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Sun 24 Aug, 2003 09:51 am
Strange isn't it that Argentina's Senate delayed action until most of the offenders are dead? Maybe they can execute them posthumously. Better late than never---I guess?
---BumbleBeeBoogie
HUMAN RIGHTS-ARGENTINA:
Now It's Up to the Supreme Court
Marcela Valente - IPS - 8/24/03
BUENOS AIRES, Aug 21 (IPS) - The families of the victims of the last Argentine dictatorship (1976-1983) are celebrating Thursday's annulment of the amnesty laws that protected the military regime's torturers and killers, and are looking to the Supreme Court to clear the way for bringing them to justice.
The Senate spent 10 hours debating before finally abolishing what are known as the Full Stop Law, of 1986, and the Due Obedience Law, of 1987, with 43 senators voting in favour of annulment, seven against and one abstention. There were 21 senators absent.
The senators thus ratified the move of their fellow lawmakers in the lower house, who voted last week to overturn the two amnesty laws.
At around 2 a.m. local time Thursday, in and around the Argentine Congress, families of the dictatorship's victims, human rights activists and former political prisoners could be seen embracing each other and crying in happiness. Hundreds of people were at hand, after closely following the historic Senate session.
"It is very exciting! We waited a long time for this moment," Sara Steimberg said Thursday in a conversation with IPS. Her son, Luis Steimberg, was kidnapped in 1976, at age 22, when he left the house to go to the cinema. He and a friend were both "disappeared" by the dictatorship's repressive apparatus.
Steimberg, 80, laments that she could not participate in the ongoing vigil outside Congress staged by mothers and grandmothers of the disappeared and by activists of leftist parties demanding the abolition of the amnesty laws.
The Senate spent less time deliberating on another matter, unanimously voting to give constitutional force to Argentina's adhesion to the International Convention on International Convention on the Non-Applicability of Statutory Limitations to War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity, adopted by the United Nations in 1968.
The annulment of the two laws appears to open the way for bringing the dicta torship's torturers to justice, despite the fact that, according to most legal experts, the congressional vote does not in itself authorise the re-opening of trials for human rights crimes committed during the dictatorship.
But experts say the votes by the upper and lower houses of Congress, strongly backed by President Néstor Kirchner himself, represent a forceful political gesture aimed at the Supreme Court, which has yet to rule on various cases related to the constitutionality of the two laws.
It was not a simple process to abolish the two laws. Leftist deputy Patricia Walsh had proposed the annulment two years ago.
Up until the final debate began, many senators agreed with Vice-President Daniel Scioli, president of the chamber, who said it was "hardly serious" to repeal a law created by the Congress itself, and planted doubts as to whether Congress can act retroactively.
Although the vote triggered tensions between Scioli and Kirchner, it is in keeping with the repeated demands of local human rights organisations and the desires of the president himself, expressed shortly after he took office May 25, to bring the agents of the dictatorship to justice.
Another push came last month when Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón requested the arrest and extradition of 45 Argentine military officers for trial in Madrid for the deaths of hundreds of Spanish citizens during Argentina's "dirty war".
Garzón rose to international fame in 1998 for his failed attempt to extradite former Chilean dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990) to Spain on charges of crimes against humanity.
Garzón's arrest orders for the Argentine officers also prompted Kirchner to overturn the decree impeding extradition of Argentines accused of crimes committed in Argentina during the dictatorship, signed by Fernando de la Rúa in December 2001, just days before he resigned from the presidency.
The former dictatorship chiefs and hundreds of their subordinates have been formally accused -- among other crimes -- of "disappearing" some 11,000 people. Human rights groups put the total of disappeared at around 30,000.
Senator Jorge Yoma, of the governing Justicialista (Peronist) Party, recognised that the annulment of the amnesty laws is "controversial", though he considers the move "enormously important morally and ethically."
Hundreds of people celebrated in the streets outside Congress after the vote tally was announced.
"I can no longer stand for very long, but I feel very gratified by this victory," Steimberg told IPS. She is a member of the organisation Families of the Detained and Disappeared, and works with other local human rights groups.
"One must have patience" in waiting for the Supreme Court to make a decision on the constitutionality of the laws, said the elderly activist. "There is no reason to rush," she added, saying she is confident that the case about her son's disappearance will now be heard.
In 1995, Steimberg endured the televised confession of former sergeant Víctor Ibañez, who said he regretted having thrown several of the dictatorship's prisoners into the Río de la Plata from an airplane. Among those prisoners was Luis Steimberg.
"It was horrible. That perpetrator of genocide thought he could ask us for forgiveness," Steimberg says. But, she adds, at least since that day she knows where her disappeared son is buried.
The laws now annulled by Congress had put a stop to the human rights trials that involved some 2,500 members of the military for crimes committed during the dictatorship.
The Full Stop Law, sponsored in 1986 by then-president Raúl Alfonsín (1983-1989) under pressure from the military, set a 60-day deadline for criminal complaints to be filed and for judges to hear the testimony of defendants and witnesses in human rights cases.
Until then, the Alfonsín administration had pursued measures that had led to the conviction of the dictatorship's commanders. Most were given life sentences, but were subsequently pardoned by Carlos Menem, president of Argentina from 1989 to 1999.
After the Full Stop Law was passed, several judges hurriedly began to summon members of the military to testify. A group of soldiers reacted in anger, staging an armed uprising in 1987.
Although the revolt was put down, in its wake the Due Obedience Law was introduced by the executive branch and passed by Congress, thus ending the prosecutions of all human rights violators who were ''following orders.''
It will be interesting to see what transpires now, BBB - I wonder if the government will still be nervous about a military revolt if prosecutions ensue?
Argentina's Example Not Likely to Be Emulated
Argentina's Example Not Likely to Be Emulated
Darío Montero* - IP S 9/4/03
MONTEVIDEO, Sep 3 (IPS) - The recent decision in Argentina to annul amnesty laws that kept human rights violators out of prison is not likely to be emulated any time soon by Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay or Uruguay.
However, calls for justice and for answers about what happened to the victims of forced disappearance under South America's dictatorships are getting louder as leftist parties -- the main targets, along with labour and social activists, of repression under the de facto regimes -- are either elected or have a real chance of making it to the government.
Under Operation Condor, the Southern Cone dictatorships of the 1970s and 1980s coordinated repression of dissent, abducting, torturing and murdering tens of thousands of people.
Last month, the Argentine parliament struck down the amnesty laws enacted in the late 1980s, and centre-left President Néstor Kirchner overturned a 2001 decree impeding the extradition of human rights violators to countries where they are wanted by the courts on charges of crimes against humanity.
The demands for justice in pending human rights cases have been felt by moderate socialist President Ricardo Lagos in Chile and by Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a founder of the leftist Workers' Party (PT).
They also await Tabaré Vázquez, the socialist leader of Uruguay's leftist Broad Front coalition, and the poll favourite for the 2004 presidential elections.
Of the six countries whose de facto military regimes cooperated in Operation Condor, Brazil and Uruguay are the only ones that have failed to bring to trial one single member of the former military juntas.
''The Lula administration has made no progress in that area,'' the president of the group Torture Never Again, Elizabeth Silveira, told IPS in Brazil. ''They say the right time has not yet arrived for revising the amnesty law decreed by the last dictator, Joao Baptista Figueiredo, in 1979.''
The amnesty covered leftist insurgents as well as members of the security forces who used torture and murder to suppress dissent during Brazil's 1964-1985 dictatorship.
Many of the human rights violators in Brazil have even been identified by name in independent reports like the book ''Torture Never Again'', and a law passed in 1995 declared that 136 victims of forced disappearance were dead.
The justice system is now attempting to clarify the deaths of members of the Guerrillas of Araguaia, a group made up of pro-Albanian Communist Party militants who were killed in the region near the Araguaia river in northern Brazil between 1972 and 1974.
But under military pressure, Lula appealed a court ruling requiring the government to declassify military documents that would shed light on the killings.
In Uruguay, legal action is also restricted by a 1986 amnesty law, which was ratified by voters in a plebiscite in 1989. The law put an end to prosecutions of soldiers and police accused of human rights abuses committed during the 1973-1985 dictatorship.
During that period, the country had the largest number of political prisoners in the world, proportionate to its population.
The governments of Luis Lacalle (1990-1995) and Julio Sanguinetti (1995-2000) did not even allow investigations into the fate of nearly 200 ''disappeared'' Uruguayans -- most of whom went missing in Argentina -- despite the fact that the amnesty law permitted such investigations, as long as no one was brought to trial.
Under the conservative government of Jorge Batlle, who took office in 2000, a change has been seen, with the creation of a peace commission, which verified that around 30 victims of forced disappearance died under torture at the hands of the military.
But the possibility of human rights violators being brought to justice remains remote in Uruguay.
Under the Uruguayan legal system, the amnesty law cannot be annulled unless it is proven that it was enacted under extreme pressure. The only alternative is for the Supreme Court to declare the law unconstitutional, which would involve overturning an earlier Court decision.
But even if the left makes it to the government, as appears likely, there is no political will in the Broad Front to try to get the amnesty law declared unconstitutional, lawyer Francisco Ottonelli, a former director of the non-governmental Institute of Legal and Social Studies of Uruguay, told IPS.
The route that the left would take, he said, is to launch in-depth investigations into the fate of the disappeared, and to purge the security forces of those implicated in past human rights abuses.
In Chile, the centre-left governing coalition is not seeking to repeal the amnesty law decreed by the 1973-1990 dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet, which covers crimes committed between March 1973, six months prior to the coup that overthrew the government of socialist president Salvador Allende, and 1978.
Most of the 3,000 disappearances and political murders were committed in that period. The Ethical Commission Against Torture also estimates that of the 500,000 people imprisoned during the Chilean dictatorship, between 30,000 and 150,000 were tortured.
But when Chile returned to democracy in 1990, judges began to rule that the amnesty law did not apply to kidnappings, the label they gave to cases of forced disappearance. However, no such case has reached the Supreme Court yet, which will have the last word.
Based on that argument, Judge Juan Guzmán began to prosecute Pinochet in March 2000, got him stripped of the immunity from prosecution that he enjoyed as senator-for-life, and could have convicted him if the legal process had not been cut short by the Supreme Court in July 2002, when it declared the elderly retired general unfit to stand trial.
Cases have been opened in the courts against 300 soldiers and police, 30 of whom are under arrest, and former intelligence chiefs have served time for the 1976 assassination of former foreign minister Orlando Letelier.
The pressure from all sides -- from torture survivors and victims' families, as well as from the military -- led Lagos to present a bill on Aug. 12 that would leave interpretation of the amnesty law up to the courts.
The president's proposal would also create mechanisms through which soldiers and police who cooperate with the courts would be eligible for more lenient treatment.
For example, those who were ''following orders'' and who now agree to provide information that clarifies the fate of the disappeared and the whereabouts of their remains could receive lighter sentences. In addition, the president could pardon human rights violators who have cooperated while they served time in prison, and who show ''repentance.''
In neighbouring Argentina, meanwhile, President Kirchner once again opened up the possibility of extraditing human rights abusers to countries like Spain or France where attempts are being made to bring them to trial for crimes against humanity.
For example, Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzón, who issued the warrant that led to nearly a year and a half of house arrest for Pinochet, is seeking the extradition of around 40 Argentine officers.
In terms of sheer numbers, Argentina heads the list of crimes against humanity in the Southern Cone region, with as many as 30,000 ''disappeared'', according to human rights groups' estimates.
But it is also the country that has made the most progress towards bringing human rights violators to justice, despite the amnesty laws -- which were annulled last month -- and former president Carlos Menem's (1989-1999) pardon of the de facto regime's commanders.
Several of the former military junta chiefs who were pardoned have been hauled back to court on charges connected to the theft of the babies of political prisoners during the dictatorship.
An investigation of Operation Condor is also under way in Buenos Aires, which has unsuccessfully sent extradition requests to Chile, Uruguay and Paraguay.
One of the military men whose extradition has been sought is former Paraguayan dictator Gen. Alfredo Stroessner, whose 1954-1989 regime left at least 3,000 dead and disappeared.
In Paraguay, ''there is a de facto 'full stop' (amnesty) law, because of the lack of political will to investigate what happened during the dictatorship,'' lawyer and human rights activist Martín Almada, who revealed the ''Archives of Terror'' in 1992, which prove the existence of Operation Condor, commented to IPS.
The Colorado Party's unbroken hold on power since 1947 has ensured impunity for human rights violators, activist Carmen Colazo, with Amnesty International Paraguay, and lawyer Rodney Smidbauer told IPS.
Nevertheless, said Almada, seven ''repressors'' were convicted after Stroessner was overthrown, including former police chief Francisco Britez and the head of the secret police, Pastor Coronel.
''Parliament is now trying to set up a truth and justice commission, which would provide reliable information and statistics on what happened during South America's longest dictatorship,'' he added.
Last week, a truth and reconciliation commission in Peru released a report which found that nearly 70,000 people were killed and disappeared by the Shining Path, a Maoist guerrilla group, and the security forces between 1980 and 2000.
And in Bolivia, Vice-President Carlos Mesa recently created an ''inter-institutional council'' to investigate the forced disappearances that took place during the 1971-1978 dictatorial regime of Hugo Banzer.
Bolivia is the only country in South America where a dictator, Banzer, returned to power at the polls, in 1999.
But another former de facto ruler, Luis García Mesa, has been serving time in a maximum security prison there since 1993.
* Mario Osava in Brazil, Gustavo González in Chile, Marcela Valente in Argentina, Alejandro Sciscioli in Paraguay and Alejandro Campos in Bolivia contributed to this report.
There are strong tensions within Argentina, afetr the aprehension of more than 40 officers from the dictatorship. Yesterday, the Argentinian justice took hold of the millionaire assets of 3 colonels of the dictatorship, accused of the assasination of 15 members of the Montoneros organization. It also accused 2 former Montoneros chiefs, because they ordered the return to Argentina of the 15 militants, risking their lives. Finally, it accused 3 recently retired generals (who are not among those indicted for genocide, torture, etc) of "apology of crime", because they spoke in favor of the military regime of the 70s.
There are also tensions in Spain. Judge Baltasar Garzón wants the government of Aznar to ask for the extradition from Argentina of several of the repressors, guilty also of assasinating European citizens. But the government does not want to.
The only important Argentinian repressor now extradited to Spain is Ricardo Cavallo (known as "Serpico", who threw two French Catholic novices from a plane, among with other human rights defenders of the time: he dubbed the poor women "The Flying Nuns"). Cavallo was extradited from Mexico. The Spanish government would have lost face if it didn't ask for Cavallo's extradition, since it often asks Mexico to extradite (?) member of ETA, the Basque terrorist organization.
I wonder if anyone can remember a story in the National Geographic about a priest councelling two 'workers' in a torture room that they were doing God's work and should not feel guilt for their very necessary work?
And, do you rememer the jounalist/editor Jacobo Timmerman's book? He described the guard who escorted him to his daily torture session as pleasant to the point of inquiring of Timmerman about his (the guard's) sons prospects in various schools.
There's a very good film about the relationship between Argentinian prisoners and their torturers, "Garage Olimpo".
The film about Timmerman's "Prisoner Without a Name" is supposed to be quite inferior.
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