Human Rights in Argentina: Missing witness Julio Lopez

Last week marked an important first anniversary. The Argentine human rights activist, Julio Lopez, disappeared on September 18, 2006, the very day that the Director of Investigations of the Buenos Aires Police, Miguel Etchecolatz, was imprisoned for human rights abuses, including the torture of Lopez.

Free Speech Radio News reporter Marie Trigona has been tireless in exposing military and police brutality in Argentina, reminiscent of much worse abuses during the "dirty war" military government years from 1976 to 1983. Under the current civilian Nestor Kirchner administration, 256 "bad cops," former military personnel and members of the military government, have been accused. So far, however, only three have been tried.

The situation in Buenos Aires may not be as bad as in, say, Yangon, Myanmar (Burma), where an ultra-repressive military junta is now facing a standoff of thousands of protesting Buddhist monks. But Trigona's lone voice in the wilderness is a wakeup call for American listeners, distracted by huge headlines, who yawn at news stories relegated to the back pages of "The New York Times." Right now the kidnapped septuagenarian construction worker Julio Lopez may possibly be the equivalent of Myanmar's Nobel-Prize winning dissident, Aung San Suu Kyi -- if Lopez is alive. My guess is that he isn't. As to his whereabouts, the most we know is nada. The plot stagnates.

Back when he was on the scene, in his court testimony, Lopez's description of undergoing prolonged bouts of torture with electric prods in La Plata during 1976 makes for graphic radio. Otherwise, Trigona's matter-of-fact "Letter from Buenos Aires" passionately underscores her view that -- forget about Hamlet's Denmark -- something is rotten in Argentina.