UNESCO recognizes former detention and torture center in Argentina as a World Heritage site

It is estimated that some 5,000 people were detained at the ESMA during the 1976-83 dictatorship, many of whom were tortured and later disappeared without a trace

By Daniel Politi | Associated Press • Published September 20, 2023



The ESMA Museum and Site of Memory stands on the day it was declared an UNESCO World Heritage Site in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Tuesday, Sept. 19, 2023.

Argentina on Tuesday welcomed a decision by a United Nations conference to include a former clandestine detention and torture center as a World Heritage site.

A UNESCO conference in Saudi Arabia agreed to include the ESMA Museum and Site of Memory in the list of sites “considered to be of outstanding value to humanity,” marking a rare instance in which a museum of memory related to recent history is designated to the list.

The former Navy School of Mechanics, known as ESMA, housed the most infamous illegal detention center that operated during Argentina’s last brutal military dictatorship that ruled from 1976 through 1983. It now operates as a museum and a larger site of memory, including offices for government agencies and human rights organizations.

“The Navy School of Mechanics conveyed the absolute worst aspects of state-sponsored terrorism,” Argentina’s President Alberto Fernández said in a video message thanking UNESCO for the designation. “Memory must be kept alive (...) so that no one in Argentina forgets or denies the horrors that were experienced there."

. . .

It is estimated that some 5,000 people were detained at the ESMA during the 1976-83 dictatorship, many of whom were tortured and later disappeared without a trace. It also housed many of the detainees who were later tossed alive from the “death flights” into the ocean or river in one of the most brutal aspects of the dictatorship.

The ESMA also contained a maternity ward, where pregnant detainees, often brought from other illegal detention centers, were housed until they gave birth and their babies later snatched by military officers.

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https://www.necn.com/news/national-international/unesco-recognizes-former-detention-and-torture-center-in-argentina-as-a-world-heritage-site/3051841/