Delegation marching
with Mothers of the Plaza De Mayo
Kerry
Kennedy, Sara Bloomfield, Mike Posner,
President Kirchner, Hector Timerman
Political Torture
by
Kerry Kennedy
Kerry
Kennedy
has
led more than forty human rights
delegations to more than thirty countries
over the course of two decades.
Kerry
established the Robert F. Kennedy
Center for Human Rights in 1987 to
ensure the protection of rights codified
under the United Nations Declaration of
Human Rights. See her Bio.
UNITED
NATIONS -- 23 March 2005 / www.MaximsNews.com
/ I
have just returned from a few days in Buenos Aires, where I witnessed, first hand, the
triumph of the human spirit over evil.
Hector Timerman, arrived in
New York
a quarter century ago, with no papers,
seeking political asylum after he fled the
military dictatorship.
Today, he is Consul General, and a
leader in the struggle for truth and
accountability.
He organized a small delegation
from the U.S.
to visit his beloved country, and I was
lucky enough to join him.
When I saw my three daughters last night I
gave them each an extra long hug, an
expression of my joy at seeing them and my
gratefulness that they have been spared
the horrors to which so many have been
subjected.
When they asked me about
my trip to
Argentina, it was hard to know where to begin.
How do you explain to the innocents
the cruelty on the scale we saw at the
ESMA, the Naval academy used as an
extermination center during the military
dictatorship?
As we walked through
its fortress gates in the middle of
downtown Buenos Aires with a handful of
survivors, just a few of the 5000 ripped
from their families and disappeared
forever, you could almost hear the sounds
of nightmare memories, screams from the
torture chambers, that were drowned by the
cheers of the fans at a soccer game a few
blocks away, the laughter of children at
the school across the street, or the honks
from the cars and buses passing by
-- as
though no one knew what lurked in the dark
places of Argentina's recent history.
I hope and pray that my girls grow up to
be strong and courageous women, and in the
same breath I hope their courage never has
occasion to be tested.
My
children are on my mind, especially,
because over the course of our three days
in
Buenos Aires, almost everyone we met spoke about their
own families.
There were the mothers
marching round the Plaza de Mayo (as they
have every Thursday for nearly 30 years),
who pinned to their breasts fading
photographs of their sons and daughters,
snatched at the prime of their youth to
face unimaginable torture.
There
were the grandmothers, the abuelas, in
their decades-long quest to identify the
newborns stolen from their detained
daughters and given to right-wing families
to raise.
There were the activists,
(almost
everyone we met, including President
Kirchner, spent time in
detention) from defenders to union leaders
to vice ministers, to the first lady and
the president -- each humble about his
or her own experience of horrors faced in
detention, but speaking with pained
eloquence of the impact on loved ones, on
mothers, fathers, sisters, daughters and
sons whose suffering, mental illness,
depression, post-traumatic stress, and
suicide is never recorded, never
considered in the sterile statistic of
30,000 murdered or disappeared.
Director of the
Holocaust
Museum
in
Washington,
D.C., Sara Bloomfield said her colleagues
looked at four types of actors in this
situation: the perpetrators, the victims,
the rescuers and the bystanders.
Much
of our journey debated the question of how
society might convert bystanders to
rescuers, a long road to a more civic
society.
Walking
through the ESMA we were told how much
interaction victims of torture had with
naval officers.
Hooded prisoners
were transferred from their holding cells
in the attic to the torture chamber in the
basement on the same staircases used by
the military to go to and from their dorm
rooms, to and from the mess hall, their
offices, the hospital, the church.
First Lady Cristina Kirchner told a
chilling account of the General who
brought a priest in to say Mass with
torture victims on Christmas Eve, days
before the same general had them drugged
and thrown live from airplanes into the
river or sea below.
She said there
was always a doctor at the ready to stop
the torture sessions prior to death, and a
priest to say last rights in case the
doctor made a mistake.
When
we asked how all these men allowed them
selves to act like such sadistic monsters,
the answers were chillingly familiar.
They believed the country was
threatened. They thought they needed
to torture people to protect national
security. They said what they were
doing was an unpleasant necessity. They
said they were at war, and in war, bad
things are to be expected.
The day we left for
Buenos Aires, Michael Posner, as director of Human
Rights First, brought a law suit against
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld for
torture, giving this trip a particular
sense of immediacy. What happened in
Argentina
was no academic survey of an atrocity from
the past.
This
is about all of us.
It
is about Abu Graib, Guatanamo, and dozens
of other clandestine detention centers run
by the U.S.
government around the world.
It is
about a current U.S.
policy that allows detainees to be sent
for interrogation to countries known to
use torture and other highly coercive
methods of interrogation which would be
illegal if they took place on
U.S.
soil.
It is about the thousands of
political asylum seekers caught up in the
Kafkaesque nightmare of our immigration
system.
And it is about the soul of
our country.
I am proud to be on the board of directors
of Human Rights First, at the forefront of
the efforts to stop our government from
using torture. I am convinced that
our education activities with Speak Truth
to Power, which we will bring to
Argentina
later this year, will help turn bystanders
to rescuers. And I am inspired by
the poetry of my good friend Ariel Dorfman,
born in
Argentina, as I hope you are.
Onward!
Kerry
Kennedy
Speak
Truth to Power, a project of the Robert F. Kennedy
Memorial
515 Canal Street
New York,
New York
The
Robert F. Kennedy Memorial is a
non-profit, tax-exempt, charitable
organization under the Internal Revenue
Code 501(c)(3).
Our tax ID is 13-2522784.
Last
will and testament
By Ariel Dorfman
When they tell you
I'm not a prisoner
don't believe them.
They'll have to admit it
some day.
When they tell you
they released me
don't believe them.
They'll have to admit
it's a lie
some day.
When they tell you
I betrayed the party
don't believe them.
They'll have to admit
I was loyal
some day.
When they tell you
I'm in
France
don't believe them.
Don't believe them when they show you
my false I.D.
don't believe them.
Don't believe them when they show you
the photo of my body,
don't believe them.
Don't believe them when they tell you
the moon is the moon,
if they tell you the moon is the moon,
that this is my voice on tape,
that this is my signature on a confession,
if they say a tree is a tree
don't believe them,
don't believe
anything they tell you
anything they swear to
anything they show you,
don't believe them.
And finally
when
that day
comes
when they ask you
to identify the body
and you see me
and a voice says
we killed him
the poor bastard died
he's dead,
when they tell you
that I am
completely absolutely definitely
dead
don't believe them,
don't believe them,
don't believe them.
Testamento
Cuando te digan
que no estoy preso,
no les creas.
Tendrán que reconocerlo
algún día.
Cuando te digan
que me soltaron,
no les creas.
Tendrán que reconocer
que es mentira
algún día.
Cuando te digan
que traicioné al partido,
no les creas.
Tendrán que reconocer
que fui leal
algún día.
Cuando te digan
que estoy en Francia,
no les creas.
No les creas cuando te muestren
mi carnet falso,
no les creas.
No les creas cuando te muestren
la foto de mi cuerpo,
no les creas.
No les creas cuando te digan
que la luna es la luna,
si te dicen que la luna es luna,
que ésta es mi voz en una grabodora,
que ésta es mi firma en un papel,
si dicen que un árbol es un árbol,
no les creas,
no les creas
nada de lo que digan
nada de lo que te juran
nada de lo que te muestren,
no les creas.
Y cuando finalmente
llegue ese día
cuando te pidan que pases
a reconocer el cadáver
y ahí me veas
y una voz te diga
lo matamos
se nos escapó en la tortura
está muerto,
cuanto te digan
que estoy
enteramente absolutamente definitivamente
muerto,
no les creas,
no les creas,
no les creas,
no les creas
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
