September 23, 2013, 12:30-1:30pm
Room 122, Allard Hall, UBC
Light lunch provided
Join renowned human rights and refugee lawyer Lorne Waldman in conversation with Rosa Gómez and Antonio Savone, survivors of Argentina’s Dirty War, as they discuss Argentina’s attempt at reconciliation and their own fight for justice.
Achieving some form of justice for the horrific and brutal abuses that occurred during Argentina’s Dirty War has been a long and painful process. The military dictatorship was marked by the ‘disappearance’ of over 30,000 persons, as well as indefinite detention, torture, and rape. In 2005, the Supreme Court of Argentina threw out the amnesty laws that shielded the military from punishment, allowing new prosecutions for decades-old crimes.
Many years after only seeing one another’s eyes through the slits of their prison cells, Rosa Gómez and Antonio Savone, both survivors of the secret prison called D2, reunited in 2011, to testify at a war crimes trial against their torturers. After Rosa had testified in a trial in Mendoza, Antonio read of it on the internet. Antonio, a Canadian citizen, returned to Argentina after he realized that his testimony could help Rosa in her long fight to hold her torturers to account. Lorne Waldman joined Antonio and bore witness to the trial.
Antonio’s and Rosa’s reunion and testimony at trial were the subject of an award-winning CBC radio documentary in 2011.