Argentina Case Evokes Memories Of The Dirty War

Argentina case evokes ‘dirty war’ memories
By Jude Webber in Buenos Aires
Published: April 26 2010 16:00 | Last updated: April 26 2010 16:00
Just as Argentina jailed its last “dirty war” leader, a bitter political row has flared over whether the children of the owner of the country’s top media group were stolen from people who disappeared under the military dictatorship.

The emblematic case, mixing human rights abuses perpetrated by the 1976-83 junta with the high-profile barrage of attacks between media group Clarín, the judiciary and President Cristina Fernández, illustrates how the country’s past continues to cast a long shadow over the present nearly 30 years since the return of democracy.

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“This case is one of public interest. It goes beyond a private case,” said Gastón Chillier, executive director of CELS, a leading human rights group.

Felipe and Marcela Noble Herrera, both 34, broke their silence last week with a full-page advert in newspapers and a television appearance, saying they feared they had become “pawns in the [government’s] onslaught” against Clarín, owned by their mother, Ernestina Herrera de Noble.

On television, Marcela Noble Herrera said the “government is pursuing us and pressurising the judges who have to resolve our cause” instead of taking issue with the delays in resolving a matter “that would bring peace to three families”.

“Do they care about us or do they need, politically, for us to be the children of disappeared?” she asked.

Her comments came after Ms Fernández last month used the anniversary of Argentina’s 1976 coup, now a national Day of Memory, to attack the “impunity of the media’s power . . . almost a mafia power” and to make a personal pledge to pursue the case in international courts “if we don’t find justice in Argentina”.

Though the president, who has publicly championed the cause of human rights, did not mention Clarín or the family by name, her meaning was clear. The government has often criticised journalists in general, and Clarín in particular, for what it sees as a failure to report its achievements.

The president has also clashed with the judiciary in recent months over controversial plans to use central bank reserves to repay debt. One politician from her party even suggested recently that judges should take exams every four years and be forced to retire at 75 – a swipe at one of the supreme court judges, Carlos Fayt, who is 92 and who had described as “nonsense” a remark by Ms Fernández.

Human rights groups say as many as 30,000 people died or were “disappeared”– some dumped at sea from aeroplanes – during the dirty war, and hundreds of babies were stolen from victims and often given to military families to raise.

The Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, with their trademark white headscarves, began marching every week in the square in front of the presidential Pink House to demand news of their lost relatives. To date, they have traced the identity of 101 grandchildren, some via ingenious means, such as airing a photograph in a popular television soap opera which led to one man finding his biological family.

“We have never had any concrete evidence that we could be the children of disappeared,” the Noble Herreras wrote in their newspaper advert, in which they said they had voluntarily given DNA samples to be compared with those of two families who are searching for their grandchildren.

The Grandmothers agree there is no certainty that the pair were stolen children, but the circumstances of their adoption have long been questioned and Mr Chillier said the family had used a barrage of legal tactics to delay judicial rulings in a case that has been dragging on for nine years.

The Grandmothers want the DNA samples compared not just with the two petitioning families, but with the entire contents of a national genetic databank, which belongs to the government. The Noble Herreras say that does not offer them the same guarantees as conducting the test in a forensic laboratory owned by the judiciary. They are currently waiting for the supreme court to rule on procedural issues.

“This isn’t a fight between the government and the media,” said Estela de Carlotto, the head of the Grandmothers. “It’s a question of defending human rights.”

The latest events in the adoption saga come after 82-year-old Reynaldo Bignone, the last president of the 1976-83 military junta, was jailed on Wednesday for a quarter of a century for his role in 56 cases of kidnapping, torture and murder.

“Justice is slow to arrive but it comes – look at the Bignone ruling,” said Mr Chillier. “They [the Noble Herreras], their families and society have to know the truth.”