Argentines unite against law helping human rights abusers [View all]
Thousands of Argentines of all ages and opposing political parties joined Wednesday to protest a Supreme Court ruling that many feared would lead to the release of convicted human rights criminals.
Argentines have been outraged by the top court’s decision last week that reduced the sentence of a human rights abuser based on a repealed law. Activists note that 750 such convicts could soon be freed with this precedent, and referred to this ruling as a “back-door amnesty.”
The so-called '2X1 law' was used by three of the Supreme Court’s five justices to reduce the 13-year sentence given to Luis Muiña for the kidnapping and torture of five people during a 1976 military operation against a suburban Buenos Aires hospital. The law was in effect from 1994 to 2001, when most dictatorship-era human rights criminals were still free.
Lower courts have meanwhile denounced it as unconstitutional and rejected requests for freedom by other convicted abusers. Congress overwhelmingly approved a bill Wednesday that would ban the reduction of jail sentences for crimes against humanity committed during Argentina’s brutal 1976-83 military dictatorship.
A firm reaction
Demonstrators marched to Buenos Aires' Plaza de Mayo square, facing the presidential offices, carrying banners with photos of those who were forcibly disappeared in a government-sponsored crackdown on leftist dissidents during Argentina’s “dirty war.” Human rights activists believe the real number of disappeared to be as high as 30,000.
Many wore white headscarves that have become a symbol of the Mothers and Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo human rights groups. During the dictatorship, they fought to recover their children and grandchildren by marching every week in front of the presidential offices.
“Fortunately, the whole society has reacted firmly,” Estela Barnes de Carlotto, president of the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, told demonstrators. Demonstrations against the ruling were held across Argentina, as well as in Barcelona and Paris.
President Mauricio Macri's Human Rights Secretary, Claudio Avruj, initially applauded the May 3 ruling but later retracted amid the political firestorm that followed. He has rejected calls for his resignation.
Speaking to the European Parliament in Brussels yesterday, former President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner - during whose tenure most of the 750 currently in prison for human rights crimes were tried and convicted - noted that Macri has always favored impunity for Dirty War perpetrators.
“This follows a long sequence of actions, starting with the president's referring to human rights as a 'scam'. They have created the institutional climate that made this ruling possible.”
At: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/argentines-unite-against-law-helping-human-rights-abusers/2017/05/10/b8757704-35e2-11e7-ab03-aa29f656f13e_story.html?utm_term=.606e397b1615
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