Former Vice President Lucía Topolansky alleged that members of the left-wing lied about crimes towards humanity dedicated throughout Uruguay’s dictatorship, which lasted from 1973 to 1985.
In line with El País, the declare was made in an interview she gave for the e book “Los indomables” (The Untameables) by Pablo Cohen. She mentioned that there are members of the left wing “who lie[d] of their statements” concerning the crimes perpetrated by the dictatorship.
Topolansky claimed that some individuals had been pressured into making false accusations. She recalled that an acquaintance of hers and her husband—former President José Mujica—was advised to lie as a way to put a sure particular person related to the regime in jail. Topolansky claimed that refusing to take action may result in accusations of being a “traitor.”
She added: “We all know who lied inside the left. However we aren’t going to say it.”
Topolansky, a former leftist guerrilla like her husband, spent 13 years in jail below the dictatorship.
Throughout that point, she says she and three different prisoners turned conscious of the loss of life of one other prisoner, who was asthmatic and died after a fuel grenade was thrown into his cell. The prisoners weren’t eyewitnesses to his loss of life, however had been assured that they’d heard sufficient to substantiate the occasions. Topolansky claims that the prisoners had been inspired to lie about having really witnessed the incident, saying that “those that needed you to lie requested you for these issues,” however that she didn’t lie as a result of she was “not like them.”
Topolansky’s statements have triggered important controversy in a rustic the place 197 individuals had been forcibly disappeared and 1000’s had been tortured between 1973 and 1985.
The group “Moms and Family members of Disappeared Uruguayan Detainees” (Famidesa) revealed a statement wherein they expressed their “most rejection” of Topolansky’s claims. The group mentioned that “some of these allegations” put in jeopardy “a means of looking for and attaining justice which has taken a few years.”
They accused Topolansky of “undermining the legitimacy of the prosecutions and sentences” issued to perpetrators, encouraging Topolansky to both “retract” her assertion or “fall silent.”
Topolansky has since despatched a handwritten letter to Famidesa, saying that she is going to “fall silent,” including “I can not retract [what I said] as a result of I knew what I mentioned.” She defined, “It was a mistake to say it within the conversations that the writer recorded to make his e book,” and said, “I didn’t learn the draft earlier than it went to enhancing. I ought to have executed so, and eliminated what I mentioned. I take duty for the error and the implications.”
She additionally said that the accusations she made about witnesses mendacity had been associated to trials in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Famidesa responded to the letter with one other statement: “We firmly preserve the place we made public on December 18: we belief in Justice and within the victims, and within the Uruguayan individuals who have expressed their solidarity and fixed help for this trigger that unites us.”
The governing Frente Amplio (Broad Entrance) coalition, which Mujica and Topolansky represented as president and vice chairman respectively between 2010 and 2015, additionally issued a statement in response to the controversy. The coalition reaffirmed its “unwavering dedication to the protection of human rights and its absolute condemnation of crimes towards humanity.”
The assertion continued, “We reiterate that respect for historic reminiscence shouldn’t be solely an act of justice in the direction of the victims and their households, but additionally a necessary situation for consolidating a full democracy, primarily based on fact and human rights.”
Topolansky’s claims will now be investigated by prosecutor Eliana Travers, although there can be no proceedings till February as judicial recess is at the moment underway.
