Coming to terms with the Argentine military dictatorship
The coming to terms with the Argentine military dictatorship began in 1983 and continues to this day. Many crimes of the dictatorship are still not atoned for and many of the 30,000 victims have disappeared. During the military dictatorship from 1976 to 1983 Argentina was ruled by a junta made up of generals, the composition of which changed several times. While the right-wing, authoritarian and ultra-nationalist military regime ruled, civil war-like conditions arose with state terror and counter-terror on the part of left guerrilla organizations. Towards the end the country was plunged into a deep economic crisis.
History of the work-up
CONADEP commission
After his election in 1983, the first democratically elected President Raúl Alfonsín wanted to achieve a thorough analysis of the crimes during the dictatorship. However, due to massive pressure from the military, this was largely stopped after a few years and only resumed from around 2003 under President Néstor Kirchner .
The processing of the human rights violations of the military dictatorship was first pushed very consistently. The CONADEP was established a commission with the investigation of cases of "disappeared" in the military dictatorship persons ( desaparecidos ) concerned. In the period between 1983 and 1984, the commission reported 8,000 disappearances from the population, but estimates speak of a high number of unreported cases and, in effect, around 30,000 "disappeared". CONADEP concluded that the military government had committed unjustifiable human rights offenses, even considering the civil war-like conditions of 1976 and 1977. Your report, which became a bestseller under the title “ Nunca más ” (“Never again”) in book form under the direction of the well-known writer Ernesto Sábato , documents the extent of human rights violations on the basis of 709 clearly proven individual cases.
As a result, the case against the junta ( Juicio a las Juntas ) was tried against the highest management level of the junta. The trial began on April 22, 1985, and the verdict was announced on December 9, 1985: Jorge Videla and Emilio Massera , both members of the first military junta, received life imprisonment as those primarily responsible for the "dirty war", and members of the second junta long prison terms. The third (under Leopoldo Galtieri ) and fourth junta (under Bignone ) went unpunished.
Closing line law
Following further trials in 1986, the government was forced Alfonsín in the same year, as a concession to the military, the so-called final stroke Act to adopt (Ley de Punto Final). Under this law, new charges could only be brought within 60 days. This resulted in a great wave of indictments and trials.
In this situation, the so-called Carapintada incident occurred: A major accused of torture and murder holed up in a barracks in Cordoba in 1987 , supported by Colonel Aldo Rico , one of the spokesmen for the right arm of the military after democratization. They called for an amnesty for all of the accused in the military. Despite numerous mass demonstrations and appeals for support from all sides of society against these demands, the Alfonsin government largely accommodated the insurgent military and passed the so-called law on obedience (Ley de Obediencia Debida). This meant an amnesty for the lower echelons of the military, who were credited with executing higher-level orders in their crimes.
Development under Menem, de la Rúa and Néstor Kirchner
The government under Carlos Menem , who succeeded Raúl Alfonsín after the economic crisis in 1988 in 1989 and was in office until 1999, tried to reform the structure of the Argentine military more strongly and, as a first step, abolished conscription in 1994 . As a concession, however, the convicted dictators were pardoned. This shows that the fear of another military coup was still latent until the early 1990s. At the same time, Menem pardoned many convicted military personnel, but also some former guerrilla fighters.
After the change of power in 1999, when Menem was replaced by Fernando de la Rúa , the demand was raised louder to reverse the amnesty and to annul the two laws Punto Final and Obediencia Debida in order to be able to indict those responsible who had previously been unpunished. It took, among other things, because of the economic crisis between 1998 and 2003, until 2003 under the government of Néstor Kirchner , until this project was implemented and in 2005 was confirmed by the Supreme Court of Argentina. The pardons issued by Menem were canceled.
How the military dealt with the crimes
The Argentine military itself described the period of its rule with the euphemistic term "process of national reorganization" (Spanish Proceso de Reorganización Nacional , often abbreviated as Proceso). This name was chosen by the military government to indicate the temporary nature of this "process". The nation, which at that time found itself in a deep social crisis, was to be "reorganized" according to conservative ideals and then "released" into democracy according to the plan of the military. Because of the ten thousandfold human rights violations committed by the military, this name is widely viewed as trivializing and euphemistic, and is therefore usually placed in quotation marks to distance it.
Today the democratic integration of the military into the state apparatus seems to have largely succeeded, which is also due to the poor image of this institution in large parts of the population, which has severely limited its influence. There is no threat of another coup, even in the worst times of the economic crisis, despite international concerns and some rumors, there was never any serious speculation about such a solution in the country. Even spectacular interventions by the Kirchner government in the military apparatus, such as the dismissal of the entire management team at the beginning of 2005 for involvement in a drug scandal, remained without significant resistance.
Legal proceedings from 2010
It was not until the 2010s that, after years of stagnation, there were again several trials against those responsible for the crimes during the dictatorship.
In February 2010, a trial of eight former military officials began in Buenos Aires for crimes committed during the Argentine military dictatorship. The German government acted as a joint plaintiff for the murder of Elisabeth Käsemann . In December 2010 Videla was sentenced to life imprisonment together with 15 other people responsible for the repression.
At the beginning of July 2012, Jorge Rafael Videla and Reynaldo Bignone were held legally responsible for the kidnapping of imprisoned opponents of the regime , which were often committed during the military dictatorship from 1976 to 1983 , most of whom were subsequently killed. The federal court in Buenos Aires handed prison terms of 50 years for Videla and 15 years for Bignone. Four other high-ranking officers were sentenced to terms of between 14 and 40 years, while two other defendants were acquitted.
In November 2012, almost 30 years after the dictatorship, 68 other suspects were opened in the 5th Court of Buenos Aires. Among them were eight pilots from the Argentine Air Force at the time who had carried out the so-called death flights , in which prisoners were thrown alive from helicopters or airplanes over the sea.
literature
- Patrick Eser / Jan-Henrik Witthaus (eds.): Memoria - Postmemoria: the Argentine military dictatorship (1976–1983) in the context of the culture of remembrance . Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2016 ISBN 978-3-631-65761-4
Individual evidence
- ↑ Argentina brings Elisabeth Käsemann's murder to court (ND, March 27, 2010)
- ↑ Videla fue condenado a prisión perpetua e irá a una cárcel común , LaNacion.com , December 22, 2010
- ↑ Argentina: Ex-dictators Videla and Bignone convicted of baby robbery at zeit.de, July 6, 2012 (accessed on July 6, 2012).
- ↑ http://www.tagesschau.de/ausland/todesengel100.html ( Memento from December 2, 2012 in the Internet Archive )