Golpe de estado – Or the last military dictatorship.

At the moment I am spending a lot of time with reading and working on Argentinas recent history. Between 1976 and 1983, during the last military dictatorship 30.000 people were kidnapped and murdered by the military. Alleged enemies of the state, members of leftist guerrilla groups, leftist activists, trade union members, social workers, students….anybody was considered as enemy who slightly sympathised with with social ideas. Countless innocent people were kidnapped, tortured, killed. Their bodies were hastily buried or thrown in the sea during the infamous “death flights”.

In 1985 the heads of the military junta were sentenced for these crimes. By strong pressure, through several uprisings, the military then forced the government in power to pass imunity and amnesty laws – why all the convicted persons regained their freedom.

Thanks to the extensive work of Argentinian and European human rights organisations trials were held in Europe in the ’90. So the military junta was at least condemned for the murdering of European citizens. Obviously, these sentences were passed in absentia.

Nonetheless, the political pressure from the European governments that followed the trials helped to influence the Argentinian politics. Nestor Kirchner put the laws in question on his agenda and in 2003 the Argentinian Constitutional Court finally annulled them. Eversince trials have been held against the murderers.

Yesterday, a large-scale trial started against those who tortured and killed several thousand in the most important torture center: the ESMA: Escuela Superior de Mecánica de la Armada. It’s the second league of the former military in power who is in the dock.

I have the chance to accompany in the next two weeks the German lawyer Wolfgang Kaleck and the Journalist Alexandra Weltz who came to Argentina to observerve the trial and produce a videoblog about it. Wolfgang Kaleck was the one who defended the cases of German victims before German courts. As several of his cases were successful, the German government applied in 2004 for the extradition of  Jorge Rafael Videla – former head of the military.

For more information check the webpage of the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights.