Argentina: Paying for the sins of the past
What can Latin American countries learn from Argentina's punitive approach?
Inside Story Americas Last Modified: 07 Jul 2012 12:40
- video -
"Truth is like opening a Pandora's box in Latin America. And once you have the truth you have power to move towards justice."
- Peter Kronbluh, a senior analyst at the National Security Archive
~snip~
There is also the question of the US's key role in supporting a continent wide campaign of political repression and terror, but should American politicians and officials be formally held to account for their actions?
~snip~
LATIN AMERICA - DEALING WITH THE PAST:
•Two former Argentine dictators were convicted of stealing babies from political prisoners
•A court in Buenos Aires sentenced Jorge Videla to 50 years in prison and Reynaldo Bignone to 15 years
•They are already serving jail sentences for crimes committed under military rule, between 1976 and 1983
•At least 400 babies are thought to have been taken from their parents while they were held in detention centres
•Thousands of people disappeared in Argentina between 1976 and 1983
•Human rights abuses in Guatemala killed hundreds of thousands after President Arbenz was deposed in 1954
•A 1964 coup in Brazil ushered in two decades of military rule
•The military junta in Brazil created Latin America's first death squads
•Bolivian doctator Hugo Banzer accused of human rights abuses
•Chile's Salvador Allende was deposed and replaced by Augusto Pinochet
•The Pinochet government is said to have tortured and murdered thousands of left-leaning Chileans
•The civil war in El Salvador left some 63,000 people dead
•Nicaragua's government fought CIA-backed fighters in the 1980's
More:
http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/insidestoryamericas/2012/07/201277102924893557.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
