Argentina's 'Grandmothers' seek pope's assistance

[Judi Lynn]

2. RIGHTS-ARGENTINA: Tortured Labour, Stolen Newborns

RIGHTS-ARGENTINA: Tortured Labour, Stolen Newborns
By Marcela Valente
Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Oct 22 2007 (IPS) - “Torture with the electric prod when she was close to term induced accelerated labour,” says the report “Maternidades Clandestinas” (Motherhood in Clandestine Prisons), which tells the stories of dozens of women illegally imprisoned during Argentina’s 1976-1983 dictatorship.

The study by the non-governmental Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo Association was published on the Internet this year, and is updated whenever new evidence arises or young people born to political prisoners in captivity are reunited with their families, three decades later.

Since they formed the association to look for their grandchildren who disappeared during the dictatorship, the Grandmothers have been able to restore the original identities of 88 young people. But they are not satisfied, as another 400 were kidnapped together with their parents, or were born in torture camps and given secretly in illegal adoptions.

Vanina Wiman, a member of the research team at the Gradmothers branch in La Plata, the capital of the province of Buenos Aires, told IPS that “for the moment” work is focused on eight illegal detention centres that operated in the province, but they know that there are “many more cases,” and hope to investigate them all.

More:
http://www.ipsnews.net/2007/10/rights-argentina-tortured-labour-stolen-newborns/