Uruguay Open to Rights Cases of Dictator Era

By REUTERS

MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay (Reuters) — Uruguay’s government issued a decree on Thursday giving judges the authority to investigate human rights cases that occurred during the military dictatorship that controlled the country from 1973 to 1985.

A year after democracy was restored in Uruguay, a small, South American nation of 3.4 million people, the government passed an amnesty law protecting security officers from prosecution.

But leftist coalitions that have been in power since 2005 have determined that some cases fall outside the provisions of the amnesty law, and about 20 former military personnel have been tried and convicted.

About 200 Uruguayans were kidnapped and killed during military rule and many more people were arrested and tortured. Uruguayans remain divided over how to deal with former military officers who have been accused of human rights crimes.

The decree, signed by President José Mujica and his cabinet on Thursday, will allow the judiciary to proceed with as many as 80 human rights cases that are pending investigation, the government said.

The Uruguayan Congress rejected a proposal last month to repeal the amnesty law that shields former military officers from prosecution for crimes committed during the dictatorship; the proposed bill split the leftist governing coalition.

Retired military officers have in recent months been pushing for human rights cases to be dismissed.

Mr. Mujica, a former leftist guerrilla who spent more than a decade in jail, rejected the retired officers’ call for a “national agreement” between the army and victims of rights abuses and their relatives that would have avoided more investigations and trials.

Uruguayans voted to maintain the amnesty law in two referendums, in 1989 and again in 2009. As part of his election platform, Mr. Mujica supported eliminating the amnesty law, but the result of the 2009 referendum and concerns over the potential political cost led him to change course.

His approval ratings have slipped to their lowest level since he took office in 2010, partly because of the discord over the amnesty within his own coalition, political analysts said.

(A version of this article appeared in print on July 1, 2011, on page A6 of the New York edition with the headline: Uruguay Open To Rights Cases Of Dictator Era.)


(2011-7-1/nytimes)