A decade of Human rights: no turning back

Ten years after Néstor Kirchner took office, the government’s Human Rights policy seems to be irreversible. Trials against military, police forces and civilians who committed crimes during last dictatorship have been taking place throughout Argentina. Former clandestine detention centres have become sites of remembrance. However, is it possible to say that there still are outstanding debts?
On a cold March 25, 2003, Kirchner took office. He reached the presidency with only a 22 percent of voters’ support. He was mostly an unknown politician but that day he promised to establish a new Argentina. “We absolutely reject the identification between governance and impunity,” he stated.
“I have not and I will not ask for blank checks. However, I came here to offer you a dream: the construction of truth and justice,” he completed. Those words had been insistently uttered by human rights organizations and activists but not by state officials. That promise seemed to be a ray of hope for many of them.
On August 11, 2003, then President Kirchner decided to adhere to the Convention on Non Applicability of Statutory Limitations to war crimes and crimes against humanity and to assign that treaty a constitutional rank. The decision meant the chance of taking to court people who were responsible of abductions, torture, disappearances and killings committed during the last dictatorship.
A day after that decision by Kirchner, the National Congress declared null the Due Obedience and the Full Stop Laws, which prevented military and police officers from being prosecuted. In 2005, a renewed Supreme Court ratified the lawmakers’ resolution and the trials against perpetrators started again.
The first legal proceeding took place in the city of La Plata, Buenos Aires province. It was a trial against Miguel Osvaldo Etchecolatz, a former senior police officer in Buenos Aires province during the military regime. On September 19, 2006, he was found guilty of the abductions and torture suffered by Nilda Eloy and Jorge Julio López and of six assassinations. He was sentenced to life imprisonment and the court led by Judge Carlos Rozanski declared that his crimes were part of the genocidal plan executed by the last Argentine dictatorship.
Julio López, a survivor of the dictatorship’s clandestine detention centres, could not hear the verdict. He disappeared a day before. Judge Manuel Blanco is currently leading an investigation into López’s disappearance, but there has been little progress in the inquiry. Human rights organizations and López’s lawyers hold the Buenos Aires police responsible for the kidnapping.
López’s disappearance came as a deep shock to the rest of the survivors who had to testify in these proceedings and for the judges involved. “They threaten us but we knew that we had the responsibility to keep on seeking justice,” Nilda Eloy, a survivor of the so-called Camps repressive circuit, told the Herald.
“More than six years after Julio’s disappearance, I believe that the state is responsible by default but also by acquiescence, by not taking the necessary measures to prevent the crime of forced disappearance from happening,” she added.
Other witnesses were threatened in the last six years, even when there is a witness protection programme in progress and also an assistance programme because, in front of the court, they are expected to retell very traumatic memories. “The only way to guarantee the security of witnesses is to have the perpetrators behind bars,” insisted Eloy.
Silvia Suppo, a survivor of Santa Fe province concentration camps, was killed in an allegedly assault in 2010. She had recently testified in a trial and she was expected to testify again. A federal judge is examining the case and trying to determine if Suppo’s murder is connected to dictatorship-era death squads.
However, the willingness of witnesses to testify was confirmed. Until March 2013, one thousand people were charged with crimes against humanity. In the last six years, 449 suspects were taken to court, 404 of them were convicted and 45 of them acquitted, according to a survey carried out by the Fiscal Unit for Coordination and Monitoring of the cases of human rights violations committed during state terror.
Meanwhile, there is also a new wave of cases probing the responsibility of civilians and economic groups in the crimes committed during the dictatorship. The Centre for Legal and Social Studies highlighted there are many sentences waiting to be confirmed by the Supreme Court.
“Trials for crimes against humanity are part of the social contract of Argentines. They are a collective decision,” said the Supreme Court Chief Justice Ricardo Lorenzetti.
Memorials
On March 24 2004, then President Kirchner inaugurated a memorial in the former Navy Mechanics School (ESMA), one of the biggest clandestine detention centres during the dictatorship. Kirchner apologized for the crimes state agents committed between 1976 and 1983 and for the democratic authorities’ silence toward them. Many pointed out that Kirchner did not mention the trial against military junta leaders which took place in 1985 during Raúl Alfonsín’s term of office.
Since then, many former clandestine centres carry signs as evidence of the repression launched during the seventies nationwide. In 2007, the Federal Network of Memorials was created. “More than fifty places carry signs as former clandestine detention centres. We are working in 40 other petitions we have received to signalize other places,” National Human Rights Department official Isabel Fernández Blanco told the Herald.
There have been many controversies over the use of these spaces. In January, following a Kirchnerite demonstration which included a barbecue at the former ESMA concentratio camp, there was a heated debate about whether these places should be considered “sacred sites” or spaces that can be “filled with life.”
Current human rights violations
Although the National Government is known for its human rights policy, there are several outstanding debts. One of them is the so-called Anti-terrorism Law passed in 2011, which human rights organizations say can be used to criminalize social protest.
The organization against Police and Institutional Repression CORREPI said that many “trigger-happy” crimes are still being committed as well as torture in prisons and police stations. According to this left-wing organization, 200 people were killed last year as a result.
The Centre for Legal and Social Studies also expressed concern in its latest annual report about the inadequate investigation into the disappearance of Luciano Arruga. The sixteen-year-old boy was last seen at a police station in Lomas del Mirador, Buenos Aires province, in January 2009. Although the inquiry has not made progress, there was a development when the court classified the case as a forced disappearance, which would definitely put the Buenos Aires police under the magnifying glass.
In its latest report, Amnesty International added the respect for indigenous communities in the list of pending achievements. The brief made special emphasis on the situation of the Qom community, which is currently at odds with the Formosa government over its ancestral lands. It also mentioned the recent case of Qom community member Florentín Díaz, who died on Tuesday in a violent police eviction in Formosa. “The repeated violence that this community has been undergoing demands an urgent call for provincial government intervention. The breach of commitments on the human rights of indigenous people demands responsibility of the Argentine State,” said Mariela Belski, executive director of Amnesty International Argentina.
Source: http://www.buenosairesherald.com/article/131893/a-decade-of-human-rights-no-turning-back-