RIGHTS-ARGENTINA: Anniversary Strengthens Fight against Impunity

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Jul 18 2000 (IPS) - Families and friends of the 86 victims of the 1994 bomb attack against a Jewish association in the Argentinean capital have formed yet another link in the long chain of groups arising to demand justice, even thoug it increasingly appears to be unattainable.

Tuesday, the anniversary of the explosion at the Israeli Argentinean Mutual Association (AMIA), those who lost loved ones in the attack joined forces with the human rights groups that formed during the country’s last dictatorship (1976-1983).

For the first time an Argentinean president, Fernando de la Rúa, attended the anniversary memorial. De la Rúa, who took office last December, promised he would do everything possible to investigate the attack, but he has been unable to erase the scepticism created by the lack of support from his predecessor, Carlos Menem, for the victims’ families.

“The Menem government (1989-1999) didn’t do a thing, it mocked our dead,” said Mario Averbuch, father of one of the victims, during Tuesday’s ceremonies at the new AMIA building. The president of the association, Hugo Ostrower, called on De la Rúa to clear up the case of the massacre.

“We demand that the State make a commitment to the truth, to persecute the assassins and those who have covered up this massacre,” declared Ostrower, “We demand an end to tolerance for the intolerant, we demand guarantees that the truth will be known.”

Journalist Magdalena Ruiz Guiñazú warned during the ceremony that “those who lack justice cannot escape living in impunity.” She asked that the AMIA incident “never again” be allowed to occur, quoting the slogan human rights activists shouted against the military dictatorship in the 1980s.

Rabbi Sergio Berman also turned to a slogan used by those who fought the military regime. He called for “justice and punishment” for those responsible for the AMIA bombing and for those who “did not investigate the incident as they should have” – the same “justice and punishment” the families of those who disappeared during the dictatorship continue to demand.

Investigations into the AMIA explosion, slated for a hearing in 2001, have so far identified six former Buenos Aires provincial police officers among the primary participants. They are thought to have played a role in obtaining the vehicle used in the car bomb that exploded outside the building.

But the irregularities and complicity in the investigations, cases of concealment and destruction of evidence and the intentional abandonment of clues have led many of the victims’ families to give up hope. Tuesday there were calls for the judge in charge of the case to be removed.

“Now I only hope for divine justice,” lamented one survivor of the AMIA bombing, the secretary to the association’s president. She remembers the cries of the survivors as they saw their family members or friends die, believing at the time it had been the building’s boiler that had exploded.

“Because of the attack, there are barrels of cement in front of the Jewish community’s institutions. If this case is not resolved, a part of society will have to wall itself in, and later another part, and another, until we are all closed off,” warned Diana Malamud, whose husband died in the explosion.

Malamud referred to the columns of cement installed after the 1994 bombing to prevent further car bomb attacks. The Jewish community in Argentina is the largest in Latin America and the second largest in the world, after that of the United States.

Malamud spoke Monday at an event that, unlike Tuesday’s – which marked the anniversary -, did not include the participation of government officials, though several human rights organisations involved in the fight for justice were in attendance.

“What occurred at AMIA and what happened during the military dictatorship affect us all,” said the 1980 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Adolfo Perez Esquivel, president of the Peace and Justice Service (Serpaj) on Monday.

The Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo and the Families of the Detained-Disappeared – groups that seek the truth about those who disappeared at the hands of the dictatorship 24 years ago – were present at the unofficial event.

Estela Carlotto, president of Grandmothers, maintained that those who disappeared under the dictatorship and the victims of the AMIA bombing unite the efforts of the human rights organisations. “As we join hands and unite our cries, as we write the same hymn and sing with different voices, we are going to break impunity,” she declared.

Marta Dillon, another human rights activist, charged that impunity is on the rise and said every day that goes by without finding those responsible for the AMIA attack and every day the families run into agents of the dictatorship who are free and on the streets, impunity can only grow.

“Many times our struggles were fragmented, but today we all stand together and we know that the justice we ask for has nothing to do with the evidence that is gathered but depends on the political will to uncover the truth,” Dillon said.

The petitions demanding the truth about the disappeared and the investigation into the fate of the children who were kidnapped during the dictatorship are in danger of reaching an abrupt halt due to a case before Argentina’s Supreme Court.

The members of the military juntas responsible for illegal repression were tried and sentenced, and later pardoned. And the officials and subordinates who directly engaged in repression – including torture – were exonerated from trial by laws of military obedience and legal deadlines.

But, in addition to the organisation created to seek justice for the victims of the dictatorship, there are also the families of victims of police repression in democratic times who have formed two associations.

Since Argentina’s return to democracy in 1983, the police have killed more than 400 unarmed individuals. The leaders of the families’ organisations cha rge that these incidents are the by-product of the impunity surrounding the dictatorship.

One new group in the cast of organisations fighting for justice is Active Memory, which is made up of families of AMIA victims who meet every Monday outside the national Justice building to demand answers for the bombing.

On Monday, the group questioned De la Rúa’s decision announced when he took office to create an elite group to investigate the AMIA case while sending a bill to Congress to protect the “repentant” ones involved in the bombing who provide information to the justice authorities.

Active Memory leaders also accused the ministers of Justice and of the Interior of attempting to shut them down.

Another new voice among human rights groups is the Convened Families and Friends of the victims of the AMIA attack, which has close ties to AMIA and Jewish community leaders, who at times were criticised for remaining close to the Menem government instead of the victims’ families.

The car bomb at AMIA exploded less than two years after a bomb destroyed the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires. The AMIA building was shattered on the morning of July 18, 1994, leaving 300 people injured in addition to the 86 dead.

Federal justice authorities then began investigations, following several trails of clues. The hypothesis that gained most force suggested the bombing had been perpetrated by an Islamic terrorist organisation, financed by the Iranian government and with the support of Argentinean civilians, police and military agents.

“Another year passes and we continue fighting with the word, our only weapon,” said Averbuch, father of one of the victims, Tuesday. “One more year that impunity gains,” he added, and remembered the death of a five-year-old boy: “Sebastian now has more years dead than he had alive.”

“The Families and Friends of the victims have been fighting for six years to win justice free of political or party identities, but those damned terrorists and the damned local connection that abetted its plans have six years of impunity,” he added.

The boy, Sebastian, who was walking by the front door of AMIA with his mother when the car bomb exploded, has become the symbol of the victims’ families’ demands for justice.