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News > Latin America

Paraguay: Opposition Seeks Justice for US-Backed Dictatorship Era

  • The Paraguayan vice presidential candidate for the opposition Ganar (Win) party, Leonardo Rubin, at the Museum of Memory, in Asuncion, Paraguay.

    The Paraguayan vice presidential candidate for the opposition Ganar (Win) party, Leonardo Rubin, at the Museum of Memory, in Asuncion, Paraguay. | Photo: EFE

Published 3 February 2018
Opinion

The strongman’s rule occurred during the United States’ Operation Condor in Latin America.

Paraguayan opposition presidential candidate with the Ganar Party Efrain Alegre, and his vice presidential running mate Leonardo Rubin announced Friday that should they win the April 22 elections, they will seek justice and compensation for the victims of the country’s former U.S.-backed dictatorship.

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The pair visited the Museum of Memory in the capital Asunción, which features documents and photos from the dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner, who ruled the country from 1954 to 1989.

"The human rights issue is central, the missing people are still being discovered ... we are going to give a lot of [importance] to this issue," Rubin explained to EFE news agency. 

"Here was a torture room, this is one of the prisons where they put the tortured, you can see the electric prods, you can see the tubs where they drowned the prisoners,” the vice presidential candidate continued. “It is a place that recalls a moment of great sadness in our country and we want to highlight it today so that it never happens again.”

Efraín Alegre visits the Museum of Memory. | Photo: EFE

Rubin further explained that the museum is important so that young people who did not live during the dictatorship "remember" what happened.

"Many young people under the age of 25 or 30 do not remember this episode very much because it is not mentioned in education books,” he stressed. “To talk about recent history is an optional subject for schools [but] it should be obligatory.”

The Paraguayan government still does not recognize Stroessner’s rule as a dictatorship, which the candidates consider a "pending matter.”

"Here when there was a coup in 1989, we recovered a certain freedom of the press, of opinion, of assembly ... But social justice was not done in any way,” Rubin urged.

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The strongman’s rule, during the United States’ Operation Condor — a coordinated repression of left-wing groups by the dictatorships of the '70s and '80s in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay — left more than 400 people disappeared. It is estimated that there were a total of 100,000 indirect victims of the repression, in addition to thousands of Paraguayans being forced into exile, according to a report published by Paraguay's Truth and Justice Commission in 2008.

Of the 448 alleged perpetrators of crimes committed during the dictatorship, some of who committed "crimes against humanity", only eight have thus far been prosecuted.

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