Adolfo Perez Esquivel, who won the 1980 Nobel Peace Prize for his work exposing abuses during Argentina’s military dictatorship, finally testified against his captors on Tuesday, describing his torture and crediting international pressure for saving his life.
Perez Esquivel recounted the blows, screams and repeated torture sessions in which guards pounded him and other naked prisoners with fists, boot heels and other weapons, then made them take cold showers before pummeling their injured bodies again.
“With the club they poked my ribs and asked if it hurt. I would say yes, and then they’d say: ‘Now you know how you should behave here.’ And then they would pound me with their heels, which made me think of those Nazi movies,” Perez Esquivel testified.
‘A LONG TIME’
However, after more than three decades, Perez Esquivel told the judges, he can no longer identify his torturers in the courtroom.
“It’s been a long time,” said Perez Esquivel, who is now 89.
Perez Esquivel is one of many witnesses in the trial of 14 former prison officials charged with crimes against humanity at the feared Unit 9, where many political prisoners were held during the 1976-to-1983 dictatorship.
Others include Argentine Foreign Minister Jorge Taiana.
HUMAN RIGHTS
Perez Esquivel founded the Permanent Assembly for Human Rights in 1975 and traveled around Latin America alerting the world to rights violations by the region’s military juntas.
In April 1977, Argentine military authorities took him into custody when he tried to renew his passport.
He wasn’t released until 1978.
“I was a person known at an international level, but in this jail I was tortured anyway, although there were many people who suffered more than me,” Perez Esquivel told reporters outside the court before testifying for more than two hours in the provincial capital of La Plata, where Unit 9 was located.
PEACE PRIZE
While in prison, Perez Esquivel was given a peace prize by the Vatican, which did not go unnoticed among his torturers, he recalled.
“At one point the deputy prison chief took me to his office and told me: ‘Not even the pope will save you. Here, we decide whether you live. We are the lords of life and death,’” Perez Esquivel testified.
According to official accounts, 13,000 people were killed during Argentina’s dictatorship, although rights group estimate the true toll may be as high as 30,000.
‘CROSSING THE LINE’: China’s embassy in Seoul criticized US Forces Korea Commander General Xavier Brunson, asking if his ‘hostile’ remarks were authorized by Washington South Korea and the US are in talks over recent public remarks by the commander of US Forces Korea, Seoul’s presidential office said yesterday, after the comments drew sharp criticism from China. In a recent podcast interview, US Forces Korea Commander General Xavier Brunson described South Korea as “the dagger in the heart of Asia” from China’s east coast, prompting the Chinese embassy in Seoul to say that he had “truly crossed the line.” The interview came amid growing speculation that Washington might seek to expand the role of US Forces Korea in countering the growing regional influence of China, a key
Through the noise of rushing papers and whirring belts at a print factory in Kyoto, two creators watch their photo essay come to life in broadsheet form — part of an effort to win new audiences in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). Despite the decline of the publishing industry, self-publication and handmade “zine” magazines are growing in popularity in Japan, reflecting the nation’s enduring love of paper in the digital era. While speaking to Agence France-Presse at the plant, his hands black with ink, one of the creators, Kazuma Obara, said: “I think [paper] is a medium that engages all five
Australian researchers have trained lab-grown brain cells on a silicon computer chip to play the 1990s shooter game Doom and said they are just scratching the surface of what the neurons could be capable of doing. It is the science-fiction work of biotech boffins at Cortical Labs, who researched and developed the technology that harnesses the workings of the brain’s networking system. Each so-called “biological computer” contains about 200,000 living human brain cells, grown from stem cells that were harvested from blood donations. Having mastered the simple computer game Pong, where a paddle is moved up and down to send a ball
France experienced its hottest spring on record, the French weather service said on Tuesday, after an exceptional early heat wave that also broke highs for the season in England and Wales. Meteo-France said the average nationwide temperature over March to May was 13.8°C — about 1.7°C above the norm, and surpassing records set in 2011 and 2020. “The warmest spring since records began in 1900,” it said in a bulletin. All three months were warmer than average, but the onset of an “unprecedented heatwave” late last month pushed the mercury to highs typically seen at the height of the summer. “Our country had never
RSS