ARGENTINA-HUMAN RIGHTS: Reparations Cannot Hush Demands for Truth

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Oct 31 1996 (IPS) - The acceptance of reparations from the Argentine State by families of “disappeared” victims of the 1976-83 military dictatorship does not mean they will stop demanding the truth, a representative of the families said Thursday.

In an interview with IPS, Jaime Steimberg, the father of a soldier who “disappeared” in 1977, acknowledged that he expected to receive 200,000 dollars as “a recognition of State guilt.”

Some 7,000 families are to begin receiving State-issued bonds a year from now. On Wednesday, Interior Minister Carlos Corach signed the proceedings for the first 50 cases of victims recognised as dead by their families.

Around 30,000 people were abducted and “disappeared” by security forces during the de facto military regime, according to figures provided by human rights organisations.

The law on reparations was originally based on a “presumption of death” and the need for the State to acknowledge its responsibility through the payment of economic compensation to the families.

But the procedures stipulated by the law force the families to open inheritance proceedings and thus “give up our disappeared for dead, without knowing the truth about their final whereabouts,” said Steimberg, the head of an organisation that groups families of people disappeared or detained for political reasons, which has been active for 20 years.

“We want that clause to be…replaced with a new one that respects the condition of ‘disappeared’,” he underlined.

Steimberg said that within the next few days a ruling is to come on a seven-year-old case in which the State has been demanded to provide information on the final whereabouts of “disappeared” victims, and in which it should receive a moral condemnation if there is proof that it has shirked investigating the truth.

The heads of the military juntas that ruled Argentina during the dictatorship were found guilty for the repression, but were later pardoned under current President Carlos Menem.

When Menem was meeting with the foreign press two weeks ago, a Swedish reporter exchanged heated words with the president after asking him about the military officers responsible for the “disappearance” of Dagmar Hagelin, a young Swedish man. Although the perpetrators have been identified, they are free, protected by a law that shelters those who “followed orders.”

“The family is going through the procedures to receive the compensation. If you want to look for the perpetrators, do it yourself,” said a miffed Menem, who added that the journalist was “more worried than the family,” who had accepted the reparations.

It is against the aim to give closure to the question of the “disappeared” without clearing up the truth of what happened to them that the families of the victims are fighting.

Many families living outside of Buenos Aires “never even heard” of the law on reparations, and thus failed to present their cases, said Steimberg. Another sector, headed by the president of the Mothers of La Plaza de Mayo, Hebe de Bonafini, rejects the compensation, because — in her words — it is like “negotiating with the blood of the disappeared.”

In the first 50 cases signed by Minister Corach on Wednesday, the victims had been given up for dead in terms of public procedures, but a majority of the families had not opened inheritance proceedings.

Among the first cases, signed by the minister in a grim ceremony, are those of short-story writer Hector Osterheld and his four children and writers Rodolfo Walsh and Haroldo Conti. “It is a recognition (of responsibility), but nothing can repair the loss of a loved one,” said Ernesto Conti, Haroldo’s son.