Argentina's Eichmann trial?
I had coffee yesterday with an Argentine journalist who has made a hobby out of studying the disappearances and other crimes of the so-called Dirty War. The topic has significance for him: his own father disappeared when he was a child – luckily to “re-appear” later, unlike many others.
He had offered to help me find information on the Dirty War. “It’s very hard to come from abroad and study this time,” he said, noting that there was very little easily accessible information. “People here act like nothing happened.”
Right. The few people who want to create memorials to the past are forced to act outside the law, spray-painting the walls of former torture centers with “nunca más” (never again), or erecting illegal signs, like this one apparently put up by HIJOS. It reminds people of the proximity of the ’78 World Cup stadium and the ESMA – the Navy Mechanics’ School – the largest secret detention center:
But there may be change in the air. This week, the “crusading Spanish judge” Garzón has requested the extradition of 46 former military officers for crimes against humanity. Argentina used to automatically turn down such requests, insisting that to allow extradition of Argentine citizens would compromise Argentine national sovereignty. If you accept the importance of national sovereignty, it’s not an unreasonable point: if judge can decide to prosecute foreign citizens for crimes committed in their own country, well, that is something of a challenge to their nation’s legal system, which you would expect to have a monopoly on such prosecutions.
But the Argentine situation is unusual. The judicial system here is paralyzed by laws preventing the prosecution of Dirty War criminals below the top ranks, and another law pardoning the few big shots who had been briefly imprisoned after the dramatic trials of 1985. And so a central quest of all the human rights groups continues to be “the battle against impunity,” and their belief seems to be that it’s far better to have the human rights abusers judged outside the country than not at all.
Now the new president Nestor Kirchner (whose name was misspelled Kirshner on the Bush administration’s press release given out last week after the two presidents met) seems to want to get at the human rights violators somehow. Kirchner was (briefly) imprisoned during the dictatorship; presumably he wants to return the favor.
And so, with the extradition requests, the subject is once again in the papers, and in conversations. My Argentine friends report getting into arguments with those who oppose the extraditions, who say it would be better to let the matter alone. People made the same argument 20 years ago, at the end of the dictatorship.
From an outsider’s point of view, this seems a bit like Argentina’s Eichmann trial.
Let me explain: Adolf Eichmann, labeled (inaccurately) as the chief architect of Hitler’s “Final Solution,” went into hiding after the Second World War, escaping the Nuremburg trials in which the Allies prosecuted vanquished Nazis. It took 15 years to find him (hiding in suburban Buenos Aires), at which point Israel smuggled him out of Argentina and put him on trial.
Eichmann’s capture bothered some in Germany who would have preferred the matter be forgotten. Chancellor Adenauer, for example, worried it would “stir up again all the horrors” and encourage anti-German sentiment. But despite the reluctance of some, the prosecution of Eichmann spurred a series of trials for other Nazis in Germany, and many of the people who had for a time been called the “murderers in our midst” – the same phrase is used in Argentina – found themselves on trial.
Here’s what Hannah Arendt says of the impact of the capture of Eichmann in her book Eichmann in Jerusalem:
Immediately after Hitler’s fall, this would have been impossible. Few Germans felt like hurling accusations at that point since, in words Arendt pulls from a German newspaper, “they themselves felt incriminated.” But 15 years down the road people seemed more willing to face the facts. I hope that’s the case here, too.
He had offered to help me find information on the Dirty War. “It’s very hard to come from abroad and study this time,” he said, noting that there was very little easily accessible information. “People here act like nothing happened.”
Right. The few people who want to create memorials to the past are forced to act outside the law, spray-painting the walls of former torture centers with “nunca más” (never again), or erecting illegal signs, like this one apparently put up by HIJOS. It reminds people of the proximity of the ’78 World Cup stadium and the ESMA – the Navy Mechanics’ School – the largest secret detention center:
But there may be change in the air. This week, the “crusading Spanish judge” Garzón has requested the extradition of 46 former military officers for crimes against humanity. Argentina used to automatically turn down such requests, insisting that to allow extradition of Argentine citizens would compromise Argentine national sovereignty. If you accept the importance of national sovereignty, it’s not an unreasonable point: if judge can decide to prosecute foreign citizens for crimes committed in their own country, well, that is something of a challenge to their nation’s legal system, which you would expect to have a monopoly on such prosecutions.
But the Argentine situation is unusual. The judicial system here is paralyzed by laws preventing the prosecution of Dirty War criminals below the top ranks, and another law pardoning the few big shots who had been briefly imprisoned after the dramatic trials of 1985. And so a central quest of all the human rights groups continues to be “the battle against impunity,” and their belief seems to be that it’s far better to have the human rights abusers judged outside the country than not at all.
Now the new president Nestor Kirchner (whose name was misspelled Kirshner on the Bush administration’s press release given out last week after the two presidents met) seems to want to get at the human rights violators somehow. Kirchner was (briefly) imprisoned during the dictatorship; presumably he wants to return the favor.
And so, with the extradition requests, the subject is once again in the papers, and in conversations. My Argentine friends report getting into arguments with those who oppose the extraditions, who say it would be better to let the matter alone. People made the same argument 20 years ago, at the end of the dictatorship.
From an outsider’s point of view, this seems a bit like Argentina’s Eichmann trial.
Let me explain: Adolf Eichmann, labeled (inaccurately) as the chief architect of Hitler’s “Final Solution,” went into hiding after the Second World War, escaping the Nuremburg trials in which the Allies prosecuted vanquished Nazis. It took 15 years to find him (hiding in suburban Buenos Aires), at which point Israel smuggled him out of Argentina and put him on trial.
Eichmann’s capture bothered some in Germany who would have preferred the matter be forgotten. Chancellor Adenauer, for example, worried it would “stir up again all the horrors” and encourage anti-German sentiment. But despite the reluctance of some, the prosecution of Eichmann spurred a series of trials for other Nazis in Germany, and many of the people who had for a time been called the “murderers in our midst” – the same phrase is used in Argentina – found themselves on trial.
Here’s what Hannah Arendt says of the impact of the capture of Eichmann in her book Eichmann in Jerusalem:
The results were amazing. Seven months after Eichmann’s arrival in Jerusalem – and four months before the opening of the trial – Richard Baer, successor to Rudolf Höss as Commandant of Auschwitz, could finally be arrested. In rapid succession, most of the members of the so-called Eichmann Commando – Franz Novak, who lived as a printer in Austria; Dr. Otto Hunsche, who had settled as a lawyer is West Germany; Hermann Krumey, who had become a druggist; Gustav Richter, former “Jewish adviser” in Rumania; and Willi Zöpf, who had filled the same post in Amsterdam – were arrested also; although the evidence against them had been published in Germany years before, in books and magazine articles, not one of them had found it necessary to live under an assumed name.
Immediately after Hitler’s fall, this would have been impossible. Few Germans felt like hurling accusations at that point since, in words Arendt pulls from a German newspaper, “they themselves felt incriminated.” But 15 years down the road people seemed more willing to face the facts. I hope that’s the case here, too.
previously there was i will (not) resist
afterwards you have Two views of Formosa
Y hoy, más noticias: Kirchner dice que en vez de procesar a los milicos en el extranjero, él quiere que el congreso cabie los leyes que previenen que ellos sean juzagados acá. [submitted on 31 Jul 03]
But I repeat: let's not ignore that -at least- something has been done. And don't say that argentinians have cleansed their memory, and that the only people who "want to create memorials to the past are forced to act outside the law, spray-painting the walls of former torture centers with “nunca más” (never again), or erecting illegal signs". The government of the city of Buenos Aires is building an entire park called "Parque de la Memoria", behind Ciudad Universitaria, which will include large plaques with the name of each one of the 30,000 desaparecidos. Teachers in public schools are asked to reflect with their pupils each 24th March about the dictatorship. I'm not denying that a big part of the argentinians say that the 30,000 desaparecidos where killed because "they have surely done something wrong" (or the horrible "por algo será" - "it should be because of something") or because they were "bolches" and bla bla bla, but I have to say that we should see also the other side of the facts. [submitted on 01 Aug 03]
I think you're right that we shouldn't necessarily say that people act as if 'nothing as happened'. Everyone over 35 I've talked to admits that the dictatorship did horrible things. Even former participants in the disappearances admit it. The point is the next thing many of them do is make excuses, often in the same apologetic tone of voice -- the country was very unsafe, there was a lot of (leftwing) terrorism that nobody talks about, etc. For them it doesn't seem so much like a matter of historical clarification, setting the record straight. It's more as if explaining WHY the military overreacted to the terrorism is to explain that they had some kind of moral exemption from the general prohibition from torture and mass murder.
Likewise, we should acknowledge the fact that there were massive trials, and in that sense Argentina is ahead of, say, Chile. But rather than compare Argentina to other countries with similar pasts, I would say we should compare what's happened in Argentina with our standards of justice, and in that sense the results have been -- in anybody's estimation -- woefully inadequate.
So when the city decides to build the "Parque de la Memoria" -- more or less equivalent to building a monument to the World Trade Center attack somewhere in Queens -- we should understand that as progress. But we should remember that many of the people who were an active part of this mess are still alive and free, and realize that we still have a long way to go. [submitted on 02 Aug 03]
And also, we have to admit that the impunity in Argentina is one of the consecuences of the process and we won´t be recover from that until we judge and punish all those responsable. so, we have a long long way to go, the good thing is that we are starting to move in the right direction. [submitted on 04 Aug 03]
My point wasn't that nothing is being done - really it was the opposite: now, finally, 27 years after the military took over the government, there seems to be some real movement in the right direction.
Regarding the 1985 trials: they may at first have been a good faith effort to do justice, but ultimately the trials were no good. To begin with, only 9 people were tried. 692 people responsible for gross human rights violations have been identified by the Centro de Esudios Legales y Sociales (CELS) - you can get the list free at the CELS office in San Telmo. And, of course, those who were imprisoned were freed shortly after.
I understand how some Argentines see it as a good thing that the country put its own human rights offenders on trial. To me, though, the 1985 trials are a perfect example of the failure of a country's attempt to try a former government.
I hope it's possible to do a little more justice now. [submitted on 04 Aug 03]