the call for justice for the tens of thousands who disappeared at the hands of the de facto military regime, Amoedo also carried a photo around her neck of her daughter and son-in-law on their wedding day, 28 years ago.

Amoedo’s daughter was 18 years old when she and her husband were abducted by the air force in 1976. They had two children, aged 45 days and two years.

“I raised them, they call me mama,” Amoedo told IPS, shortly before the speaker at Monday’s march cited the Madres de Plaza de Mayo as “a moving example of justice, not vengeance.”

The sound of the shofar, the horn with which the Jewish people were traditionally called to assembly and prayer, precedes the speeches delivered by members and supporters of Memoria Activa, which on Monday focused on “the latest blow against humanity.”

The demonstrators were referring to the Sep 11 suicide attacks, in which three hijacked commercial airliners were crashed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York and the Defence Department (Pentagon) in Washington, D.C. A fourth airplane failed to reach its target and crashed into a field in the state of Pennsylvania.

During several days of unceasing efforts by rescue workers in New York, the relatives of thousands of victims hung photos of the missing around their necks, urging that the search not be called off until the bodies of their loved ones showed up.

They are demanding to know what happened, with the same impotence and anguish felt by the families of the victims of the Argentine dictatorship, and the relatives of the 29 victims of the 1992 bombing of the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires and the 86 victims of the 1994 attack on the Mutual Israeli Argentine Association (AMIA).

“A different scenario but the same horror: another suicide vehicle crashing into a civilian target; a huge number of dead; the Dantesque scene of buildings falling down, missing bodies, the smell of death and horrified screams. Another country, the same attack,” summed up Enrique Churba, who lost a loved one in the AMIA bombing.

Diana Malamud, a member of Memoria Activa, told IPS she was horrified by last week’s terror attacks in the United States, and said she remembered the thirst for revenge she felt seven years ago when her husband was killed in the AMIA attack.

A key development in the seven-year investigation into the incident will take place on Sep 24, when several members of Argentina’s security forces implicated in the bombing will stand oral trial.

“I believe the route to take is not vengeance, but justice. Vengeance only brings more death, while justice checks impunity, which forms the foundation allowing such crimes to continue to be committed,” said Malamud, whose husband was an architect helping to remodel parts of the AMIA building when it was bombed by a vehicle loaded with explosives.

“At first I wanted vengeance, but after the initial impact I began to think about my values, about my husband’s values, and about our two children, and I realised that for society, it is better to bring the perpetrators to justice than to promote acts of vengeance that trigger more violence,” she added.

Another protester, Adriana Resel, remembered her sister, also a victim of the AMIA bombing. “She was a social worker who worked a weekly shift in which she attended retirees and people who visited the centre to ask for financial assistance. She wasn’t supposed to be on duty the day of the attack, but she was standing in for a coworker,” she told IPS.

Despite the horror of that attack, Resel is another who does not believe in revenge. “We have never sought vengeance, we have always demanded justice, and this appalling attack in the United States should serve to strengthen our demand and give a collective boost to all of the investigations.”

In Resel’s view, the route to take is not the one chosen by US authorities, or by the Argentine government, which has offered support for eventual anti-terrorist actions decided on by Washington. “We don’t want civilians to die. We just want those who committed the crimes, and nobody else,” she stressed.

For his part, Carlos Jusevich, whose daughter was killed in the attack on the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires, said last Tuesday’s events demonstrated that “no one is safe.”

He lamented that “a horrible massacre” had to occur “so people would become aware of what it is to live in a society brought to bay by terrorism.”

Nine years on, the investigations headed by the Supreme Court have not yet come up with any clear answers.

The Centre for Legal and Social Studies, a human rights group founded by the father of a woman who was disappeared by the dictatorship, also expressed its condemnation of the attacks in New York and Washington, D.C., while stressing its “absolute rejection” of any act of violence.

“The fight against terrorism should consist of investigating the facts and identifying, trying and punishing the perpetrators. The actions undertaken must not consist of generalised reprisals, nor can they fail to respect international law,” said the human rights centre.

Meanwhile, people continued to arrive at Monday’s gathering, including well-known figures as well as the relatives of victims, who hugged each other, moved by the memories revived by the attacks in the United States.

At the end of the demonstration, the speaker repeated the same phrase reiterated every Monday: “For those killed in the massacres at the embassy and AMIA we are calling for….”, and his listeners shouted as one “Justice!”