Alas, Argentina has its Hardcore Stupid too. And they’re not only stupid, they’re fascists who celebrate a criminal regime:
Some 5,000 right-wing demonstrators rallied in the capital, showing support for the former military dictatorship that waged a brutal campaign against suspected leftists.
The protesters gathered at a plaza in downtown Buenos Aires, chanting slogans and saying that the bloody tactics used by the dictatorship were justified in the fight against subversive groups.
“No soldier will ask for forgiveness,” said Ana Lucioni, a member of the Commission to Honor the Victims of Subversion, one of the groups that organized the rally.
Official estimates blame the 1976-83 military regime for the disappearance of some 13,000 suspected leftists, though human rights groups put the figure at about 30,000.
Carrying signs with slogans such as “Victims of terrorism are never remembered,” the protesters criticized leftist President Nestor Kirchner’s efforts to bring those responsible for human rights abuses to trial.
Under Kirchner, a number of dictatorship-era human rights trials have been reopened that could send military officials — most of them retired — to prison.
Leftist organizations staged a counterprotest two blocks away to demand “trial and punishment for genocide.” Police kept the two groups apart.
A similar rally by pro-dictatorship protesters was held in May. Several active military officers who attended were fired soon after.
And here are some of the victims of the dictatorship, seeking justice for one of their own:
More than 12,000 people demanding the safe return of a “Dirty War” prosecution witness missing since mid-September marched peacefully through the Argentine capital Friday night.
Led by the Mothers of the Plaza — a group still searching for loved ones missing from a 1976-83 military dictatorship — demonstrators jammed the downtown plaza outside the offices of President Nestor Kirchner, calling for the return of former torture victim Jorge Julio Lopez.
The protest, the latest in a series, was more than twice as large as one on Sept. 27, which drew about 5,000 people. Police stood guard and no incidents were reported.
“We are looking for justice, we are looking for Julio!” the crowd chanted, calling for prosecutors and judges to step up trials of suspected human rights violations from the dictatorship.
Lopez, 77, vanished on the eve of the Sept. 19 conviction of a former police investigator in the first “Dirty War” trial since the Supreme Court last year overturned a pair of 1980s amnesty laws shielding many former state security agents from prosecution.
Former officer Miguel Etchecolatz was convicted by a federal court of “genocide” and sentenced to life imprisonment for the disappearances of six people during the dictatorship.
Nearly 13,000 people are officially listed as killed or missing in what prosecutors have described as the dictatorship’s systematic crackdown on dissent, known as the “Dirty War.” Human rights groups say the toll is closer to 30,000.
And I suppose, to the bloodthirsty fascists who label all the victims of the dictatorship as “terrorists”, that latter number is just not high enough. And human-rights activists are “terrorists, too!
