[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 51 (Wednesday, April 14, 1999)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E653-E654]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 ARGENTINA'S DEMOCRACY FACES STRUGGLES

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. EDOLPHUS TOWNS

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                       Wednesday, April 14, 1999

  Mr. TOWNS. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to share with you my concern 
towards the struggles that a young democracy in Latin America is 
facing. I am referring to Argentina and its questioned judicial system, 
still so tainted by the memories of past dictatorships. I would like to 
talk to you about a small Buenos Aires based non-governmental 
organization that has to bear the harassment and persecution of a 
corrupt judiciary. I hope that after I share with you my concerns you 
will then be in a better position to discharge our responsibility of 
expressing some words of caution to our citizens and U.S. based 
corporations that are considering whether to make investments in 
Argentina.
  On February 1st, President Clinton responded to a missive in a salvo 
of bipartisan letters from colleagues legislators concerning the Buenos 
Aires Yoga School case. Clinton began his response by observing: ``I 
share your commitment to the protection and enforcement of human rights 
in Argentina and around the world.'' Our U.S. president then went on to 
note that: ``Our embassy in Buenos Aires has been closely monitoring 
this matter [the BAYS case] for the past several years, and has raised 
it on several occasions with appropriate officials in the Argentine 
Ministry of Justice. Like other cases in the Argentine judicial system, 
this case has taken too long to resolve. While I agree that we cannot 
intervene in the Argentine judicial process, we will continue to follow 
the case and urge the Argentine government to resolve it as 
expeditiously as possible.''
  The BAYS case has been high on my agenda and that of many of our 
colleagues for much of the past year where we have expressed our unease 
over the treatment of this Argentine group. Many of our colleagues, in 
order to seek justice for BAYS, have sent letters to President Menem 
calling for his intervention--never receiving an answer, the case has 
achieved significant leverage among us, U.S. policy makers, as an 
important component in the hemispheric policy formulations.
  Clinton's letter about BAYS's plight pointedly referred to this 
highly controversial case. One which was initiated over six years 
before when faculty and students of the Yoga school became a chosen 
target for Argentina's notoriously flawed judiciary vindictiveness of 
several relatives from BAYS members. The philosophical and culturally-
centered educational institution was accused of ``sexual corruption of 
adults'' and has attracted unprecedented prosecutorial and judicial 
misconduct from Argentine authorities since then. Almost all outside 
observers who have examined the case considered it unfathomable why so 
much negative energy has been dissipated against such a small group 
which, in fact, has won considerable renown abroad for its artistic 
accomplishments and social programs. One compelling explanation is that 
the case has triggered a bundle of latent and overt ultramontaine, neo-
Nazi and deep-seated anti-Semitic strains lying just below the surface 
of Argentina's historic memory, which may be fundamental to why this 
largely Jewish organization of 300 members has been subjected to its 
extraordinarily protracted ordeal. In the playing out of the case, it 
was also shown that the indignation of the Argentine media--to much of 
which venality is no stranger--is highly selective and that the press, 
in this case, has been revealed as a lapdog of the political 
establishment. It has not shown itself as a forensic lion when it came 
to confronting the slavishly purchased performance of the country's 
court system in general, and its outrageous behavior regarding the BAYS 
saga, where under-the-table subventions must have become the rule in 
forcing the prolongation of this case.
  Over much of the past six years, members of BAYS have been 
experiencing unrelenting harassment at the hands of Argentine judicial 
authorities, including totally unjustified and violent illegal searches 
of their homes and offices, imprisonment of innocent members, the 
hectoring of their children, and the seizure of their personal property 
which to this day has not been returned. All this has transpired even 
though no compelling incriminating evidence has been presented by the 
prosecution against the Yoga School, the statute of limitations has 
since expired, and the Argentine Supreme Court has nullified the 
original charges. Some of the prosecutors and judges engaged in 
hounding the BAYS systematically have engaged in unprofessional 
behavior, which at times has included resorting to the use of 
scurrilous anti-Semitic remarks made in public settings--enough to 
result in the first judge being impeached by the national legislature. 
In this case, reputably, justice has been for sale.
  The BAYS affair provides a telling example of the corrosive role that 
corruption may have played in the form of payoffs to court personnel 
overseeing such cases as the one involving BAYS, from several wealthy 
and alienated relatives of BAYS members. Even one of the more 
controversial judges involved in the case is ready to acknowledge that 
the alienated relatives have a psychological, if not neurotic need to 
establish that it was the organization rather than themselves who had 
generated their family's personal travails. In fact, a close 
examination of each of these plaintiffs conduct reveals that in a 
number of these cases, much of the social anomie brought on by 
intrafamily strife existed even before the founding of the 
organization. The harassment of the BAYS also provides an insight into 
the role played by an extremist ideology in Argentina's tainted 
judicial system, and how little has changed since the era of military 
rule beginning in the 1970's, when government authorities murdered, 
with impunity, upwards of 20,000 innocent civilians in the country. 
Many of the judges now on the bench were appointed to their relatively 
lucrative positions at that time, with their modus operandi still 
reflecting the low standing that people of their political persuasion 
traditionally have accorded

[[Page E654]]

to democratic practices, judicial guarantees and the notion of civil 
rectitude in public office.
  My concern continues to grow as each week brings even more disturbing 
developments in the case. We are disappointed that Justice Minister Dr. 
Raul Granillo Ocampo's assurances, made while he was ambassador to the 
United States, have not been followed up on. Despite the July 1997 
rulings of the Court of Cassation confirming the earlier decision of 
the Supreme Court condemning the actions of the judicial authorities, 
the lower courts have refused to cease their continuous penal 
persecution.
  The three documents from the Court of Appeals, Chamber VI on March 2, 
1999, revoked the dismissals ordered by the lower court and ignored the 
decision by the Court of Cassation. The Appelante written by Carlos 
Alberto Elbert, Luis Ameghino Escobar and Carlos Alberto Gonzalez 
ordered the continuation of an investigation which has long exceeded 
its statute of limitations. If we add to this the lack of legal 
controls and malevolent obsession to persecute by the State Attorney's 
office the opening of a new case with the identical charges which 
originated the BAYS case in 1993 the denial of the right to a fair 
trial for the defendants, and the continuance of the processes already 
declared null, the picture becomes very alarming.
  We have shown our concern and wish to help strengthen Argentina's 
democracy, but we seem to be ignored by the country's authorities. For 
me this is yet another opportunity to depict a number of disturbing 
instances where injustice has been done; where the courts have served 
as a persecutor of the human spirit, rather than its defendant. Let our 
citizens be aware of this situation, let us take care of our 
interests--both in the economic and the humanitarian field--and let's 
hope that this can break the silence that rests over this serious 
matter of a group of philosophers that have the admirable strength to 
keep on wishing to live in a democracy, like we do.

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