HUMAN RIGHTS-ARGENTINA: Time for Justice

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Oct 1 2003 (IPS) - Nearly 20 years after Argentina’s 1976-1983 dictatorship came to an end, public opinion and the government finally seem to be focusing on the same demand: that human rights violators be brought to justice.

The impunity that has continued to surround the perpetrators of the state terrorism waged during the ”dirty war”, when between 10,000 and 30,000 real or perceived opponents of the military regime were ”disappeared”, also spawned impunity in other spheres, which has protected those implicated in high-level corruption scandals, for example, said analysts consulted by IPS.

”There has been a change in the past few years,” leading to greater adherence to ”post-materialistic values oriented towards greater justice and equality, respect for human rights, and improved quality of our democratic institutions in general,” sociologist and pollster Graciela Romer told IPS.

In surveys carried out by her polling firm, Romer y Asociados, around 70 percent of respondents acknowledged that human rights violations were committed by the dictatorship, although opinions remain divided over what should be done to achieve closure for that tragic period of history.

”Forty percent believe that the courts should be allowed to act, and 23 percent say it would be enough for the armed forces to apologise for the crimes that were committed,” said Romer.

The rest said the country should ”look forward” – a euphemism for their rejection of the reopening of trials of human rights violators in the military.

Romer said ”the big change is seen in the new generations,” because it is young people between the ages of 18 and 25 who are most inclined to demand that those responsible for the dictatorship’s crimes be punished.

Parallel to the shift in public opinion, human rights organisations, mainly made up of survivors of the repression or relatives of the detained-disappeared, have continued to clamour for justice.

That demand continued to be voiced even after then-president Carlos Menem (1989-1999) pardoned the former members of the ruling junta, the only military personnel who had been convicted and sentenced, in 1990.

In today’s new climate, in which the long-standing demands for justice have gained support in new quarters, Romer believes President Néstor Kirchner, who has been behind the drive to reopen the trials of the military perpetrators of abuses, ”is not taking advantage of a social current opposed to impunity, but acting in step with the shift in values that has occurred in Argentine society.”

The Mothers and Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo – organisations of victims’ families – expressed surprise at Kirchner’s aim to allow the courts to put an end to the impunity enjoyed by military personnel who live normal lives in this Southern Cone country of 37 million despite having committed appalling crimes against humanity.

The Centre of Legal and Social Studies, which groups lawyers and sociologists, believes ”there is a profound sentiment in Argentine society in favour of ending the impunity surrounding the state terrorism of the past.”

The human rights group also praised the efforts of the Kirchner administration to ”rebuild the institutional foundations of the democratic system.”

Since taking office on May 25, Kirchner has repeatedly stated that his government will be ”implacable” in the task of bringing human rights violators to justice. ”Defence of human rights occupies a central position on Argentina’s agenda today,” said the president.

In just four months, Kirchner has carried out a purge of the top echelons of the armed forces and police; moved to replace justices sitting on the Supreme Court, which is widely seen as corrupt; overturned a decree impeding the extradition of members of the military who judges abroad want to try for human rights crimes; and pushed for the annulment of the amnesty laws that put an end to prosecutions of military personnel in the mid-1980s.

In August, Congress annulled the amnesty laws – known as the Due Obedience and Full Stop laws – which had been enacted by the legislature amidst a climate of fear of a new coup d’etat.

The president has also ordered the declassification of official documents that shed light on the unresolved cases of the 1992 bomb attack against the Israeli Embassy, which left 29 dead, the 1994 blast in AMIA, a Jewish community centre, that left a death toll of 86, and a 1996 explosion in a munitions warehouse in Río Tercero, in the central province of Córdoba.

Since the annulment of the amnesty laws, the courts have reopened cases against soldiers that had been closed in 1987, incorporated new elements that had emerged in trials aimed at finding out the truth about the fate of the ”disappeared” and the whereabouts of their remains, and begun to summon military personnel implicated in the ”dirty war” to testify in court.

”The work of CONADEP (the National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons) was an act of bravery, but at that time, the military still had a lot of power, and there was great fear,” Rev. Juan Gattinoni, who helped draft the commission’s 1984 report based on testimony from survivors of the repression, told IPS.

The report formed the basis for bringing the former members of the ruling junta to trial.

But the amnesty laws were passed amidst the widespread fear of another coup, and ”then the worst thing happened: the pardon of the military commanders who were behind bars, which unleashed a phase of much broader impunity,” said Gattinoni, regional secretary of the Latin American Council of Churches.

During the Menem administration, ”impunity formed part of a broader policy aimed at covering up crimes of corruption, and more serious ones, like the bomb blasts in the Israeli Embassy and AMIA.”

According to Gattinoni, the stages of fear and impunity have finally been left behind due to a combination of factors, including the unceasing work of human rights groups. But, he said, the watershed came on Dec. 19-20, 2001, when massive street protests and rioting forced then-president Fernando de la Rúa to step down.

”During that time, there was an enormous explosion of people saying ‘Enough!’ to the politicians, ‘Enough!’ to the Supreme Court, ‘No more impunity!’, and the contradiction became too big to continue covering it up,” said Gattinoni.

The Kirchner government is following a line of ”opening up issues to public debate, and it looks like we’re entering a phase aimed at overcoming the paternalism of believing that we have to cover up questions of the past in order to avoid running risks,” he said.

Historian and documentary-maker Felipe Pigna said in a conversation with IPS that in the past 20 years of democracy, ”there have been waves of justice accompanied by a certain degree of interest in the human rights question on the part of society, and waves of impunity, accompanied by greater social indifference.”

Former president Raúl Alfonsín (1983-1989) and his successors Menem and de la Rúa ”did everything possible to bury the human rights violations in a sort of collective oblivion, and were partially successful in doing so,” he said.

But now ”the fact that a significant part of the country’s new leadership belonged to the generation of the 1970s has strengthened the view that justice is needed, and that the memory of what happened must be kept alive.

”That has taken shape in the drive to reopen trials and in the annulment of the impunity (amnesty) laws,” said Pigna.

Kirchner, who was a law student and activist at the time of the March 1976 coup, has pointed out that many of his friends and classmates fell victim to the dictatorship.

”We are the children of the Mothers and Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo,” the president told the United Nations General Assembly on Sep. 25.