Seven neo-Nazis were jailed in Buenos Aires last week for painting swastikas in a public square.
The arrests June 19 prevented a confrontation last Friday when a neo-Nazi group calling itself the Nationalist Workers’ Party had planned to assemble outside the National Congress to pledge allegiance to an Argentine flag with a swastika in its center.
Argentine President Carlos Menem banned the rally. “Never again — that type of ideology is not valid in today’s world,” he said.
The neo-Nazis are headed by Alejandro Biondini, a self-proclaimed admirer of Adolf Hitler who vigorously denies the Holocaust but claims not to be an anti-Semite.
He and his followers face up to three years’ imprisonment if convicted. They were arrested under a 1988 law that prohibits the practice or promotion of discrimination on the basis of race, creed, sex or national origin.
This was the first time the statute has been used to restrain anti-Semitic activity, according to Rabbi Morton Rosenthal, Latin American affairs director for the Anti-Defamation League.
One of the most recent anti-Semitic manifestations was the destruction of 110 gravestones at a Jewish cemetery on the outskirts of Buenos Aires in May. Two men were arrested. Nazi literature was found in their apartments.
Biondini’s group had put up posters inviting people to join them in their pledge to the swastika-adorned flag. They called off the rally.
‘NEED TO BE ALERT AND VIGILANT’
Federal Judge Ricardo Weschler did not immediately resolve their legal situation. He neither ordered a preventive prison sentence nor an eventual release date, the newspaper Clarin reported last Friday.
Justice Minister Leon Arslanian has asked for a background report from the Justice Department and the intelligence service as a basis for a case, the Latin American Jewish Congress said.
Biondini’s group has been trying, without success, to officially register itself as the Nationalist Socialist Workers’ Party, the name of the original Nazi party in Germany. It also wants permission to use a swastika.
Biondini announced recently that his party intends to run candidates in the October mid-term elections, and he may run for president in 1995.
Jews and others are concerned by the spate of anti-Semitic incidents in the country. Argentina’s ambassador to the United States blames them on social unrest in reaction to the economic reforms and other changes necessary to put Argentina on the road to democracy.
The envoy, Carlos Ortiz de Rozas, stressed, however, that the government has moved quickly to arrest and prosecute the responsible parties.
Ortiz, who was posted to Washington in April, addressed a luncheon there last week sponsored by B’nai B’rith International.
He said that all who “appreciate freedom have to be alert and vigilant all over the world in order to prevent the renaissance of things that plunged humanity into the Holocaust and chaos of 50 years ago.”
(JTA correspondent David Friedman in Washington contributed to this report.)
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
