Argentina’s Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that people can’t be forced to give blood for genetic tests to determine whether they were taken at birth from political detainees who were killed during the dictatorship era.
Activists estimate some 500 such offspring have not been traced.
But the court ruled that people cannot be forced to participate in efforts to track down those who were taken from parents slain in the “dirty war” campaign against leftists during military rule from 1976 to 1983.
“The right of biological families to know the truth does not mean that the other victim should shoulder all the emotional and legal consequences of establishing a new identity,” two of the justices said.
However, the court said less invasive ways of obtaining DNA would respect personal dignity and individual rights under the Argentine Constitution.
The judges said for example that taking samples from hair brushes or other personal objects was legal with a court order.
The rulings involved a decade-old case of a former sailor and his wife, Guillermo Prieto and Emma Gualtieri, who falsely registered two boys as their own.
The boys were taken from their mothers, who had been kidnapped by security forces, said the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, a movement that campaigns to reunite “dirty war” victims with blood relatives.
The group persuaded a judge to order the young men to give blood samples. Both refused.
The judge then ordered a search of their home and recovered samples from their personal effects, which confirmed they were not related to the couple.
It remained to be seen whether the couple would face any charges.
The two men’s DNA was entered into Argentina’s national gene bank, which contains genetic information related to thousands of missing people, but it has not been made public whether the DNA led to a match with blood relatives.
Both rulings will apply to other cases in which the suspected children of the disappeared have refused to provide DNA. Most people, however, have volunteered in hopes of discovering their birth families.
The Grandmothers group has recovered the identities of 97 of these children and estimates 500 others remain undiscovered.
Chile’s government, meanwhile, launched a campaign on Tuesday to gather more samples for a similar DNA database.
An official survey lists 3,197 people killed by security forces while late general Augusto Pinochet ruled Chile from 1973 to 90, including 1,200 who disappeared after being detained.
In the 19 years since democracy was restored, bodies or bone fragments of about 200 of missing people have been found. Many remain unidentified.
The government hopes its media campaign will encourage Chileans with missing relatives to provide blood samples.
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