Argentines protest for an end to debt incurred during dictatorship

[struggle4progress]

By Jude Webber
7/17/2006
Catholic News Service (www.catholicnews.com)

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina – Dozens of Argentines protested outside Congress demanding an end to payments of what they called "immoral" foreign debt racked up under the South American country's 1976-83 military dictatorship.
The July 13 demonstration was held on the sixth anniversary of a federal judge's ruling that Argentina's foreign debt "was grossly increased from 1976 by means of a vulgar, grievous economic policy which brought the country to its knees."

"We can't pay with the hunger and suffering of our people," said Sister Liliana Marsans of the Sisters of St. Anthony of Padua and president of the conference of Argentine religious. Sister Liliana took part in the rally attended by social and religious groups ...

"Argentina's foreign debt is illegitimate. A large proportion of it was used to kill people," said the Rev. Angel Furlan, a Lutheran pastor from Buenos Aires ...

http://www.catholic.org/international/international_story.php?id=20556

[msongs]

1. the USA should renounce its deficit-related debt as well then

if everyone did the same, we could all start over.

Msongs
www.msongs.com

[struggle4progress]

2. The theory behind claims that countries like Argentina should ..

.. be able to ignore some debts is that the lenders knew, or ought to have known, that the money was used to fund a corrupt dictatorship which violently oppressed the population, that the loans served no legitimate purpose, that the survivors got essentially no benefit from the loan, and that it is morally repugnant to saddle the survivors with the costs of the murders of their brothers and sisters.

Our situation isn't entirely parallel yet, though it looks to me like we're rushing in that general direction ...