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World renown human rights activist Estela de Carlotto said Argentine President Mauricio Macri's comments downplaying the brutal reign of the 1976-1983 military dictatorship were “scary” and said they showed a “lack of respect” for the victims of the dictatorship.
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“What Macri says is scary, but it's what he feels, what he thinks,” de Carlotto told El Tiempo in an interview published Thursday.
“To call our children terrorists is the greatest offense, to treat those who organized fighting for the country, it is terrible,” she added.
De Carlotto, who heads the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, said that his comments “hurt but they do not weaken us.”
Macri made highly controversial comments in an interview with BuzzFeed Wednesday, saying that he didn’t know how many people were disappeared in Argentina, whether it was “9,000 or 30,000.”
The Argentine president also used a controversial term to refer to the dictatorship, calling their clampdown on human rights and democracy a “Dirty War.”
The term “Dirty War” is offensive to many in Argentina as it suggests it was a conflict between two equal parties, when in reality it was a systematic campaign of arbitrary detentions and extrajudicial killings carried out by the state.
“This was not a dirty or clean war, it was state terrorism,” said de Carlotto.
Macri has been accused of deliberately undermining efforts at achieving justice with respect to abuses committed by the dictatorship.
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Earlier this month, he granted permission for 50 military officials found guilty of crimes against humanity to serve out their sentences at home. In June, he reversed three-decades of attempts at reestablishing civilian control over the country's armed forces, granting them greater autonomy.
In a move that violated an agreement with Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the Macri government gutted the agency tasked with helping find children stolen from their parents by the military during the dictatorship.
The Macri family was closely tied to the dictatorship. Their businesses grew considerably during the Argentine dictatorship thanks to generous contracts with the military regime.
“The situation we are living is frightening, having to be on the lookout regarding everything that is said or done regarding human rights,” said de Carlotto.
Macri's attitude concerning human rights stands in stark contrast to the leftist governments of Nestor Kirchner and Cristina Fernandez, who made a deliberate effort to hold the perpetrators of crimes against humanity responsible for their actions.
“We ask for respect and this is a very big show of a lack of respect for our children … If he thinks we're going to forget, he is very wrong. We are not going to stop speaking up,” said de Carlotto.
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