ARGENTINE NOBEL PRIZEWINNER RAPS REAGAN
Author: Associated Press
Date: Sunday, July 26, 1981
Page: ?????
Section: RUN OF PAPER
Nobel Peace Prizewinner Adolfo Perez Esquivel called President Ronald Reagan's
human rights policy "a big step backwards," and accused the Argentine military
government of hiding the truth about missing political dissidents.
He also said the regime was withholding the $5000-a-month stipend legally
due him.
"I haven't heard a word since I requested payment of the pension two
months ago in the Welfare Ministry," the 49-year-old human rights activist
said in an interview with the Associated Press at the crumbling structure that
serves as headquarters for the Service for Peace and Justice he heads.
A law passed by the military regime in April 1977 provides for payment for
life of a stipend equivalent to a Supreme Court judge's salary to any
Argentine winner of a Nobel prize.
Perez Esquivel, a sculptor and former art professor, said he does not want
the stipend for himself.
"I have a stack of letters on my desk, rural schools asking for money for
food and clothes for the kids, co-op projects that need funding. The pension
is not much considering all we're faced with, but it could be put to good
use," he said.
Perez Esquivel was imprisoned without charges at the time the stipend law
was decreed. The army generals who run Argentina claimed his work "unknowingly
aided subversives." They kept him locked up for 14 months in 1977-78, and
Perez Esquivel said he was beaten at times.
Then Perez Esquivel won the 1980 Nobel Peace Prize for the work of his
Service for Peace and Justice. The military apparently is withholding the
stipend because the money could be used to help the organization challenge the
government over the the estimated 6000 to 10,000 Argentines who disappeared in
detention during a five-year military crackdown beginning in 1975.
"The Administration of Mr. Carter pursued a policy that benefitted the
search for a solution to the human rights problems facing this country. The
abandonment of that policy is for me a big step backwards," Perez Esquivel
said.
Perez Esquivel also said a recent interview with Argentine President
Roberto E. Viola in Time magazine contending there were no "disappeared
people" or summary executions of dissidents in Argentina is "not in accord
with the facts."
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