DNA test reveals grandson of Argentina rights group founder taken during 'dirty war'
Source: Associated Press
DNA test reveals grandson of Argentina rights group founder taken during 'dirty war'
Article by: Associated Press
Updated: August 5, 2014 - 4:45 PM
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — An enduring mystery of Argentina's "dirty war" ended Tuesday with the announcement that a prominent human rights activist has located the son born to her daughter who was killed by the military dictatorship in August 1978.
The identity of the son born to slain student activist Laura Carlotto was confirmed by DNA after the now 36-year-old man came forward to voluntarily take the test, family members said.
Laura Carlotto's mother, Estela Barnes de Carlotto, is founder of the human rights group Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo. She is among leaders of the effort to seek justice for victims of the dictatorship that ruled the South American country in 1976-83 and to locate hundreds of children taken from their captured parents and illegally adopted by families who supported the dictatorship.
The Argentine military captured, tortured and killed thousands of people in a crackdown on guerrillas and their supporters during the dictatorship.
Read more: http://www.startribune.com/world/270040291.html
Kissinger approved Argentinian 'dirty war'
Declassified US files expose 1970s backing for junta
Duncan Campbell in Los Angeles
The Guardian, Friday 5 December 2003 21.20 EST
Henry Kissinger gave his approval to the "dirty war" in Argentina in the 1970s in which up to 30,000 people were killed, according to newly declassified US state department documents.
Mr Kissinger, who was America's secretary of state, is shown to have urged the Argentinian military regime to act before the US Congress resumed session, and told it that Washington would not cause it "unnecessary difficulties".
The revelations are likely to further damage Mr Kissinger's reputation. He has already been implicated in war crimes committed during his term in office, notably in connection with the 1973 Chilean coup.
The material, obtained by the Washington-based National Security Archive under the Freedom of Information Act, consists of two memorandums of conversations that took place in October 1976 with the visiting Argentinian foreign minister, Admiral César Augusto Guzzetti. At the time the US Congress, concerned about allegations of widespread human rights abuses, was poised to approve sanctions against the military regime.
According to a verbatim transcript of a meeting on October 7 1976, Mr Kissinger reassured the foreign minister that he had US backing in whatever he did.
More:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/dec/06/argentina.usa
= new reply since forum marked as read
6 August 2014 Last updated at 05:57 ET
Argentina Plaza de Mayo activist finds 'stolen grandson'
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Ms Carlotto spoke at a news conference surrounded by some of the families who have already been reunited[/font]
An Argentine activist who searches for people who were snatched as babies by the 1970s military junta has found her own grandson.
Estela de Carlotto said finding her grandson, a victim of the practice, was "reparation" for her and for Argentina.
She said he had come forward for DNA testing because he had doubts about his own identity.
The junta snatched hundreds of babies from their opponents and gave them to sympathisers to bring up.
Ms Carlotto's organisation, The Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, was formed to reunite biological parents with hundreds of children born in prisons and torture centres.
'Silent embrace'
Ms Carlotto and her grandson have not yet met face to face, but Ms Carlotto says she is already imagining what it will be like to embrace him.
More:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-28669697
I'm happy that Estela de Carlotto found her grandson.
Guido, the Grandson in the DNA of All Argentinians
Analysis by Fabiana Frayssinet
BUENOS AIRES, Aug 8 2014 (IPS) - The recovery of “grandchild number 114” – one of the sons and daughters of those who were “disappeared” during the Argentine dictatorship – caused a commotion that many compared to the excitement of making it to the final match of the World Cup a month ago.
A degree of compensation for the wound that has remained open during 30 years of democracy but has finally begun to heal.
“Speechless”, “excited”, “ecstatic” were some of the terms repeated over and over on the social networks which reached a record number of retweets and shares on Aug. 5, when the discovery of the grandson of the president and founder of the Abuelas (Grandmothers) de Plaza de Mayo organisation, Estela de Carlotto, was announced.
A sensation of “speechlessness” felt by most – although not all – people in Argentina and reflected across the media, regardless of ideological slant.
“The tireless struggle to search for their blood relatives could never be called into question, it is something so natural, so logical, so right, that no one can remain indifferent towards it,” lawyer Marta Eugenia Fernández of the University of Buenos Aires told IPS.
Since 1977 the Abuelas have been looking for the children born into captivity or kidnapped along with their parents during the 1976-1983 dictatorship, which left 30,000 people dead or disappeared, according to human rights groups. The children were raised by military and police couples as well as by families unaware of their origins, who adopted them in good faith.
More:
http://www.ipsnews.net/2014/08/guido-the-grandson-in-the-dna-of-all-argentinians/
Argentine Musician Finds Out His Biological Parents Were Killed by Country’s Dictatorship 36 Years Ago
Uki Goni / Buenos Aires
12:39 PM ET
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Estela de Carlotto, president of Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, right, and her grandson Ignacio Hurban, left, hug during a news conference in Buenos Aires, Aug. 8, 2014.
Victor R. Caivano—AP[/font]
Ignacio Hurban's parents were killed by a ruling dictatorship, and he was raised by another family
It wasn’t until his thirty-sixth birthday two months ago that Ignacio Hurban was told he was adopted. But his was no regular adoption — it transpired instead under the most violent of circumstances.
His real parents, Oscar Montoya and Laura Carlotto, were arrested in November 1977 by Argentina’s ruling dictatorship because of their political activities, disappearing into the macabre system of death camps the military set up across Argentina. His father was secretly executed shortly after his arrest. But his mother, two months pregnant, was kept alive until Hurban was born in June 1978, after which she was also murdered.
Hurban’s case was by no means an isolated one. It’s estimated that some 500 infants suffered the same fate during the bloody 1976-83 Argentinian regime, during which some 20,000 mostly young left-wing political activists were murdered. The military made only one exception during its killing spree: Pregnant women were kept alive until they gave birth. Afterwards, the infants were handed over to military families or unsuspecting couples to be raised according to the “Western and Christian” values the military claimed to defend. These infants grew up completely unaware of their real identities.
“It’s a crime beyond all imagination,” says Robert Cox, a British journalist who lived in Argentina during those years, bravely reporting and even confronting top generals personally about the crimes they were committing. “I still don’t understand how men who are meant to be men of honor, military men, could fall so low. It’s the one crime above all others that wakes us up to the horror of what happened and how terribly evil it was.”
Two former dictators of that regime were eventually convicted for the systematic kidnapping of children. Jorge Rafael Videla died in prison last year while serving a 50-year sentence, Reynaldo Bignone remains behind bars. Various military couples who knowingly took in such children have also been convicted, including cases in which the “adoptive father” played a hand in the killing of the infants’ real parents.
More:
http://time.com/3096122/ignacio-hurban-argentina/
Seems impossible, doesn't it, that any government in the world would stoop that low?
From a Wikipedia article regarding their most infamous torturer :
More:Alfredo Ignacio Astiz (born 8 November 1951) was a Commander, intelligence officer, Marine and maritime commando in the Argentine Navy during the military dictatorship of Jorge Rafael Videla during the Proceso de Reorganización Nacional (1976–1983). He was known as El Ángel Rubio de la Muerte (the "Blond Angel of Death", and had a reputation as a notorious torturer. He was discharged from the military in 1998 after defending his actions in a press interview.
~snip~
In December 1977 Astiz organized the kidnapping of about a dozen people associated with the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, including the founders Azucena Villaflor de Vicenti and two others. The non-violent group of mothers organized to learn the fates of their missing children and protested against the thousands of "disappeared." He also kidnapped two French nationals who were Catholic nuns, Leonie Duquet and Alice Domon. None was seen alive again after having been tortured at ESMA and "transferred", a euphemism for being taken elsewhere to be killed.
Astiz was witnessed torturing the nuns at ESMA by beating them, immersing them in water and applying electrified cattle prods to their breasts, genitals and mouths. A staged photograph intended to portray their support of the Montoneros, a Peronist leftist group, was leaked to the press. Despite repeated efforts by France to trace the nuns, the Argentine government denied all knowledge of them.
In late December 1977, unidentified bodies began washing up on beaches hundreds of kilometers south of Buenos Aires after heavy storms. Autopsies revealed they had died on impact, apparently having been thrown out of aircraft over the ocean, intended never to be discovered. In March 1978 Agence France-Presse reported that the bodies were believed to be the two nuns and several members of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, but this was not confirmed by the government. These and other bodies washed ashore were buried in mass graves at General Lavalle Cemetery, about 400 kilometers south of Buenos Aires.
In July 2005 several bodies of unidentified women were found in a mass grave in General Lavalle Cemetery. Forensic DNA testing by the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team identified the remains of Duquet, Azucena Villaflor de Vicenti, and two other founders of the Mothers of the Plaza in August 2005.[4] Domon's remains have not been found.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfredo_Astiz
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Alfredo Ignacio Astiz[/center]
