MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Letter on identification of Argentine soldiers buried in Falklands sent to the Red Cross

The Argentine memorial at Darwin cemetery

Malvinas conflict next-of-kin commission sent a letter to the International Red Cross expressing their position regarding the request from President Cristina Fernandez for that organization to help with the identification of soldiers’ remains buried in the Falkland Islands Argentine cemetery.

The letter was addressed on April 13 and refers to the announcement by President Cristina Fernandez last April 2 in Ushuaia during the commemoration of the 30th anniversary of the Malvinas war; precisely on the day (in 1982) Argentine troops landed and occupied the Falklands for 74 days, until expelled by a British Task Force.

In the Tierra del Fuego ceremony Cristina Fernandez revealed she had 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”.

She added “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.

In their release the Commission of the next of kin of the fallen in Malvinas said their letter was addressed to the president of the Red Cross International Commission, and referred to the request for forensic, genetic samples to be taken from the Argentine soldiers’ remains buried in the cemetery at Darwin in the Falklands and whose identities “only remain known to God”.

Cristina Fernandez original announcement on April 2 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 copy from the letter sent by the Malvinas next-of-kin Commission was also given to the Argentine president concludes the brief release signed by Delmira de Cao, president and Dalal Abd de Massad.