Days away from the nation’s most sobering national day remembering the victims of the 1976-1983 military dictatorship, one of Argentina’s leading human rights groups has called for the implementation of a new cross-party pact to defend human rights.
In the lead-up to the National Day of Memory for Truth and Justice, celebrated on March 24 each year, the authorities of the Centre for Legal and Social Studies (CELS) have warned that human rights must be protected.
In a statement, CELS highlighted how human rights were steamrollered during the military dictatorship’s bloody reign of terror and called on political leaders to agree to a new ‘Pacto de Marzo.’
The initiative is modelled on President Javier Milei’s call for a fiscally based ‘Pacto de 25 de Mayo,’ which states 10 points he wants to enforce as the nation’s founding principles, including the importance of an austere state, the defence of the private sector and political reform.
CELS, however, says the president’s pact is lacking ground rules for the defence of democracy.
“The past is always subject to controversy and divergent views about what happened, nuances, disagreements about the way others have had to process it. Starting in December 1983, these differences were unfurled in a basic and fundamental pact: we choose democracy, we choose the right to organisation, dissidence, having our voices heard, we choose not wanting to go to a demonstration on the street for fear of reprisal, we choose the Armed Forces outside the civil institutions,” read a statement from the NGO.
“On this 24th [of March], we choose the March Pact,” it declares.
Among the 10 principles contained on CELS' list are the condemning of officers for their crimes, the defence of freedom of expression and the right to information, the opening up of state archives and the guarantee of basic education to all.
CELS said that this year’s commemorations on March 24 would take place in “an unprecedented context,” 48 years on from the military coup that brought the junta to power,
“On every anniversary of the 1976 coup we march to ratify that we share both a rejection of the military dictatorship and its systematic plan for disappearance, torture and extermination, as basic agreements for life in democracy,” continues the statement.
“This March 24 is the 48th anniversary in an unprecedented context which sets the challenge of having to resign this essential pact,” it concludes.
CELS, which was founded in 1979 during the dictatorship, highlighted the hostile context for this year’s Day of Memory for Truth and Justice. It accused “President Javier Milei and the country’s foremost authorities” of giving voice to “forms of denialism and relativism of State terrorism.”
“We have seen tributes at military quarters to officers sentenced for crimes against humanity with the endorsement of political authorities. These messages, which enable state violence and cruelty, are corrosive for society and raise many questions about the democratic training of young people starting their military career,” the NGO warned.
CELS expressed concern over the arrival of members of the Armed Forces in key political positions, saying that “the military advancement over civil areas of government is significant.” It denounced that “military retirees hold multiple political posts, which throughout these 40 years of democracy were held by civilians.”
It specified that “in some cases,” these functions are a threat against the delineation between national defence and homeland security, since the government has placed military personnel in functions of national intelligence or crime prevention.”
CELS has warned that there are “officials and legislators” who are civilians, but who “recognise themselves as members of ‘the great military family’ and represent those interests” – comments many interpreted as aimed at Vice-President Victoria Villarruel.
It also warned that the government is heading towards “a militarisation of security policy” given the “serious growth of drug-related violence.”
“All in all, we are observing a return of military sectors to Argentine political life, an involvement which had been limited as agreed between the successive governments and much of the Armed Forces”, read a press release.
The report also warned against the reintroduction of discourse by public officials which calls into question state policies regarding memory, truth and justice.
“The official discourse resumes and brings new meaning to the guiding values of the dictatorship: breaking social bonds, organisation and mobilisation, suppressing dissidence, human rights, state protection, a change of the economic regime.
“The idea that rights and democratic institutionality need to be granted in order for someone to bring order is also spreading,” said the organisation.
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