Argentina justice activist to visit Timor-Leste

Timor-Leste television viewers will have an opportunity to learn about a successful campaign for justice for crimes against humanity.

TVTL will broadcast the film El Cerco (The Circle) about Patricia Isasa's work for justice in Argentina on Sunday, 9 October, at 8:30 pm. The film is in Spanish with English and Tetum subtitles. [We apologize that TVTL did not broadcast the film on 1 October, as they had promised.]


Patricia Isasa was a 16-year-old student union organizer in 1976 in Santa Fe, Argentina, when she was kidnapped by police and soldiers and tortured and held prisoner without trial for two-and-a-half years at one of the 585 clandestine detention and torture centers set up during the dictatorship. After a long legal battle to bring her torturers to justice, six of the people who tortured her were  sentenced to decades in prison in 2009. Some of them had become mayor and judges during the three decades between when they committed their crimes and when justice was finally achieved.

La'o Hamutuk has arranged for this broadcast in preparation for Patricia Isasa's visit to Timor-Leste later in October, which will include a speaking tour around the country and several events in Dili.  Ms. Isasa will share experiences of her successful struggle to achieve accountability in Argentina by bringing perpetrators of serious crimes to trial and prison.  Her victory gives hope and motivation to Timor-Leste's people who continue to suffer from the ongoing impunity for crimes against humanity committed during 24 years of Indonesian occupation of Timor-Leste.

For more information, or to arrange a showing of the film or a meeting with Patricia Isasa, please contact Jose Pereira at La'o Hamutuk: jose@laohamutuk.org or 3321040 or 7367518.