SUPPRESSION OF HUMAN RIGHTS IN ARGENTINA

Touted until recently as one of the most advanced nations in Latin America, Argentina has fallen victim to a series of brutally repressive measures instituted by military dictator President Jorge Rafael Videla. Using the threat of internal subversion as its excuse Videla's regime has employed kidnapping, torture and murder to effectively silence all criticism. A nation that has had the highest literary rate in Latin America, a strong cadre of trained technicians, low unemployment, little starvation, more doctors per capita than the United States, and a capital city well known as a cultural center, is now experiencing a disastrous decline that has been intensified by the suppression of human rights.

Among the events widely reported in the American press are:

• The killing of between 10,000 and 15,000 people after their kidnapping by the police.

• The detention of thousands more in prisons and special detention camps. Many disappear suddenly without a trace.

• The use of torture including beatings, the use of cattle prods, immersion and electric currents.

Though the military has said that it intends to restore elected government, to date there is no congress, political parties have been suspended, labor unions have been infiltrated by the military and are largely under military administration, the universities have been purged because they are thought to be a training ground for guerillas, and press criticism has been effectively silenced.

The American Federation of Teachers is deeply concerned about the suppression of human rights in Argentina. We deplore the destruction of the country's educated leadership, its educational institutions, and the independence of its labor movement.

Leaders of the Argentine labor movement, Confederacion General del Trabajo (CGT), and of the teachers' union, Confederacion Argentina de Maestros y Professores, have been detained, tortured, and silenced. Some have even been murdered.

The right to strike and bargain collectively have been cancelled.

Labor leaders have been prevented from traveling abroad.

Thousands of teachers have been dismissed from university faculties; nearly 100 academic courses have been suppressed; many outstanding research organizations such as the Argentine Association of Physics, have either ceased to function or have been rendered impotent.

University students are under military control and subject to harsh restrictions and political attack.

Salaries in universities and state research centers have been deliberately depressed, despite an annual inflation rate of 170 percent.

Individual professors have been abducted, kidnapped, imprisoned, and even murdered. Many professors who have not been fired have left anyway, producing a massive exodus of university staffs. Top scientists have fled the country. Social scientists have been branded "subversive" and have faced the most serious cutbacks of all. Half a million Argentines¾mostly professional¾have left their country since President Videla's coup.

Prospects for replacing this educated leadership are dim¾because of increasing poverty, primary school dropout rates are now 50 percent. Innocuous books and artists are banned; "new math" is branded as "Marxist."

The American Federation of Teachers expresses its solidarity with the group of 25 Argentine labor leaders who are attempting to salvage what is left of the movement there. We call on the Carter Administration to do everything possible to ease these repressive practices in Argentina by:

Drawing the attention of the nation and the world to the barbaric practices of the Videla regime.

Insisting that future aid and contact between the United States and Argentina be dependent on changes in these policies.