MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

More shadows than lights in Amnesty’s annual report on Argentina

Male violence against women is of “deep concern”

Amnesty International (AI) expressed its “deep concern” regarding male violence towards women and the current prison situation in Argentina, where the evictions of indigenous communities from their ancestral lands was also denounced.

On the positive side, the 2010 AI report on the state of Human Rights in the world, to be presented in London, highlights the progress of penal procedures “to take before the judiciary those responsible for the human rights violations committed in the past.”

For Amnesty International, gender violence in Argentina is a “reason for deep concern,” since although the report remembers that in April of 2009 the country approved “a law to prevent and punish violence against women,” by the end of the year “it had yet to be applied.”

Regarding the situation of Argentine prisons, AI highlighted “the terrible conditions, the overcrowding, and the lack of appropriate health services” in centres of several provinces, as well as “the violent acts and tortures, along with other bad treatments, registered.”

Regarding the rights of indigenous communities, AI claims there were “eviction orders” that went against “international norms and a law of national emergency approved in 2006 by which the execution” of said evictions “were temporarily suspended.”

The progress made in the “indictment of renowned human rights violators of the past” is the most positive aspect of the report on Argentina elaborated by AI, although it adds that “the lack of resources produced long delays.”

According to official sources, at the end of 2009, more than 600 people were being prosecuted by the commission of past human rights violations, before the 30 convictions.

AI reports that, even though witness protection programs exist, there are “threat reports” and it made a reference to the case of Jorge Julio López, complainant and principal witness in the case against Miguel Etchecolatz, former investigations director of the Buenos Aires province police, who has been missing since 2006.