MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Argentina appeals to Red Cross to help identify remains of soldiers buried in Falklands

CFK message on national television blasting the UK and the UN Security Council

President Cristina Fernandez has sent a letter to the Red Cross asking the international organization to intercede before the UK so that the remains of Argentine and British soldiers in the Falkland Islands which are still unknown, 30 years after the beginning of the Malvinas war can be identified.

The announcement made on Monday April 2 came as part of the president’s speech on national television to mark the 30th anniversary commemoration which was broadcasted live from Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego where the main remembrance of the Day of the Malvinas war veteran, (as registered in the Argentine calendar), took place.

“Last Friday I addressed a letter to the Red Cross authorities asking they take the necessary measures and intercede before the UK so that the remains of unknown Argentine and British soldiers can be definitively identified, thirty years after the Malvinas war”, said Cristina Fernandez.

“Every person has the right to be buried with a plaque identifying his name and every mother has the inalienable right to worship his son; this goes back in our civilization to Antigone and Sophocles”, she added.

The announcement was in response to the request from Malvinas war veterans since a significant number of the combatants buried in the Falklands’ Argentine memorial at Darwin remain unidentified. A number of graves have a plaque with the engraving: “Argentine solider, only known to God”

The Argentine president attended the ceremony at the impressive Malvinas Plaza in Ushuaia with Vice President Amado Boudou, Tierra del Fuego governor Fabiana Rios, members of her cabinet other local and military authorities, foreign delegations plus Malvinas war veterans and next of kin organizations.

In her speech Cristina Fernandez paid tribute to Argentine and British combatants and again blasted the UK for not complying with UN resolutions calling for Falklands/Malvinas sovereignty talks.

She made it a point to underline that the April 2 decision to use force in the Falklands “was not a decision from the Argentine people, behind that decision was not even the attempt to exercise sovereignty in the Islands but an attempt from the military regime headed by General Leopoldo Galtieri to perpetuate itself in power”.

“Memory and truth then, mainly to unveil that curtain which pretends to make the UK believe it was the people of Argentina that took that decision” said CFK and underlined the significance of disclosing the Rattenbach report done by “honourable military officers” who were extremely critical of those who commanded the Malvinas war, and had remained classified for thirty years.

Cristina Fernandez ironically replied to UK PM David Cameron latest message when he said that 30 years ago the people of the Falklands suffered an act of aggression targeted to steal them of their freedom and way of life.

“I think Cameron is not aware that at the time the freedom of all Argentines was also confiscated” under the military dictatorship. “There were thousands of imprisoned with no names in concentration camps and hundreds of detained-disappeared, who never appeared again”, she said.

Cristina Fernandez then blasted the British “absurd colonial dominion of the Islands from over 14,000 kilometres away: it is most unfair that in the XXI century there are still colonial enclaves and most of them from the UK”.

She warned that the 30th anniversary events are only part of the ongoing Argentine legitimate claim over the Malvinas and anticipated that next year will have elapsed 180 since the Argentine original settlement was expelled from the Islands by British military, who have remained ever since.

Finally the Argentine president called for the UN resolutions to be respected by all since “it seems there are resolutions first class and second class, whether you are a member or not of the Security Council”.

International law applies to all, including members of the Security Council and it this is not changed “the world will never have rule of the law, security, human rights and equality”.