MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Malvinas veterans demand identification of comrades' remains

A group of Malvinas veterans who last week on the anniversary of the beginning of the conflict visited the Falkland Islands, called on the Argentine government for the identification of all combatants buried in the Argentine cemetery at Darwin, reports the Buenos Aires press.

According to official Argentine data the cemetery has 230 graves of which only 120 figure with their names. The rest are unidentified with a simple line in the cross: "Argentine soldier only known to God". Besides another eight remains are buried in two common graves. "We are victims of the dictatorship. There should not be NN in the cemetery", was the message on a banner displayed at the cemetery by the group of Malvinas veterans, Walter Acevedo, Walter, Stefenon, Julio Villafañe and Alejandro Rey who arrived to the Islands on the Saturday Lan flight and should be back at their homes Sunday. "It's unacceptable that 26 years from the conflict nothing has been done to identify our comrades fallen in battle", said Rey in an interview with La Nacion from Buenos Aires. Together with his friends he belongs to the Malvinas Former Combatants La Plata Center, Cecim. "We are victims of the dictatorship (1976/83) and this (Argentine) government which crusades for human rights should be the driving force in the identification task". "As former soldiers we witnessed the abuses committed by officers and petty officers of the Argentine Armed Forces and also have direct testimonies of those victims who suffered physical and psychological abuse. We also have out doubts about the way some of our comrades whose bodies were never found, died", added Rey. La Nacion reports that last year on the 25th anniversary of the war a group of Malvinas families and members of Congress presented then president Nestor Kirchner a project to discuss with the United Kingdom a humanitarian agreement to, among other things, allow the identification of the remains. A task to be undertaken by the Argentine Anthropologic Forensic Team, EAAF, which has a long and renowned international reputation for having participated in countless identification cases of remains from disappeared persons from the time of the Argentine dictatorship and in other Latinamerican countries. Apparently the Argentine government said the request in under consideration but also cautioned that it's not an easy decision since there are groups belonging to Malvinas Families who approve the initiative and others who reject DNA tests. However the sources quoted by La Nacion said that "there are no disappeared NN in the Islands, but rather bodies which have not been located or found; the names of all the fallen in Malvinas are known". "This irregular situation is a consequence of the instructions and way of thinking from those who tried in 1982 to recover the Malvinas by force, a military action which led to war with Great Britain", said Ernesto Alonso, head of CECIM who recalled that soldiers on their return to Argentina were ordered by the officers to remain silent about events. Alonso said "the military did nothing to have our dead identified. They lied to the families appealing to the "disappeared" figure and gave no replies about what had happened with soldiers who died in combat, and much less about those who died of hunger, cold or even murdered by their own officers". A year ago a group of Malvinas veterans from the northern province of Corrientes pressed charges with a federal judge in Rio Grande, Patagonia, giving personal testimony as victims or witnesses, of abuses committed against foot soldiers by officers from the Argentine Armed Forces in at least 23 cases.