Argentine Senate annuls amnesty laws on human rights violations

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The governing Peronist bloc and some dissident legislators from the opposition Radical Civil Union (UCR) voted to void the controversial Full Stop and Due Obedience laws early Thursday. The vote came after speeches by more than 30 senators Wednesday evening prolonged a session which had already lasted more than four hours.

In a vote eight days ago, the lower house of the legislature voided the laws, although the Supreme Court is ultimately responsible for deciding their validity.

As the senators debated the bill, hundreds of people summoned by political parties, human rights organizations, unions and social, student and jobless groups demonstrated outside Congress to demand the scrapping of the laws, which are also known as the "impunity" laws.

Analysts said the bill was an important political signal to the Supreme Court, which must now rule on the validity, or lack thereof, of the laws enacted by the government of President Raul Alfonsin (1983-1989), which succeeded the right-wing military regime.

http://www.falkland-malvinas.com/Detalle.asp?NUM=2519

PARDONED mass-torturing, mass-murdering right-wing Argentinian psychopaths. Isn't it finally good to hear this tide is being reversed?

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(snip) Argentines Debate Torture Site's Future Proposed `Unity' Park Offends Many Survivors

By Anthony Faiola Washington Post Foreign Service Sunday, January 11, 1998;
Page A21

BUENOS AIRES-In the bright southern light, a massive complex rises in misleading tranquillity, with a life-size Nativity scene and rose bushes gracing its front lawn. But behind the spiked-iron gates of the Navy School of Mechanics, the most notorious detention center used by the former military dictatorship during its "dirty war" against dissidents, is a place most Argentines regard as a dark abyss haunted by memories of the thousands tortured and slain there.

From 1976 to 1983, detainees were hauled into this complex of sparkling white-washed buildings on four city blocks. They were tossed into windowless dungeons, tortured on racks, beaten with chains and pipes and shocked with electric prods. Prisoners -- some alive, some not -- were taken from their holes and flung into the nearby River Plate from airplanes. Others were incinerated on the grounds in what neighbors mistook for cadets' barbecues.

Now, in what opponents have likened to "putting a memorial of pardon at Auschwitz," President Carlos Menem has decided to knock down the complex and build what he calls a "monument of national unity" in an apparent gesture of reconciliation toward the Argentina military, in whose ranks many of the former torturers remain.

The move comes as opposition leaders are pressing as never before for new trials arising from the abuses committed by members of the military junta that ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983. After civilian rule was restored, the government of Menem's predecessor, Raul Alfonsin, granted amnesty to most of those military leaders, who had fallen into disgrace after their humiliating defeat by the British in the 1982 Falkland Islands war. Menem later pardoned those few leaders who had been tried and jailed.

Menem, currently considered the staunchest U.S. ally in Latin America, told reporters last week that he has ordered the demolition of the center and the creation of a park and monument at a time when his opponents wrongly "insist on opening new wounds." (snip/...)

http://www.mail-archive.com/pen-l@galaxy.csuchico.edu/msg23789.html

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(snip) Former Argentine president Jorge Rafael Videla, the 73-year-old dapper dictator who launched the so-called Dirty War in 1976, was arrested on June 9 for a particularly bizarre crime of state, one that rips at the heart of human relations.

Videla, known for his English-tailored suits and his ruthless counterinsurgency theories, stands accused of permitting -- and concealing -- a scheme to harvest infants from pregnant women who were kept alive in military prisons only long enough to give birth.

According to the charges, the babies were taken from the new mothers, sometimes by late-night Caesarean sections, and then distributed to military families or shipped to orphanages. After the babies were pulled away, the mothers were removed to another site for their executions.

Yet, Argentina now is engulfed in a legal debate over whether Videla can be judged a second time for these grotesque kidnappings. After democracy was restored in Argentina, Videla was among the generals convicted of human rights crimes, including "disappearances," tortures, murders and kidnappings. In 1985, Videla was sentenced to life imprisonment at the military prison of Magdalena.

But, on Dec. 29, 1990, amid rumblings of another possible military coup, President Carlos Menem pardoned Videla and other convicted generals. Many politicians considered the pardons a pragmatic decision of national reconciliation that sought to shut the door on the dark history of the so-called Dirty War when the military slaughtered from 10,000 to 30,000 Argentineans. (snip/...)

http://www.consortiumnews.com/1990s/consor17.html

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Anyone doing searches on Argentinian right-wing government treatment of dissent, or imagined dissent will be utterly horrified at information available. Hideous.

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GENERAL JORGE RAFAEL VIDELA
President of Argentina
Soon after the coup that brought him to power in 1976, General Jorge Rafael Videla began Argentina's dirty war. All political and union activities were suspended, wages were reduced by 60%, and dissidents were tortured by Nazi and U.S. trained military and police. Survivors say the torture rooms contained swastikas and pictures of Hitler, Mussolini and Franco. One year after Videla's coup, Amnesty International estimated 15,000 people had disappeared and many were in secret detention camps, but although the U.S. press admitted human rights abuses occurred in Argentina, Videla was often described as a "moderate" who revitalized his nation's troubled economy. Videla had a good public relations firm in the U.S., Deaver and Hannalord, the same firm used by Ronad Reagan, Taiwan, and Guatemala. Not surprisingly, his Economics Minister, Jose Martinez do Hoz, spoke, at Deaver's request, on one of President Reagan's national broadcasts in order to upgrade Argentina's reputation.
Videla also received aid from WACL, the World Anti-Communist League (see card 17), through its affiliale, CAL (Confederation Anticomunista Latinoamericana). CAL sent millions of dollars to Argentina from sources such as the Italo-Argentine Masonic Lodge P-2, an outgrowth of old U.S. anti-communist alliances with the Italian drug malia. As part of its WACL affiliation, Argentina trained Nicaraguan contras for the U.S. Videla left office in 1981, and aftar the Falklands Crisis of 1982 he and his cohorts were tried for human rights abuses by the new government.



http://home.iprimus.com.au/korob/fdtcards/SouthAmerica.html