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<font size=4><b>Julio Lopez: Impunity Yesterday and Today in Argentina
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<a href="http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2126/1/" eudora="autourl">
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2126/1/<br>
</a>Written by Marie Trigona <br>
Wednesday, 23 September 2009 <br><br>
</font><font face="georgia" size=3>Julio Lopez went missing three years
ago on September 18, 2006 in his hometown of La Plata, Argentina.
However, September 18, 2006, was the second time the father, construction
worker, activist and torture survivor was disappeared. Julio Lopez went
missing for the first time during Argentina’s 1976-1983 military
dictatorship, when he was kidnapped from his home during the night by a
commando group, taken to a secret detention center and tortured in
several different police barracks that served as clandestine network for
disappearing thousands. During his 1976 kidnapping and torture sessions,
during which he was tortured with the Picana [electric prod], he met
Miguel Etchecolatz, the police chief who coordinated kidnappings and
torture in the network of clandestine detention centers in La Plata, 30
miles from Buenos Aires. <br><br>
Lopez’s testimony during a historic human rights trial in 2006 led to
Etchecolatz’s conviction. The police chief was sentenced to life in
prison for crimes against humanity and genocide during the dictatorship.
Absent from the courtroom following his forced abduction, Julio Lopez
missed seeing the face of his torturer, Etchecolatz, dressed in police
clothing and a bullet proof vest, kissing a rosary as he was sentenced to
life in prison. <br><br>
Three years after the key witness’s disappearance, thousands marched in
Buenos Aires, La Plata and other cities to demand an end to impunity and
that Julio Lopez reappear alive. Protestors marched in cold rain and
under gray skies, which further clouded remaining hope that Lopez will be
found alive. Investigations have led to no answer as to where Lopez could
be located, alive or dead. “Three years after the disappearance of Julio
Lopez, the investigation into his whereabouts is practically paralyzed,”
said Myriam Bergman, attorney who represented Lopez during the trial
against Etchecolatz. “We feel as if there’s been an absolute negation of
justice.” <br><br>
Human rights groups presented a formal letter to the Supreme Court
accusing authorities of delaying the investigation into Lopez’s forced
disappearance. These groups suspect police and court authorities
with ties to officials who participated in rights abuses have disrupted
the investigation into Lopez’s disappearance. “Three years after the
second disappearance of Julio, we have denounced that the investigation
has been tied up by corrupt judges and authorities with affinity to
impunity for the military,” said Margarita Cruz, torture survivor and
human rights activist. “Today, September 18, marking 3 years since
Lopez’s disappearance, is a very painful day because once again we are
condemned to live with impunity.”<br><br>
<b>A Legacy of Impunity</b> <br><br>
Impunity is an all too long living legacy for Argentines. And justice for
the crimes committed during the bloody dictatorship has been slow.
Immediately following the dictatorship’s end in 1983, several junta
leaders were tried and sentenced. However, former President Carlos Menem
passed an amnesty law in 1990 that released jailed leaders of the former
junta and other military and police jailed for rights abuses. Following
the Due Obedience and Full Stop laws, all doors to justice were closed,
providing blanket amnesty for officers until 2003 when the Supreme Court
cancelled junta pardons. Miguel Etchecolatz was one officer who was
formerly pardoned. He had been sentenced to 23 years in prison for 91
cases of torture, but was released when the Due Obedience law went into
effect. In the years since the Supreme Court revoked amnesty, ruling that
immunity for former officers was unconstitutional, several high profile
human rights cases have begun. <br><br>
The trials were made possible by the work of human rights activists who
have endlessly demanded justice for the crimes committed against their
loved ones. One such group is HIJOS, ‘Children for Identity and Justice,’
which developed the escrache or “exposure” protest held at the home or
workplace of an unpunished criminal, as a method to deliver justice.
Eduardo Nachman is a part of HIJOS. “Justice is not only slow, but the
courts have organized the trials to take years,” says Nachman. “This
favors impunity: the suspects who are not held in jails while awaiting
trials can enjoy freedom and the witnesses who must wait to testify are
dying before they have information as to the whereabouts of their loved
ones and seeing the murderers go to jail.”<br><br>
CONADEP (The National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons) held an
investigation into human rights abuses in 1984. The government gave the
commission only 9 months to complete its report about fate of thousands
who were forcefully disappeared. CONADEP put together a 50,000 page
document, published as an official document Nunca Mas (Never Again). From
the testimony of survivors, the document details crimes committed in a
network of over 370 clandestine detention centers. Logically, thousands
must have been involved in the illegal detention and disappearance of
tens of thousands of activists, students and union organizers. “The
reports from 25 years ago documents 1,600 repressors involved in crimes.
If there were more than 400 clandestine detention centers, each center
would have needed many people to operate, so it’s logical to conclude
that several thousands were involved,” says Nachman. <br><br>
Despite concrete evidence concluding that thousands of officers were
involved, only 280 are facing trial, and many of those charged with
crimes are under house arrest rather than waiting for trial in jail. Only
58 people have been sentenced, most are under house arrest. Three have
been pardoned and Hector Febres, who worked at the infamous ESMA Navy
Mechanics School, died in his jail cell from cyanide poisoning just days
before he was to be sentenced. Rights groups believe that he was murdered
so the former officer wouldn’t break a pact of silence and release
information as to the whereabouts of children born in captivity and
appropriated by military and raised with a false identity. In another
case of impunity, Juan Miguel Wolk, who ran the Pozo de Banfield
detention center where hundreds perished, lives in a beach home in Mar
del Plata. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison but was later pardoned.
When judges ordered him to appear in court, following the Supreme Court’s
decision, they were informed that he had died. But Wolk, alias “the Nazi”
lives pretty well for a dead man in his home, just blocks from his
neighbor, Etchocolatz , who recently moved to a jail following his 2006
life sentence according to journalist Roberto Garron from Miradas del Sur
newspaper. <br><br>
The disappearance of Lopez has reopened painful wounds of impunity and
fears about the possibility of violent repercussions against survivors
and witnesses participating in human rights trials. “Julio Lopez had the
courage to identify Etchecolatz as a torturer,” said Nachman. “His
disappearance isn’t a coincidence. He was disappeared to scare off and
threaten many people who must testify.” Evidence that has surfaced
leads to Etchecolatz and his connections with the Buenos Aires provincial
police. “When the investigation made progress, all clues led to the
provincial police,” says Bergman. At the time of Lopez’s disappearance
more than 70 police officers in the ranks of the provincial police served
during the dictatorship, many have been “forcefully retired” following
pressures from human rights groups. Bergman adds, “There is a lack of
political commitment to investigate the police. The investigation was
interrupted right after they investigated a doctor with ties to
Etchecolatz and detectives found out that Lopez was in his car.”
Investigators have gathered evidence from Etchecolatz’s cell in Marcos
Paz, where another 100 officers from the dictatorship are under arrest,
including notebooks with information about witnesses testifying against
him and telephone numbers of members of the police force. <br><br>
Jose Shulman, a survivor from the Brusa detention center in Santa Fe,
said that despite the threats and disappearance of Lopez, none of the
2,500 witnesses have withdrawn their testimony or refused to testify in
the human rights trials. He interpreted the threats as a “sign that those
dictatorship supporters feel weak from the judicial defeat that they are
now facing.” <br><br>
The slogan “Never Again” was adopted with the hope that Argentina and
other countries in the region, including Brazil, Chile and Uruguay, ruled
by violent military dictatorships would never repeat that dark chapter in
history. Military dictatorships ruled the region in the 70’s under the
direction of Operation Condor, a shared regional plan to suppress
political activism with support from the US government. Much of the files
and top-secret information has yet to be released about the crimes the
military coups committed. And, without justice and with outstanding
impunity, history is likely to repeat itself. “Without Lopez there can’t
be a ‘Never Again,’” writes Ana Maria Careaga, executive director of the
Institute for the Space for Memory. For ‘Never Again’ to become a
reality, justice must be delivered. <br><br>
But Julio Lopez is not just a new name inscribed on the doleful roll call
of Argentina’s disappeared; he is also a reminder of the crimes against
humanity still taking place in the region. Today, Lopez’s disappearance,
threats and persecution against activists, an active coup in Honduras,
and US military bases in Latin America are chilling reminders that
“democracy” in the region has only advanced minimally since the era of
bloody military dictatorships. <br><br>
<i>Marie Trigona is a journalist, radio producer and filmmaker based in
Argentina. She can be reach through her blog at
<a href="http://mujereslibres.blogspot.com/">
http://mujereslibres.blogspot.com/</a><br><br>
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