Wednesday, June 23, 2010

World Cup: Argentinian team support for Mothers of the Plazo de Mayo

The following under reported story has already been spotted on Louis Proyect's blog and over at Socialist Unity blog but the text cut and pasted below is from the Shiraz Socialist blog:

Ian W writes:

We are bombarded daily by the World Cup. The organisers of the event claim that it is non-political, yet it is dominated by large multinatonal corporations.

Here you can see a photograph of the Argentine football team holding a banner. This photo has been effectively censored by the international press and Toutube has also blocked it. Why?

The banner simply states that the members of the football team support the call for the for the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Who are these mothers? They are the mothers of young men and women who “disappeared” during the Dirty War carried out by the Argentine Military Junta between 1976 and 1983.

An estimated 30,000 “disappeared”, that is were killed, because they were socialists, communists, trade unionists, community organisers, students, activists and so on who opposed the military dictatorship. Some of these young women had babies, about 500 in total, who were not returned to their natural families to live with their grandparents as their own parents had been killed. The babies were given to military families who supported the dictatorship.

One day a week between 1977 and 2006 the Mothers, now grandmothers, would walk around the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires demanding to know what had happened to their children. They even did this during the dictatorship and for their bravery three of the mothers also disappeared, that is were killed, for daring to question the military dictatorship.

The present football team now supports the call for these mothers to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace.

I'm sure you'll agree that it is one of the more heartening stories from in and around this current World Cup.

More info on the story at the following link. (You may have to use babelfish to translate it.)

4 comments:

gray said...

Indeed Darren. With a little bit more coverage, maybe England "fans" will be less "Argie bastards"/Falklands towards the Pumas and more fists held up in solidarity to the workers who suffered.... Ah, who the feck am I kidding? We'll be hearing all about the world wars and 66 again in a few days.

ps. did you see this on my blog?
http://trotfinder.blogspot.com/2010/06/liverpool-banner.html

Imposs1904 said...

I saw your post.

Wasn't there enough space on the banner for Souness's granite like features?

gray said...

I just knew the war jokes would start....

This world cup is like WWII: the French are beaten, the Italians in disarray, the Americans are in it at the last minute, and only England can stop the Germans.

Imposs1904 said...

No mention of Japan?