HUMAN RIGHTS-ARGENTINA: Foreign Minister Agrees to Questioning

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Sep 19 2002 (IPS) - Argentina’s Foreign Minister Carlos Ruckauf was summoned by a court in France Thursday to testify in connection with the forced disappearance of an Argentine-French citizen in 1975, while he was serving as labour minister.

The court summons was announced in Paris, where Ruckauf is on an official visit.

In Argentina, meanwhile, the press reported on the minister’s alleged involvement in a trade union conflict in 1975 that led to the “disappearance” of 14 employees of the local factory of the German car-maker Mercedes Benz.

Ruckauf immediately responded to the French court’s summons, stating in a news briefing that he was willing to respond “in writing to any questions set forth by any judge from any country in the world, through the diplomatic channel outlined by the Vienna Convention.”

Ruckauf was labour minister in 1975 and 1976, during the government of María Estela Martínez de Perón (1974-1976). Under President Carlos Menem (1989-1999), he was named ambassador to Italy, interior minister, and vice-president (1995-1999). He was elected governor of the province of Buenos Aires in 1999.

His performance as governor and his election campaign brought him heavy criticism from human rights organisations, which complained that he encouraged the police not to hesitate to fire their guns against suspected criminals.

Judge Gerard Caddeo took advantage of Ruckauf’s visit to Paris to ask him to clarify whether French citizen Maurice Jaeger, who went missing in Argentina in 1975, was one of those covered by a decree that Ruckauf signed as labour minister, in which he ordered the armed forces “to annihilate subversive elements throughout the country.”

The lawyer representing the Jaeger family, Sophie Thonon, explained that the courts wanted to ask the foreign minister “if that decree implied the forced disappearance of opponents.”

Jaeger came to Argentina at age 14 with his parents. He was last seen in 1975, in the northwestern province of Tucuman, at the age of 36. According to witness testimony, he was sighted in a clandestine torture centre after he was abducted by the armed forces.

German reporter Gabriela Weber, who testified Wednesday in the federal court in the Argentine city of La Plata, the capital of the province of Buenos Aires, said Ruckauf was involved in the disappearance of 14 Mercedes Benz workers.

Weber presented documents uncovered in the Bonn files of the International Federation of Metalworkers, which showed that Mercedes Benz executives in Argentina reported that Ruckauf had pressed for workers to be dismissed for political reasons.

In 1975, the Argentine branch of Mercedes Benz employed around 4,000 people. The documents in question indicate that Ruckauf and a leader of the metalworkers union, José Rodríguez, asked the company to fire over 100 workers to “eliminate subversive elements in the factory.”

Weber said that although the company laid off 115 workers, Ruckauf and Rodríguez pressed for even more dismissals.

The laid-off workers belonged to a commission opposed to the Federation of the Union of Argentine Metalworkers (SMATA), which was headed by Rodríguez and aligned with the then-governing Justicialista (Peronist) Party.

“That commission is not part of the union, and has been sponsored by the subversives,” said Rodríguez in 1975, in a letter to the company’s board of directors, which Weber presented to the court.

On the eve of the 1976-1983 military dictatorship, the label “subversive” was enough to identify someone who was likely to be killed by the armed forces or paramilitary groups.

“The dismissals were an urgent request by the labour minister and the leadership of SMATA, who had pressed for even more workers to be laid off,” stated another letter presented by Weber, which had been sent by the board of directors of Mercedes Benz in Argentina to Eugene Loderer, the head of the International Federation of Metalworkers.

At least 14 of the dismissed workers were “disappeared.” Some of them were seen in clandestine army prisons by Mercedes Benz workers who survived their detention.

Weber explained to the press Thursday that in these cases, there has been no heavy pressure from the families to find out the truth about their loved ones, because the company decided to indemnify the wives of the “disappeared” for “humanitarian reasons,” with amounts equivalent to what their husbands would have earned in 10 years of work.

Between 11,000 and 30,000 people became victims of forced disappearance under the de facto military regime. But the state’s politically motivated repression began under the government of Martínez de Perón, who was overthrown by the armed forces.