Ex-combatants of the Falklands War mobilized this Tuesday to the Supreme Court of Justice to demand that it rule in the legal case in which a hundred ex-military personnel were denounced for torturing soldiers of their own troops during the 1982 war conflict, which has been paralyzed for eleven months, and they asserted that “the Judiciary violates human rights.”
“There cannot be 40 years of impunity in Argentina and we say emphatically that torture in the Malvinas is a crime against humanity; if this situation is not redeemed, we will never have an Argentina that can consecrate a sovereign, representative democracy that defends and protects the rights of citizens,” said Roldolfo Carrizo, president of the Malvinas Islands Ex-Combatants Center (Cecim) of La Plata, at the ceremony that took place in front of the Palace of Justice.
The claim was led by members of Cecim La Plata, the Provincial Commission for Memory (Cpm) -also a plaintiff in the case-, the Autonomous CTA of the Province of Buenos Aires, the Group for Sovereignty (GPS), the Center for Veterans and Ex-combatant Islas Malvinas (CEVECIM) from Berisso and a student center from Normal 1 in La Plata, who demonstrated peacefully and with a climate of awareness and mutual support.
After 15 years of initiating the case, which contains more than 170 statements by victims and 130 soldiers accused of these acts – 3 of them prosecuted and another 20 called for questioning – the Court must decide whether it considers the facts denounced as crimes against humanity, which makes them imprescriptible, or common crimes.
“There cannot be 40 years of impunity in Argentina and we emphatically say that torture in Malvinas is a crime against humanity”
Among those who went to demand justice was Eduardo José Ortuondo, from the Mechanized Infantry Regiment (RIM) 3, who fought on the outskirts of Puerto Argentino and gave his testimony as a direct victim of the reported torture.
“They staked me and the entire guard under the snow for seven hours straight and beat us. They also put us into wells of frozen water. We ask that they declare it against humanity so that torture and ill-treatment have no prescription.” He added that “April 2nd are not happy dates, this always comes to mind. The best gift for the 40th anniversary (since the beginning of the war) would be Justice.”
The complaints raise the imposition of torture and illegitimate deprivation of liberty. The main means of torture that appears in the testimonies is the staking of soldiers outdoors for long periods of time, in some cases without coats or shoes in the frigid climate of the islands.
Tortures were also denounced, such as being buried standing up to the neck in wells that the victims themselves had to dig, the obligation to submerge in ice water completely naked, beatings, cattle prods, and the deliberate lack of provision of subsistence items.
“Here in the Court there are soldiers staked out. We allow ourselves to say it because torture continues to occur in the psyche and the subjectivity of each one of the soldiers who dared to denounce it and go against the imposition of silence by the civic-military dictatorship,” he said. Jerónimo Guerrero Iraola, lawyer for Cecim La Plata, the complainant body.
He affirmed that “today the Judicial Power of the Nation violates human rights.” He also explained that “the soldiers tortured in the Malvinas suffered at least three moments of violation of their basic elementary rights of their human dignity: the first was torture, the second the configuration of a State logic so that this goes unpunished and the third is the work of the Judiciary”.
The lawyer confirmed that the crimes present enough evidence to be considered crimes against humanity. “With 10% of the evidence that is in this file, which tells the stories of the victims and official documents that support and assure what tortured soldiers have exposed before judicial officials, we would have the perpetrators convicted, but it does not happen because the Power Judiciary has decided to make flesh the mandate of the dictatorship, and today it perpetuates the logic of violation of human rights.
During the demonstration, songs by León Gieco were played and the song “La Memoria” was played, while the ex-combatants held a flag that read “Malvinas, 40 years of impunity. Memory, truth, justice, sovereignty, peace.” They also placed on the floor and the fence of the entrance to the Court, human figures made of black cardboard representing the soldiers stationed in Malvinas, with messages of denunciation such as “Soldier staked by the genocidal State”, “40 years later we await justice” and “Malvinas was also the dictatorship.”
The ex-combatants of Cecim La Plata Carrizo and Ernesto Alonso, Roberto Cipriano, Secretary of the Provincial Commission for Memory, and Hugo Godoy, head of ATE and secretary of the Autonomous CTA spoke.
Alonso recalled that among the soldiers who participated in the Malvinas War “we are going to find appropriators of babies, pilots of the death flights and those who tortured in the different extermination camps.”
Likewise, he denounced that “for 40 years the Armed Forces have been maintaining in the death certificates of many comrades that their deaths occurred ‘in combat’ and we were witnesses that unfortunately many of our comrades died in the hands of these genocides.”
Lawyer Pablo Vassel, who at the beginning of the case as Undersecretary for Human Rights of Corrientes, between 2004 and 2008, collected testimonies from the Malvinas combatants and presented them as a complaint to investigate human rights violations, said that the combatants “are a group that was silenced by the ‘demalvinization’ and impunity, and they feel motivated to tell their story since all the victims of the military dictatorship began to make their testimonies public in court.”
Roberto Cipriano, from the CPM, also a complainant, stated that what is happening in this case is “appalling and it is embarrassing to have to come and explain this.” He pointed out that these events have been “unnoticed by the Judiciary, enshrining impunity to date,” and “revictimize again and again those young people who left the best years of their lives for our country.”
The ex-combatants filed a petition with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights that “is under analysis and we will have news about it at any time,” Guerrero Iraola said.
Cecim’s lawyer handed in a request for immediate dispatch to the Court together with Cipriano and said: “we demand that the court live up to history and produce the ruling as soon as possible.”
