40 years after the beginning of the end of terror | The H …

After two years of efforts on behalf of human rights organizations, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) went to Argentina in April. September 1979 and received hundreds of complaints of abductions, torture and homicides endorsed by Videla, Mbadera and Cía. and met with various personalities, civil society organizations and the dictators themselves. The result, in 1980, was a comprehensive report on acts of state terrorism that forced mainstream media to end the fiction of clashes and begin the impunity defense for their perpetrators. Over the next 40 years, and especially after the election of Mauricio Macri as President, the IACHR became the permanent recipient of various human rights violations that compel the state to respond to the international community.

Finger on the wound

The 1979 inspection was based on the persistent denunciation by the international community of the crimes of the dictatorship. "Emilio Mignone (President of CELS) has been to the United States and myself periodically in Buenos Aires. I have made several visits to government authorities to obtain permits, "said Edmundo Vargas Carreño, then secretary of the IACHR. "It had been months of negotiations and here they said" no, no and no, "but the James Carter government has been lobbying," he added. In parallel, an in-depth work was done to select 500 of the 4500 documented cases having first collected the APDH, then the rest of the agencies.

On September 6, 1979, the commissioners moved into a building on Mayo Avenue, received hundreds of complaints from parents of missing persons, interrogated political prisoners and testified in jails. They also visited clandestine centers such as ESMA, which sailors renovated to mislead them, while transferring the hostages to El Silencio's fifth property, owned by the Catholic Church of El Tigre. . "The word" disappeared "does not appear in the media. Clarin and The nation they published information about clashes in which terrorists have always died or escaped, "said former Commissioner Tom Farer during his visit to the country in 2009." During the visit, the word "Disappeared" finally appeared. The exclusions were opening and I think the government could not close them anymore, "he said. "The compilation of concordant and consistent evidence made it possible to state that the thousands of missing persons were dead and that the violation of virtually all known human rights was irrefutable," said the former commissioner. Colombian Marco Gerardo Monroy Cabra.

On the basis of this work, they prepared the final report, which marked the beginning of the end of the dictatorship. The IACHR affirmed with all the letters that the missing ones were dead. "It was the most discussed sentence in the report. Some members rightly said that it would put an end to high hopes, which was impossible. But the majority criterion has prevailed. The evidence was of such magnitude that we could not stop saying it, "Vargas Carreño explained. The dictatorship banned the release of the report, but Mignone smuggled into the country at five hundred copies. The impact is enormous: the media must publish what is happening, put an end to the fiction of clashes and the disqualification of victims. Then began the phase of general admission of crimes and defense of impunity of their perpetrators.

Contributions in democracy

After the promulgation of the laws of End Point and due obedience, and rehabilitations, one of the few encouraging news for those who did not resign themselves to impunity was Resolution 28 of the IACHR of October 1992, which established their incompatibility. with the declarations of human rights and conventions and confirmed the duty of the state to investigate and punish serious human rights violations. The Menem government agreed to compensate former political prisoners and relatives of the disappeared but, with the complicity of their own "automatic majority" in the Supreme Court, remained indifferent to the demand for justice.

The admission of the theft of the death of former captain Antonio Scilingo restored the demand for justice and resulted in trials for the truth, a vein that allowed agencies, prosecutors and judges to receive testimonies of victims and offenders. The Menem government opposed it, the Court of Drug Addicts ruled against this right, but sparked such rejection that all agencies have denounced the state in the IACHR. The amicable settlement agreement was signed at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs during a visit of the IACHR on November 15, 1999: the state is committed to guaranteeing the right to the truth, exhausting all means to clarify what happened to each of the missing.

In addition to the process of the crimes of the terrorist state, the IACHR and the Inter-American Court have played a leading role in the fight for the guarantee of rights. Other examples include the reform of the Migration Law and the Military Justice Code, the repeal of the crime of outrage, the decriminalization of slander and insults in cases of death. public interest.

The arbitrary detention of social leader Milagro Sala in January 2016, who had just badumed Mauricio Macri as president and Gerardo Morales as governor of Jujuy, resulted in a relentless succession of abuses and deaths. arbitrary conduct by his lawyers and friendly organizations to the inter-American system. In July 2017, the IACHR asked the state to adopt alternative measures to imprisonment, a decision that the Macri government has not respected and which has resulted in the imposition of new measures. intervention of the Inter-American Court.

During the course of Change 's administration, the IACHR received innumerable complaints of human rights violations, which sometimes resulted in warnings and precautionary measures. Among the denounced problems are the serious practices prevalent in psychiatric hospitals, the tightening of immigration policies and the violation of the rights of migrant populations, the progress of the militarization of public security in the region, the repression against press employees social events or overcrowding in police stations of the province of Buenos Aires, resulting in preventable deaths such as those of Esteban Echeverría or Parchment. Last February, the IACHR called on the state to take urgent measures to preserve the life and integrity of Buenos Aires' prisoners, reduce protracted stays and reduce overcrowding rates.