Argentina: Wounds that won't heal

Argentina: Wounds that won't heal

It's been over thirty years since a military junta took over  Argentina's government and initiated a dirty war against left wing guerrillas and its citizens. Thousands of people were "disappeared" , killed and tortured.  Most prisoners were held in clandestine detention centers, with no official records of their detentions or even their deaths. 

It was in those centers where hundreds of babies were born. Their mothers were accused of being guerrillas, so their children were taken away and handed over to police officers, military personnel or couples faithful to the regime. The babies were , supposedly, raised free of "subversive doctrines".

Human Rights organizations and the Argentine Government are pushing for a new law that would help in finding the whereabouts of those babies born thirty years ago. This law would make DNA testing obligatory.

Even today, many of the children that were stolen do not know where they come from. In fact, there have been many cases where they actually love their so called adoptive parents. The ongoing debate is centered on how traumatic it could be for a person to be forced to take a DNA test if he or she does not want to know where they actually came from.

Years ago, an organization called "The Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo" was formed in order to find those babies. They assume their children were killed but they wanted to find those babies that were born in captivity. Those defending them say that they are getting old and that they have the right to find their grandchildren before they die.

Those opposing the law say it will create more trauma and again victimize those who have already suffered enough. What do you think?

RELATED MEDIA: The programme Witness looks at Argentina's "dirty war" through the lens of the children caught up in its wake, with Missing Generation.