Uruguay

Mercosur meeting that promised incorporation of Bolivia to the group results in an invitation to Uruguay to ‘jump ship’

by
Share this
Share

Argentinian president Alberto Fernandez, who has spent the last weeks leading up to the current Mercosur virtual summit promising to work to incorporate Bolivia into the bloc as a member-in-full, took a complaint from the Uruguayan president and flippled into an invitation to leave the group.

Uruguay’s Luis Lacalle Pou said, “It should not be a burden, we are not willing to make it a corset in which our country cannot move, that is why we have talked about flexibility,” in a speech referencing Argentina’s opposition to negotiations outside the group.

The speech was fiery and so was Fernandez’s response, “We don’t want to be anyone’s burden. For me, it is an honor to be part of Mercosur … If it is a burden, the easiest thing is to abandon ship.”

Uruguay is one of the four founding remembers of the 30-year-old group. Bolivia has been in observer status since the 1990s and its president announced at the summit, the country’s “immediate willingness to carry out the tasks necessary to assume full membership,” a step that requires the approval of Brazil.

The meeting will continue on April 22.

By Milan Sime Martinic

Interpol disrupts Uruguay-Spain sex-trafficking highway but Montevideo remains a busy hub to Europe

by
Share this
Share

Six simultaneous raids in both countries resulted in several arrests in both jurisdictions and the conclusion by authorities that the small South American country is still a large source of origin, transit, and destination of women trafficked to Europe.

Uruguay’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced in a press release that the Interpol operation liberated four women and dismantled what it qualified as “an important human trafficking network.”

Three residencies in Montevideo yielded three arrests. Two raids in the city of Guadalajara, and one at an estate in Alcalá de Henares, a suburb of Madrid, in Spain yielded another five arrests. Seven of the eight arrested were of Uruguayan nationality and four were women. The group lured women in difficult financial situations with offers of well-paying job offers, only to force them into street and club prostitution in Europe under precarious conditions, said the announcement.

Structural inequalities and discrimination, says a report by Uruguayan NGO El Paso, are the main factors that make women in the country vulnerable to victimization. The country’s location on the Atlantic Coast naval corridors makes it ideal for international human traffickers, according to a report by Interpol. Around 17% of Uruguay’s trafficking victims leave the country, mostly bound for Spain and Italy, reported El Paso.

By Milan Sime Martinic

Uruguayan women take to the IACHR their 2011 case for sexual abuse and humiliation they endured as political prisoners

by
Share this
Share

Leftist female political prisoners were always kept hooded and submitted to gropings, forced nudity, sexual abuse of all types, rapes, etc., by members of Uruguay’s 1973–1985 military dictatorship, said the attorney for 28 women who presented their case Thursday to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, IACHR. It wasn’t easy for them to come forward, he said.

The women first came forward 10 years ago and 2 have already died, but their attorney said the investigations have gone nowhere and thus the decision to raise the case to a higher international tribunal. Their complaint identifies more than 100 former regime officials, doctors, psychologists, and security forces members, some of whom could only be identified by their aliases and voices, explained the attorney.

“In Uruguay, sexual violence was a weapon of war used by the state to humiliate and punish political prisoners,” Maria Noel Leoni of the Center for Justice and International Law told the online IACHR hearing.

Rapes, sexual humiliation, torture, killings, enforced disappearances, and other human rights violations were reportedly committed by the 12-year dictatorship imposed after a 1973 US-backed coup. The doctors charged were present during the tortures, controlling to make sure they did “not overdo it,” and “advising,” explained the women’s attorney. “It was “very sadistic.”

“At this stage of the game, many of the women had lost hope that anything could be done,” said the attorney. “Now we have some expectations.”

By Milan Sime Martinic