French President François Hollande joins Estela Carlotto in tribute to Argentine Dirty War victims.

[forest444]

Last edited Thu Feb 25, 2016, 10:13 PM - Edit history (1)

President François Hollande today took part in a memorial ceremony at the former Navy Mechanics School (ESMA) memorial, the site of 5,000 Dirty War era deaths and the most infamous clandestine detention center operated during Argentina’s 1976-83 civil-military dictatorship. The French leader was joined by the President of the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, Estela Barnes de Carlotto, and the Mayor of Buenos Aires Horacio Rodríguez Larreta.

President Hollande made some brief statements to the press highlighting the efforts made by “men and women who have looked for their sons and grandchildren for so many years,” referring to role played by the Mothers and Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo in the search of their sons and grandchildren who were kidnapped (and in many cases killed) by the military forces during the country’s darkest period.

Hollande concluded the memorial by throwing flowers onto the Río de la Plata from the Memorial Park; an estimated 8,000 victims were thrown alive from military aircraft over the bay from 1976 to 1978. He recalled that “France was also affected” by the brutal dictatorship as 22 victims were French nationals. He said that France “was aware that in Argentina a mass crime had been committed.”

Hollande warned that “barbarity never ends,” praising the significance of the ESMA memorial so that “the whole world knows what a dictatorship has been.”

At: http://buenosairesherald.com/article/209493/hollande-at-esma-memorial-france-aware-mass-crime-committed-in-argentina-

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President Hollande at Buenos Aires' Memorial Park with mothers and grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo. Argentine President Mauricio Macri, a sympathizer of the dictatorship, did not attend.[/center]

[noretreatnosurrender]

1. Thank you

Thank you for posting this article.

[forest444]

2. You're welcome, noretreatnosurrender.

I'm happy you enjoyed it. Here are a few images of the Memorial Park from which President Hollande threw the bouquet tribute. The park was built in 2007 overlooking the area in the Río de la Plata estuary where the infamous death flights took place 30 years earlier.

Peace.

[Judi Lynn]

3. Wonderful learning they created this area where people can stand and ponder the tragedy

of all those human beings as they were thrown from the military aircraft, falling through the sky, to their deaths in the deep waters off the shore, and only AFTER they had been brutally tortured, first. All because they were people who protested the fascist, US-supported dictatorship.

It should be a good place to collect their thoughts, and remind themselves that yes, it really happened.

I have to wonder now that a neo-fascist has taken the reigns, they might start rounding up the people who use that park area for its intended purpose, a place to reflect, mourn the lost, and hope for the future.

[Judi Lynn]

4. A human being will never forget the two French nuns who were tortured and murdered

for their support for the mothers of the political prisoners who had been murdered, after their totally non-violent organization was penetrated by a military spy, and betrayed for daring to try to find out what happened to their sons and daughters.

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Léonie Duquet (April 9, 1916, Longemaison, Doubs, France – 1977, Argentina) was a French nun who was arrested in December 1977 in Buenos Aires, Argentina and "disappeared." She was believed killed by the military regime of Argentine President Jorge Rafael Videla during the Dirty War. Alice Domon, a French nun working with Duquet, disappeared a few days later. They had been working in poor neighborhoods of Buenos Aires in the 1970s and supported the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, founded in 1977. Despite repeated efforts by France to trace the sisters, the Argentine military dictatorship was unresponsive.

In 1990 a French court in Paris tried Argentine Captain Alfredo Astiz, known to have arrested Duquet and believed implicated in the "disappearance" of Domon, for kidnapping the two sisters. He was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment in absentia.[1] In Argentina at the time, he and other military and security officers were shielded from prosecution by Pardon Laws passed in 1986 and 1987. These were repealed in 2003 and ruled unconstitutional in 2005, and the government re-opened prosecution of war crimes.

In July 2005 several bodies were found in a mass grave in General Lavalle Cemetery, 400 kilometers south of Buenos Aires. Forensic DNA testing in August identified one as Duquet's. DNA testing revealed that within the same grave were the remains of the three "disappeared" Argentine women, founders of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, who had also been missing since December 1977. Domon has not been found.[1] Since the confirmation of Duquet's murder, France has been seeking extradition of Astiz; in 2005 he was being detained in Argentina after being indicted on charges of kidnapping and torture.[1]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9onie_Duquet

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Alice Domon

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Alicia Domon, Caty, (born September 23, 1937, Charquemont, Doubs, France; disappeared on December 17 or 18, 1977 near Santa Teresita by the Argentine Sea) was a Roman Catholic nun from France who was one of two French nationals to be "disappeared" in December 1977 in Argentina during the military dictatorship of the "National Reorganization Process" (1976–1983). She was among a dozen people associated with the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, a human rights group, who were kidnapped and taken to the secret detention center at ESMA.

According to witnesses who saw her there, over a period of about 10 days, she was interrogated and tortured, forced to write a letter claiming participation in guerrilla group opposing the government, and photographed in a staged setting in front of a Montoneros banner (this photo was released to the press). That group of detainees, including Sister Léonie Duquet, was "transferred", a euphemism for being taken out and killed. Domon's remains have never been found.

Bodies began to wash up on beaches south of Buenos Aires in December 1977. They were quickly buried in mass graves. A March 1978 Agence France-Presse article reported that the bodies of the missing two French nuns and others associated with the Mothers were believed to have been among them.[1]

In 2000, a small plaza in Buenos Aires was named "Hermana Alice Domon y Hermana Leonie Duquet," in honor of the sisters. Their lives are celebrated in an annual commemoration at the Santa Cruz church of San Cristobal, where they had worked, and where the remains of Duquet and several Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo are buried.

In 2011, Alfredo Astiz, who had infiltrated the Mothers of the Plaza and organized the abduction of the twelve in December 1977, was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for that and other crimes against humanity. For his torturing at ESMA, he had been nicknamed "The Blond Angel of Death."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Domon

[forest444]

5. In honor of Sisters Domon and Duquet, whose murders helped turn the world against the dictators.

Thank you, Judi, for this essential information - which, although a veritable cause célèbre at the time, has since been largely forgotten outside of France and Argentina.

At the time, as you may know, the dictatorship claimed that they had been murdered by leftists (as they often claimed whenever the press got curious). They did so with premeditation, going as far as to order their captors (led by the infamous Navy Commander Jorge "Tigre" Acosta, who's now in jail thanks to Cristina Kirchner) to photograph the two nuns with a Montoneros banner behind them.

Sister Domon, who was very fond of Astiz, was said to have died asking about the well-being of "that nice young man." There must be a special place in Hell for people like him.

Thanks as always, Judi.