Page 3 - AHATA

A6 WORLD NEWS
Saturday 17 auguSt 2024
Mexico’s truth commission reveals new evidence of ‘death flights’

during 1965-1990 ‘dirty war’

By MARÍA VERZA Acapulco.
Associated Press During a 2012-2017 trial, sur-
MEXICO CITY (AP) — More vivors in Argentina testified
evidence has emerged that the flights took place
that Mexican authorities at least weekly.
disposed of the bodies of The Argentine trial, at which
dissidents in “death flights” 29 former officials were
during the country’s 1965- sentenced to life in prison,
1990 “dirty war. “ proved that the Argentine
Mexico’s governmental dictatorship used “death
Truth Commission said in a flights” as a systematic
report Friday that recollec- mode of extermination.
tions by witnesses and doc- Argentina’s junta is widely
uments leaked over the considered the most dead-
years described the chilling ly of the military dictator-
last moments of the victims. ships that ruled much of
The executions were part Latin America in the 1970s
of an effort by the Mexican and 1980s. Human rights
government at the time to groups estimate 30,000
eliminate leftist social and were killed, many of whom
guerrilla movements. disappeared without a
The victims, who have not trace.
been identified or count- In Mexico, the less-wide-
ed, were pulled one by A visitor looks at an exhibit during the inauguration of a memorial to victims of Mexico’s “dirty spread executions ap-
one to a bench at a mili- war” at the former Federal Security headquarters where student protesters were taken in 1971 peared to target small
tary airfield near Acapulco. following a violent crackdown in Mexico City, June 10, 2019. Associated Press rural guerrilla movements
They believed they were in Guerrero state, where
going to have their pho- been killed that way, of them released. of 183 names of likely vic- Acapulco is located. But
tographs taken, but were though he provided no lists The truth commission lo- tims on the “death flights.” a broad range of people
instead shot in the back of nor names of the victims. cated log books for about Several of those names were apparently swept up
the head, and their bodies Some of the victims may 30 flights by one plane match people who disap- in the killings.
dumped by plane out in have been dying, but not from the base between peared during the govern- The Mexican executions
the Pacific ocean. yet dead, when they were 1975 and 1979. And in a ment counter-insurgency appeared a bit more ru-
According to testimony by pushed out of the planes. two-decade-old witness campaign. dimentary and less well-
Gustavo Tarín, who served Military aviation mechanic statement from a man who Unlike the better-known planned: fishermen in the
in a military police unit at Margarito Monroy said he claimed to be an armed case of the “death flights” area recalled seeing bod-
the time, the same pistol participated in 15 of the forces deserter, another 25 carried out by Argentina’s ies wash up on shore, after
was used so often in the kill- flights, and that female flights by another plane are 1976-1983 military dictator- which the military allegedly
ings that soldiers came up victims were sometimes mentioned. ship, little is known about began placing them in
with a nickname for it: “the offered release, or the re- That statement, which had the ones carried out by sacks weighted down with
sword of justice.” lease of their husbands, if long been held in the ar- Mexico, mainly in the 1970s, rocks before tossing them
Tarín said that as many as they had sex with soldiers, chives of a now-deceased from a small airbase at Pie into the ocean.q
1,500 people may have though he never saw any rights activist, included a list de la Cuesta, just west of

Philippines says China was `dramatically’ alarmed over U.S.

missile system deployed to its north

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — China expressed its “very dramatic” alarm over a mid-
range missile system that the U.S. military recently deployed to the Philippines, and
warned it could destabilize the region. But Manila’s top diplomat said Friday he reas-
sured his Chinese counterpart that the weaponry was only in the country temporarily.
Philippine Foreign Secretary Enrique Manalo said his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, ex-
pressed China’s concern over the U.S. mid-range missile deployment to the Philippines
during their talks last month in Laos on the sidelines of the Association of Southeast
Asian Nations meetings with Asian and Western countries.
“We discussed it and, well, they made it very dramatic,” Manalo said in response to
questions during a news conference with foreign correspondents in Manila. “I said you
shouldn’t be worried.”
Pressed to specify what China’s specific concerns were, Manalo said Wang warned
the presence of the U.S. missile system could be “destabilizing,” but the Philippine for-
eign affairs chief said he disagreed. “They’re not destabilizing” and the missile system
In this photo provided by the Philippine Coast Guard, a Chinese was only in the Philippines temporarily, Manalo said he told Wang.
Coast Guard ship, right, uses its water cannons on a Philippine The U.S. Army said in April it transported the mid-range missile system, a land-based
Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR) vessel, as it weapon that can fire the Standard Missile-6 and the Tomahawk Land Attack Missile,
approaches Scarborough Shoal in the disputed South China from the U.S. to the northern Philippines as part of combat exercises with Philippine
Sea, Dec. 9, 2023.
Associated Press troops.q