Argentine Senate Opens Debate on Bill to Curb Human Rights Trials

Survivors acted out the horrors of imprisonment under former military rule as Argentina’s Senate opened debate Monday on a bill to wind down human rights prosecution of military and police officials.

President Raul Alfonsin proposed the measure, and its passage appeared assured in the 46-member Senate.

Although his center-left Radical Civic Union occupies a minority 18 seats, support is expected from seven senators representing small, provincial parties.

The opposition, labor-based Peronist party holds 21 seats. It opposes the bill, as do most human rights organizations, smaller leftist parties and youth groups rallying under the slogan “trial and punishment for all the guilty.”

Several members of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, an organization of women whose children disappeared during military rule, were ejected from the public gallery when they began shouting “Traitors!” and “Scoundrels!” at the legislators.

Antonio Berhongaray, the Radical party chairman of the Senate Defense Commission, said the government could not be accused of weakness on human rights and wanted to see an end to the trials.

“Alfonsin’s human rights record has always been clear and courageous,” he said. “It is inconceivable that the trials against the military should go on forever.”

The bill sets a 60-day deadline for starting the trial of officials who stand accused of abduction, torture, murder or other human rights violations while they were striving to wipe out leftist subversion in the late 1970s, during armed forces rule.

It sets a 30-day deadline for filing new complaints in connection with the repression, which followed a wave of leftist guerrilla violence.

Courts would be empowered to speed up the trial process.

The initial stages of trial now are under way for about 30 to 35 officials, human rights groups estimate.