Activist Warns of Operation Condor II

by Mario Osava

Noted human rights lawyer Martin Almada says he was given access to a letter by a Paraguayan army officer indicating that the author was sending the Ecuadorean army a list of names of "subversives," and suggesting that a region-wide Latin American list be drawn up.

According to Almada, the letter, which identifies members of the "landless" and "homeless" squatters' movements, human rights and women's rights activists, and investigative journalists as "subversives," points to a continued crackdown on dissent in a sort of "Condor II."

Speaking at a seminar on political repression here last week, the activist suggested a meeting with the armed forces to insist that human rights groups be allowed to see the list of supposed "subversives," and to urge members of the military to take part in social programs aimed, for example, at assisting homeless children and protecting the environment.

The Paraguayan National Human Rights Commission has already sent a request to the secretary-general of the Organization of American States (OAS) to urgently convene talks between the region's military brass and peace activists.

Almada is best known for his discovery in 1992 of the so-called "Archives of Terror" on the outskirts of Asuncion, Paraguay. The several tons of records contained documented Operation Condor, a violent coordinated repression of real or suspected opponents by the de facto military regimes ruling much of South America in the 1970s and 1980s.

Almada recommended that the armed forces of Latin America take courses on human rights, like those given to many police forces in the region.

He also urged that former dictators like Alfredo Stroessner -- who ruled Paraguay with an iron fist from 1954 to 1989 -- Jorge Videla in Argentina, Gregorio Alvarez in Uruguay and Hugo Banzer, currently the elected president of Bolivia, be brought to justice.

Stroessner is currently living in Brazil, where he was granted political asylum -- a "legal absurdity" that should be corrected because the former dictator has been fugitive from justice since 1991 and is facing murder charges in Paraguay, said Almada, who delivered new documents to the president of the human rights commission of the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies, Marcos Rolim.

But the former Paraguayan dictator should be tried in Brazil, as Paraguay's courts are not up to the task, said the activist, who described Luiz Gonzalez Macchi as an "illegitimate president," and pointed out that other senior officials played an active role in the Stroessner regime.

Macchi was chairman of the Senate when he was named president in March 1998, after vice-president Luis Mar’a Arga–a was assassinated and then-president Raśl Cubas resigned.

Pres. Macchi's father was minister of justice to Stroessner for 30 years, observed Almada, who underlined that power in Paraguay has remained in the hands of politicians with links to the dictatorship.

The human rights lawyer said he feared a new coup d'etat in his country, due to the unstable situation created by Macchi's lack of legitimacy, and the fact that Vice Pres. Julio Cesar Franco, who won the August elections held specifically to fill that post, is a member of the opposition.

"Gonzalez Macchi should resign for the health of democracy in Paraguay," Almada insisted, adding that Paraguay's partners in the Southern Cone Common Market -- Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay -- should back this call for the sake of the trade bloc's stability and growth.

He also called on the OAS and the United Nations to investigate the murders of 34 reporters within the framework of Operation Condor, in order to provide guarantees for journalists working today to clarify human rights violations.

Since early this year, Almada has been living in the United States, as a visiting professor at a university in Arkansas. He fears assassination in Paraguay, where he is facing lawsuits stemming from his denunciations of human rights abuses.

The "Archives of Terror" also indicate that Interpol (International Police) was an accomplice of the Latin American military dictatorships, he told the Rio de Janeiro seminar.

He also pointed to evidence of a "Pre-Condor" phase in the late 1950s and the 1960s, in which the Brazilian armed forces played a key role, providing training in repression to their counterparts from other South American countries.

The Brazilian army's training of many officers who later played leading roles in cracking down on opposition in their countries was provided in the context of the "national security doctrine" then in vogue, Almada added.

He cited a document signed by Chilean Colonel Manuel Contreras Sepulveda, the head of the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet's (1973-90) notorious National Intelligence Office (DINA) in the 1970s.

In the letter, Contreras asks Pinochet for "budget allocations for the DINA officers taking anti-guerrilla courses at the training center in the city of Manaos, Brazil."