In Search of the Disappeared

A commission probes the government's record on human rights

When word that Argentina had won the world junior soccer championship in Tokyo reached Buenos Aires, the country burst into frenzied celebration. Two days later, thousands of screaming fans gathered in the capital's Plaza de Mayo as President Jorge Rafael Videla welcomed home the squad, still beaming from its 3-1 triumph over the Soviet Union. Meanwhile a much smaller crowd lined up, almost unnoticed, outside the headquarters of the Organization of American States (O.A.S.). More than 1,500 people waited to present petitions to the visiting Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. Last week the commission was near the midpoint of a long-delayed, two-week investigation of the fates of thousands of desaparecidos (the disappeared)-- people who vanished without a trace during the government's campaign against terrorism.

No one knows how many Argentines mysteriously disappeared during the reigns of Isabel Peron and the military regime that toppled her three years ago. Human rights organizations, including the London-based Amnesty International, charge that since 1975 15,000 desaparecidos have been abducted, tortured and possibly killed by agents of the government -- without authorization by any court of law. Argentine activists guess that the total might be as high as 12,000, while the government insists that fewer than 5,000 people were arrested under executive powers invoked during a state of siege that was imposed in 1974.

Satisfied that the "war" against the Montonero terrorists had been won, General Videla last year ordered that squalid prisons where thousands of political prisoners were held should be spruced up, and invited the Inter-American Commission to make a firsthand inspection of its human rights performance. As Videla told TIME Buenos Aires Bureau Chief George Russell last week: "We have nothing to hide.''

In fact, since last year the regime has been much more selective in using its sweeping powers to arrest people suspected of subversion and hold them indefinitely. The mysterious squads of thugs, who usually ride in Ford Falcons and kidnap suspected opponents of the regime, have been relatively inactive. This year only 36 Argentines, compared with more than 600 in 1978, have joined the ranks of the desaparecidos. Critics of the regime say that the crackdown on alleged subversives, rather than being halted, has simply been redirected. Instead of focusing on individuals thought to have terrorist connections, activists claim, the government is now harassing the human rights organizations that have dramatized the plight of the missing victims worldwide. Says a leader of one such group: "We face a total system of repression."

The new trend became evident in December when 42 of the so-called Mad Mothers, who every Thursday had conducted a silent vigil on behalf of their missing children in the Plaza de Mayo, were briefly incarcerated. In July and August eleven more people were abducted. Another man, Union Official Raul Aramendi, turned up in a prison in Misiones, where he had been held on a vague charge of "subversion." In Buenos Aires, cops burst into a printing plant and confiscated 3,500 copies of a list of 5,581 missing persons. Other squads of police invaded the offices of the League for the Rights of Man and the Permanent Assembly for Human Rights, seizing 6,000 files. Argentina's Interior Minister, Major General Albano Harguindeguy, claimed that his government had been surprised by the raids on the human rights organizations, which were ordered by an Argentine judge. He offered a blithe explanation for seizing the printed list of desaparecidos:

"I wanted to hand over a copy personally to the Inter-American Commission."

That kind of bland admission is, in a sense, a step forward for Argentina's military rulers. There have been others. Until July, the government refused to give any information on prisoners detained under the broad-brush emergency powers. It now makes monthly reports, the latest showing that 1,438 people are still detained without charge.

Last week Harguindeguy announced new laws that will permit relatives of those who have disappeared since November 1974 to have them declared legally dead. Wives and dependents of the vanished can claim pensions from the government one year after the disappearance. The law is necessary, President Videla argues, because "the peculiarity of terrorist action prevents us from determining if the presumed desaparecidos are still in hiding, have left the country or have died as a consequence of their own terrorist activities."

That argument is small comfort to anguished families who are convinced that their kinsmen who remain alive are languishing in secret concentration camps. Argentines who claim to have been detained in such camps tell harrowing stories of being confined in cramped "boxes" only 2 ft. long, 2 1/2 ft. wide and less than 5 ft. tall.

The blaring music that was constantly played inside these camps, they say, could not cover up the screams of prisoners being beaten or tortured with electric shocks. Says a father whose two sons vanished in 1976 from their home in Buenos Aires:

"Even the worst common criminals in Argentina are tried and judged. Their parents know what happened and why. But not us."

To determine the validity of these accusations, the commission (whose seven members, mostly lawyers and jurists, are from the U.S., Costa Rica, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, El Salvador and Venezuela) is conducting discreet interviews with government officials, opposition leaders, clergymen, political detainees and even ex-President Isabelita herself, who is under house arrest at an estate near Buenos Aires. There seems little chance that the commission can complete its report before the O.A.S General Assembly next meets in October. It will be more than a year before the body can debate whether the charges that Argentina is abusing the rights of its people are justified or if they are, as Vide la claims, the result of a "defamation campaign" launched by the forces of international terrorism.

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