News / Argentina

Argentina activists to ask Obama to release dictatorship-era records

Friday, 26 February 2016 10:53 AM [ Last Update: Friday, 26 February 2016 11:08 AM ]

Members of human rights organizations Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo and Madres de Plaza de Mayo, including Estela de Carlotto (2-R), wait to greet French President Francois Hollande (out of frame) in Costanera Norte, Buenos Aires, on February 25, 2016. ©AFP

A rights group in Argentina says it will ask US President Barack Obama to declassify US documents related to the country’s dictatorship during his upcoming visit to the Latin American state.

Estela de Carlotto, head of the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo rights group, said Thursday her group would be eager to meet Obama during his visit to the country in March.

“We want to ask him to declassify the archives... on everything relating to repression across Latin America and especially our country,” she said at Remembrance Park, where she accompanied visiting French President Francois Hollande as he paid a tribute to dictatorship victims.

The site, located on the shores of the River Plate, is a memorial that includes the names of more than 9,000 dictatorship victims engraved on a sloping wall. Twenty-two of the victims were French citizens.

Following his historic trip to Cuba, the US president will be arriving in Buenos Aires on March 23 to meet President Mauricio Macri, who has pledged to end a decade and a half of financial and political isolation from the United States.

Obama’s visit to the Latin American country overlaps with a mass rally marking the anniversary of the coup that led to Argentina’s 1976-1983 military dictatorship.

On March 24, human rights activists will be marching to Plaza de Mayo, the main square of the capital Buenos Aires, to mark the 40th anniversary of the military coup.

Several rights groups have called on Obama to apologize on behalf of his country for the US’s support of the military regime at the time.

French President Francois Hollande (R) and Estela de Carlotto, head of the human rights organization Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, throw flowers to the river to honor victims of the country's dictatorship in Buenos Aires, Feb. 25, 2016. ©AP

Military dictatorships across Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s collaborated in hunting down leftist opponents in a scheme known as the ‘Operation Condor.’

Some 30,000 lost their lives or “disappeared” during the period of internal violence in Argentina, dubbed “The Dirty War.”

During the dictatorship, an estimated 500 babies were stolen by the regime which abducted, tortured and killed dissents and their suspected sympathizers.

De Carlotto’s group is attempting to find children kidnapped or illegally adopted during the dictatorship.

She believes that the US documents will shed light on those behind child kidnappings, and provide “a lot of information of historic value.”

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