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Galtieri and Human Rights

Sunday, July 14th 2002 - 21:00 UTC
Full article

Former President of Argentina, General Leopoldo Galtieri, has at long last been arrested and charged with human rights crimes allegedly committed in 1980 before he became President in 1981.

General Galtieri was previously sentenced to twelve years detention for negligence and incompetence in his conduct of the Falklands War but never charged with human rights crimes. He was freed from his comfortable military prison in 1989 only half-way through his sentence under a general amnesty. The two other members of his junta had also been sentenced for mismanagement of the Falklands War ? Admiral Jorge Anaya to 15 years, and the Air Force Commander, Brigadier Basilio Lami Dozo to six years in jail. They were also freed.

Mercopress Correspondent Harold Briley was an international journalist based in Buenos Aires in 1980 and the late 1970s when the military dictatorship's campaign of repression, kidnapping, torture and killing was at height. In this feature, he describes the atmosphere of fear and uncertainty that prevailed.

It was the bloodiest period in Argentina's recent history, a vicious campaign waged without pity by three military juntas against their own people in what was called "the Dirty War". It began with General Videla's military coup in 1976 and continued until military rule was ended by their failure in the 1982 Falklands War and bringing the return of civilian government.

Throughout military rule and ever since, the relatives of the missing, the desparacidos, have demonstrated in Buenos Aires' main square, the Plaza de Mayo, demanding to know what happened to them and calling for punishment of the guilty military torturers and murderers.

The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, as they became known, have gathered every Thursday afternoon, sadly, courageously and patiently. At long last their patience may bring results, but there is scepticism that the guilty military officers will be let off as so often in the past. I often joined them during military rule and since.

Under the military regime, it was against the emergency laws to demonstrate. We were photographed by the secret police using long lenses. and sometimes roughly dispersed and arrests were made.

The women always wear white headscarves, embroidered with the names of the missing and the date they disappeared ? sons and daughters, mothers and fathers, grandchildren and grandparents, all desaparacidos -- Argentina's great legion of the lost.

They gave new meaning to a word and a new dimension to Latin America's apparatus of state terror, more sinister and more harrowing, human rights organisations said, because of the total lack of trace , the uncertainty whether they were dead or alive, and the feeling of helplessness of the victims' families.

The relatives exhausted all means of inquiry, turned down by officials, the military , the police and the courts. No writ of habeas corpus succeeded. The answer was always the same ? there is no record.

Uruguay was no safe haven

The disappeared came from all ranks of society, of all ages, with only one link ? they disappeared. Many were social and medical workers, trade unionists and journalists. Some had foreign nationality ? Italian, Spanish, French, Swedish but this was no protection. They were taken from their homes in the dead of night, arrested in the street, and often bundled into sinister black Ford Falcon cars with no number plates, never to be seen again. One prominent human rights mother, whose eldest son disappeared, told me she sent her two younger teenage children to Uruguay thinking they would be safe in another country, beyond Argentina's borders. Instead, they were arrested by the military there in collusion with the Argentine military, and they too disappeared.

It is now known that many were sent to concentration camps in the Argentine countryside. Some were held in various torture centres in Buenos Aires, the most notorious of which was the Navy Mechanics School. Many were secretly buried in mass graves at night. Others were dropped from military helicopters over the Atlantic, with their heads and hands cut off to prevent identification if ever washed ashore.

The generals attempted to justify their reign of terror by saying it was necessary to save the country from anarchy and terror. They admitted to what they called "abuses" and "excesses", and said the disappeared were inevitable victims.

Some, the generals claimed, were subversives who were killed in street clashes or went underground or into exile abroad. The military closed ranks and sealed lips in a conspiracy of silence. They said it was no use mourning the missing. They had gone forever. The regime brought in a law to allow legal presumption of death, without any information or any corpse.

Surprisingly, General Galtieri himself, on assuming power, promised in 1982 to release some limited information. But the promise was never fulfilled before he launched the Falklands War.

The generals always insisted that in a condition of any reconciliation should be that those responsible should not be brought to trial and punished. They thought they had escaped when prosecutions were brought to an end and a general amnesty was declared during the civilian governments of President Alfonsin and President Menem.

The legality of such decisions is now challenged by the courts. And the latest arrests of General Galtieri and other military officers suggest they cannot be so sure they will not be punished.

Harold Briley, (MP) London

Categories: Mercosur.

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