Uruguay deepens its search for the dictatorship's disappeared with access to new archives
Key takeaways
- The agreement, signed on Monday in Montevideo, deepens a strategic pact reached by state bodies in February.
- Education Minister Jos Carlos Mah a said the step was fundamental to advance on truth and justice, as it facilitates access to data crucial for judicial investigations and for victims' access to justice.
- The main development is the incorporation of the Udelar, which will contribute its technological infrastructure to form a repository that allows the data to be systematized, made accessible and disseminated.
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Uruguay expanded its policy of searching for those who were detained and disappeared during the dictatorship with the signing of an accord for the treatment, preservation and administration of archives on human-rights violations committed in the country between 1968 and 1985. The agreement, signed on Monday in Montevideo, deepens a strategic pact reached by state bodies in February.
The accord was signed by the Ministry of Education and Culture (MEC), through the General Archive of the Nation; the National Human Rights Institution and Ombudsman's Office (INDDHH); and the University of the Republic (Udelar). Education Minister Jos Carlos Mah a said the step was fundamental to advance on truth and justice, as it facilitates access to data crucial for judicial investigations and for victims' access to justice. The State, he said, must help when there is such a great dispersion of documents, and specified that the processing of the information would be governed by strictly technical criteria to guarantee objectivity.
The main development is the incorporation of the Udelar, which will contribute its technological infrastructure to form a repository that allows the data to be systematized, made accessible and disseminated. The president of the INDDHH, Mariana Mota, valued that institutional synergy as a way to optimize resources in the face of the challenge of analyzing archives scattered across different state agencies, and linked it to the permissions already granted to access the Defense Ministry's archives.