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In-Depth:
Justice for a Lawless World? Rights and reconciliation in a new era of international law
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 Download this in-depth report
Part I 6.36 MB
Part II 2.40 MB
- Professor Noam Chomsky
- ICC Chief Prosecutor Moreno Ocampo
- Samantha Power, Professor of Practice in Human Rights Policy
- Juan Mendez ,President of the International Center for Transitional Justice
- Justice Geoffrey Robertson Q.C.
- Dr Fanie du Toit, Programme Director for Educating for Reconciliation at the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation in South Africa
- Abdullah An-Na`im, Ph.D, Charles Howard Candler Professor of Law at Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA
- Augustin Nkusi, the Director of the Legal Support Unit, National Service of Gacaca Jurisdictions, Rwanda
- Benjamin Gumpert, counsel representing Justin Mugenzi, who is currently on trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda
- Hanny Megally, Director, Middle East and North Africa Program, International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ)
- Paul van Zyl, Country Programme Director at the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ)
- Johnston Busingye, Secretary General of the Ministry of Justice in Rwanda
- Dennis McNamara (Special Adviser on Internal Displacement to the UN’s Emergency Relief Co-ordinator and Director of the OCHA Inter-agency Internal Displacement Division) on the rule of law
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GLOBAL: ARGENTINA: Justice, impunity and the ‘dirty war’
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Portraits depicting Argentina’s military junta members, top officers and ministers directly involved in the country’s “dirty war” 1976-1983. Thousands were kidnapped and never seen again; prisons overflowed with so-called political prisoners, torture was common and there were no trials or even pretense of legal processes.
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Thirty years after Argentina’s last military dictatorship seized power, the country remains divided on whether justice has truly been done.
Known for their English-cut suits and commitment to “western Christian civilization”, behind the scenes, General Jorge Rafael Videla and his fellow military leaders oversaw a regime of clandestine kidnappings, torture and murder.
Human rights groups estimate that as many as 30,000 Argentinians were ‘disappeared’ during their bloody regime, which ran from 1976 to 1983. However, official figures put the figure closer to 9,000. The victims of the so-called ‘dirty war’ ranged from left-wing guerillas to student activists or trade unionists.
Once democracy was restored in 1983, the commanders of the military dictatorship were put on trial for a series of human rights atrocities carried out during the junta’s seven-year regime. General Videla and fellow junta member Emilio Massera were sentenced to life imprisonment. Seven other ex-commanders received sentences of between four and 17 years.
Other military officials were also brought to justice, helped in large part by the government-backed National Commission for Forced Disappearances. In total, around 450 torturers and enforcers received prison sentences.
But towards the end of 1986, the government of President Raul Alfonsin determined it was time for the country to move on. Under the Full Stop Law (Law No. 23,492), prosecutors where given two months to bring cases against members of the military. After that period, any new case was ruled inadmissible.
Junior officers and other security personnel received additional judicial protection under the 1987 Law of Due Obedience (Law No. 23,521). The legislation confirmed the constitutional validity of those that claimed they were only acting under orders.
In 1990, Alfonsin’s successor, Carlos Menem, used similar arguments of national reconciliation in order to issue Videla and his fellow junta members with pardons. At the time, the amnesty divided the nation between those who believed such a move was necessary for Argentina to move on, and those who saw it as an aberration of legal due process.
“The amnesty under Alfonsin was understandable. The democratic system was still fragile. He was looking to strike a balance that would keep democracy alive,” said 55-year-old businessman, Alfonso Bustamante.
“But what Menem did wasn’t at all necessary. They [the military junta] had already been condemned. It was just a cynical political move on his part to win the support of those who backed them, especially those in the economic classes.”
Support for Menem has shrunk drastically over the last fifteen years, especially since the country’s 2001 economic crisis (a phenomenon many blame of the former president’s policies). Few today agree that the pardons were the right decision, although many will admit off the record that it was the right decision at the time.
Behind some of this unspoken defence of judicial impunity lies some residual support for the military dictatorship. For example, in the run-up to the thirtieth anniversary of the 1976 coup, a spate of pro-dictatorship graffiti appeared in Santa Fe, a city in the more conservative interior of Argentina.
“The country was a mess before the military. I think it right that they clamped down on the Montoneros [a radical left-wing guerilla group active in the 1970s]. What I think was wrong was that they did it in secret,” says Patricia, a mother of two and Sunday-school teacher from Greater Buenos Aires province.
Since the end of the Menem years (1989-1999), the mood of political opinion has swung back in favour of a judicial solution to past human rights abuses. In 1999, a Federal Court reopened cases against Videla and Massera for the kidnapping of children born to political dissidents.
The prosecution argued that as crimes against humanity, both international law and the Argentinian court rendered the previous amnesties illegal.
The same court officially declared the Full Stop and Due Obedience laws null and void in 2001, when Argentinian judge Gabriel Cavallo sentenced two policemen for the ‘disappearance’ of a Chilean-Argentinian couple. The ruling was supported by Congress in a 2003 bill, and upheld by the Argentinian Supreme Court in June 2005.
Some of the famous ‘mothers of the disappeared’ protest group show Argentinean President Nestor Kirchner portraits of their lost sons. For nearly three decades, these mothers have fought for the right to re-unite with their abducted children.
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“The Supreme Court’s ruling shows that no matter how many years go by, laws that block justice for gross abuses of human rights remain a thorn in the side of democratic governments,” commented Jose Miguel Vivanco, Americas director of Human Rights Watch, the US-based campaign group.
The families and relatives of those ‘disappeared’ during the ‘dirty war’ also welcomed the Court’s decision. Estela Carlotto, president of the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, one of the most vocal opponents of the amnesty laws, described it as a vindication for their 25-year campaign for justice.
"The laws created an impunity which has afflicted us for years," 76-year-old Carlotto told reporters. "We have had to live with these thieves and assassins walking freely among us."
For the first time since the end of the military dictatorship, human rights activists have the ear of the ruling administration. The repeal of the 1980s amnesty laws was one of the first actions taken by centre-left president Nestor Kirchner after coming to power in May 2003.
More recently, the president has pushed forward plans to turn the Naval Mechanics School in Buenos Aires - one of the military’s most notorious torture centres – into an official museum of memory. The Kirchner administration has also agreed to mark 24 March – the date of the 1976 coup that brought Videla’s junta to power – as a ‘National Day of memory, truth and justice’.
Young Argentinians, many of whom have become politicised by the country’s 2001-2002 political and economic crisis, are generally sympathetic to the country’s ongoing search for justice.
“There ought to be fair and objective justice met out to those who committed these terrible crimes,” says Diego Frontera, an actor in his late twenties. “I’d also like to see a deeper investigation into those business interests who helped fund the military forces.”
But not all Argentinians back the return to a debate they would rather consign to history. Among the most vociferous critics is the Catholic Church, which still holds a powerful sway on public opinion, despite losing some influence for its perceived association with the military regime.
One archbishop, for example, went on record as saying the proposed museum was "created out of a morbid need to return to the past because of an inability to deal with the future". Another argued that President Kirchner’s pro-justice stance only served to “divide society up into the pure and the impure".
Split as public opinion may be, the issue of the ‘dirty war’ shows no signs of going away. News of exhumed bodies or the identification of former torture centres regularly appear in the nation’s press.
The media gave wide coverage, for example, to last year’s discovery of Azucena Villaflor’s remains. A founding member of the campaign group, Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, Villaflor was arrested in December 1977. She is believed to have died after being thrown out of a military plane into the sea.
Last year’s repeal of the impunity laws by the Supreme Court, however, has not resulted in the flood of new cases that many predicted. In fact, the majority of recent legal action has come from outside Argentina.
Spain has met with particular success in securing the extradition of several former Argentinian military officials. In April 2005, a Spanish court condemned ex-naval officer Adolfo Scilingo to 640 years in prison for his part in the murder of 17 people during the military dictatorship.
For Dolores Centurion, the question of legal justice against the perpetrators of Argentina’s ‘dirty war’ is important but secondary.
“What’s most important for me is finding where my parents are buried,” says the 30-year-old nurse, whose mother and father were killed during the military dictatorship. “Only then will I really be at peace and able to move on with my life.”
This report was written by Oliver Balch for IRIN
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