Latin America
Related: About this forumArgentina tries doctors for 'baby theft' during military rule
17 September 2014 Last updated at 21:06 ET
Argentina tries doctors for 'baby theft' during military rule
[font size=1]
Mothers of "disappeared" children protest in Argentina in this 1977 photo[/font]
Two doctors and a midwife have gone on trial in Argentina charged with kidnapping babies born in captivity to left-wing political prisoners during the 1976-83 military government.
It is the first case of medical staff being tried for allegedly falsifying the babies' birth certificates.
An estimated 500 children were stolen at birth from their mothers during what was known as the Dirty War.
They were then given illegally to other families who raised them as their own.
The real parents were either killed or disappeared.
More:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-29248974
Judi Lynn
(160,535 posts)New Memo: Kissinger Gave the "Green Light" for Argentina's Dirty War
By David Corn
| Tue Jan. 14, 2014 4:23 PM EST
Only a few months ago, Henry Kissinger was dancing with Stephen Colbert in a funny bit on the latter's Comedy Central show. But for years, the former secretary of state has sidestepped judgment for his complicity in horrific human rights abuses abroad, and a new memo has emerged that provides clear evidence that in 1976 Kissinger gave Argentina's neo-fascist military junta the "green light" for the dirty war it was conducting against civilian and militant leftists that resulted in the disappearancethat is, deathsof an estimated 30,000 people.
In April 1977, Patt Derian, a onetime civil rights activist whom President Jimmy Carter had recently appointed assistant secretary of state for human rights, met with the US ambassador in Buenos Aires, Robert Hill. A memo recording that conversation has been unearthed by Martin Edwin Andersen, who in 1987 first reported that Kissinger had told the Argentine generals to proceed with their terror campaign against leftists (whom the junta routinely referred to as "terrorists" . The memo notes that Hill told Derian about a meeting Kissinger held with Argentine Foreign Minister Cesar Augusto Guzzetti the previous June. What the two men discussed was revealed in 2004 when the National Security Archive obtained and released the secret memorandum of conversation for that get-together. Guzzetti, according to that document, told Kissinger, "our main problem in Argentina is terrorism." Kissinger replied, "If there are things that have to be done, you should do them quickly. But you must get back quickly to normal procedures." In other words, go ahead with your killing crusade against the leftists.
The new document shows that Kissinger was even more explicit in encouraging the Argentine junta. The memo recounts Hill describing the Kissinger-Guzzetti discussion this way:
The Argentines were very worried that Kissinger would lecture to them on human rights. Guzzetti and Kissinger had a very long breakfast but the Secretary did not raise the subject. Finally Guzzetti did. Kissinger asked how long will it take you (the Argentines) to clean up the problem. Guzzetti replied that it would be done by the end of the year. Kissinger approved.
In other words, Ambassador Hill explained, Kissinger gave the Argentines the green light.
More:
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2014/01/new-memo-kissinger-gave-green-light-argentina-dirty-war
Judi Lynn
(160,535 posts)Argentina tries doctors for dictatorship baby thefts
AFP
By Sonia Avalos
5 hours ago
Buenos Aires (AFP) - Two doctors and a midwife went on trial in Argentina on Wednesday accused of delivering political prisoners' babies and helping the country's former military regime steal them from their parents.
"It's a very important trial because it will judge the complicity of doctors and midwives who were directly responsible for these crimes against humanity," said 36-year-old Francisco Madariaga, one of an estimated 500 children taken from their mothers at birth during the 1976-1983 dictatorship.
Madariaga was born in a secret maternity ward at a military hospital in Buenos Aires, delivered by midwife Luisa Yolanda Arroche, who is charged with falsifying his birth certificate and abetting his kidnapping.
Arroche, now 86 years old, is standing trial with doctors Norberto Bianco and Raul Martin, who are both also in their 80s.
~snip~
Pregnant prisoners were often forced to give birth blindfolded and handcuffed.
Their babies were then taken away and often given to military or police families, sometimes even their parents' killers.
More:
http://news.yahoo.com/argentina-tries-doctors-dictatorship-baby-thefts-220731916.html