The Assemblea Teatro, which has journeyed for over 15 years at the side of the Madres, the Abuelas and the Hijos who, for more than 35 years now, have never wavered in the pursuit of justice for their loved ones and for all the desaparecidos, and the support offered by the Associations for Human Rights of Argentina, become an occasion for a meeting to be held in Rome at the foreign ministry on the history of Argentina between 1974 and 1983, and entitled: “The day before yesterday, the dictatorship: not to forget”.
A series of open sessions with Italian journalists who have been following events in Argentina, and South America as a whole, for the past 15 years; Minister Giulio Terzi is scheduled to give the closing speech.
Discussions will be about Argentina, its recent history and human rights, a few days before the start of an “Assemblea Teatro” tour through five South American countries. After Ecuador, the tour will go on to Colombia, Paraguay and Uruguay and end in Argentina in a symbolic location, the ESMA-Escuela Superior de Mecánica de la Armada, today’s Museum of Memory in Buenos Aires.
From the historical point of view, in reality only a moment has passed since those tragic events in Argentina. While many around the world kept still, minimised and, amazingly enough, did not intervene, 30,000 civilians – including 1,600 Italians – were tortured, shot and even pushed to their death from airplanes into the sea. What we want not to erase today is the memory of these deeds; memory, the container of all those things that must act as a warning, especially to the new generations, that such tragedies must never again occur because, as Jewish writer and Nobel Prize laureate Eli Weisel said “neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim, and silence encourages the tormenter, never the tormented”.
Giulio Terzi di Sant’Agata, Minister for Foreign Affairs
