Statement onthe 50 years since the assassination of Zelmar Michelini

Zelmar Michelini, former Senator of Uruguay, was assassinated on 20 May 1976, alongside Héctor Gutiérrez Ruiz, Rosario Barredo and Wiliam Whitelawe [name unverified], in Buenos Aires, by a Uruguayan-Argentine paramilitary unit acting on the orders of the Uruguayan dictatorship, within the framework of Operation Condor and the Cold War.

This was not an isolated case during those years in which the illegal actions of the armed forces, particularly in the Southern Cone of Latin America, claimed the lives of democratic political leaders and military figures who opposed the dictatorships.

Fifty years on from those events, we wish to remember Zelmar Michelini — whose career as a student and trade union leader, journalist, member of parliament, senator, and minister is well known to all — and to honour him for becoming a defender of Human Rights in Uruguay.

In 1973, he was forced into exile in Argentina following the coup d’état in Uruguay.

Zelmar Michelini was a man of peace. At a time when only the sound of weapons could be heard, he preached peace time and again. A man of dialogue and uncompromising democratic conviction.

With the democratic wave that began in Argentina in 1983, it became possible — with the particular circumstances of each country taken into account — to revisit the past of illegal state-sanctioned violence, and to recognise the courage of those who, like Zelmar Michelini, gave their lives for the ideals of individual freedom, social equality, and human rights across our countries.

The Socialist International, fifty years after his assassination and the many tributes paid to him throughout May — the month of memory in Uruguay — wishes once again to pay homage to this tireless fighter: Zelmar Michelini.