[huridocs-tech] Race-hate groups find virtual haven in Argentina

The Christian Science Monitor
from the August 23, 2002 edition
http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0823/p07s02-woam.html

Race-hate groups find virtual haven in Argentina
Lax laws and cheap Internet access have helped far-right groups thrive

By Colin Barraclough | Special to The Christian Science Monitor
BUENOS AIRES - Argentina has emerged as the location of choice for 
websites set up by the world's ultranationalist and neo-Nazi 
political groups.

In recent years, race-hate groups in Europe and in other Latin 
American countries have come under increasing pressure to curtail 
their online activities. Authorities have dismantled some extremist 
sites, or pressured web-hosting companies to close sites temporarily 
for posting offensive or illegal content.

Neo-Nazi groups experience few such problems in Argentina.

Aided by inexpensive high-speed Internet access and an outdated 
antidiscrimination law, race-hate groups from all over the 
Spanish-speaking world are making Argentina their virtual home base.

1990s boom

"The late 1990s saw the re-birth of neo-Nazi groups in Argentina, 
both in the real world and on the Internet," says Sergio Widder, 
Latin America representative for the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a 
Jewish human rights organization. "The ultraright in Argentina is 
using the Internet to help create a neo-Nazi network in Latin 
America." According to the Wiesenthal Center, the number of sites 
worldwide it deems "problematic" has grown to 3,000 today from one in 
1995. Specific numbers for Argentina were unavailable.

The highest-profile site in Argentina is City of Freedom of Opinion, 
run by the neo-Nazi New Triumph Party (PNT). Its leader, Alejandro 
Biondini, appears at public meetings in SS-style uniforms, giving the 
Nazi salute. Set up as a modest online newspaper in 1997, the site 
has since mushroomed into a much-visited portal connecting more than 
300 extreme right-wing groups in Europe and Latin America.

The site, in Spanish and other languages, boasts a news agency and a 
bulletin board for neo-Nazis. The PNT offers free e-mail and 
web-hosting services for race-hate groups around the world. On the 
site, the PNT says it specifically offers hosting facilities to 
extremist groups whose websites have been prohibited or whose 
activities have been curtailed in other jurisdictions.

The portal allowed neo-Nazi groups from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and 
Uruguay to plan a congress in April 2000, to be held in Chile on the 
anniversary of Adolf Hitler's birthday. The Chilean authorities 
eventually banned the meeting.

Numerous other Argentine race-hate and ultra-nationalist sites 
provide a regular channel of contact for extremists in Chile, 
Uruguay, Brazil, and Europe. Many glorify Germany's Nazi Party and 
Italy's fascism, championing the country's European roots, and 
lashing out against drug addicts, Marxists, Jews, and homosexuals.

One site, True Peace, set up by Carlos Torlaschi, president of the 
Group of Retired Admirals of Argentina, celebrates the military and 
police officers who killed some 30,000 Argentine citizens during 
Argentina's 1976-83 "dirty war" against suspected leftists.

Argentina is an ideal online location for many extremist groups. 
Despite the country's profound economic slump, Internet penetration 
remains one of the highest in Latin America, and super-fast Internet 
access is widely available. Both factors are a legacy of the decade 
in which Argentina's currency was fixed at parity with the US dollar, 
making the import and use of technology inexpensive for Argentines.

But since currency devaluation in January, the peso has plummeted by 
some 70 percent against the dollar, making Argentina a cheap place 
for foreign groups to set up hosting facilities.

Furthermore, a 1997 decree issued by then-President Carlos Menem 
explicitly stated the government's refusal to interfere with 
production, creation, and dissemination of information distributed on 
the Internet. The decree guaranteed Internet sites freedom from 
censorship.

Current laws offer little help

Antidiscrimination advocates have found it impossible to use the 
country's antidiscrimination law, passed in 1988, as it does not 
cover Internet publication.

"We could try to act against the companies hosting these sites, but 
the legislation just isn't there to take action against them," says 
Adrián Jmelnizky, who investigates racial abuse cases for Argentina's 
National Institute Against Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Racism. 
"Internet use is beyond the scope of the antidiscrimination law and 
there are no initiatives to change that at present."

As a result, ultraright groups locating their sites in Argentina 
avoid the need to locate servers offshore, or to hide domain names 
behind a maze of sites located in unhelpful jurisdictions.

Police, already overburdened by a wave of kidnappings and a general 
rise in violent crime, say they have little time to monitor websites 
for incendiary content.

Despite the growing visibility of Argentina's far-right groups on the 
Internet, analysts say their fortunes remain stagnant in the real 
world. Unlike European far-right groups in places such as the 
Netherlands, which have exploited economic dissatisfaction to recruit 
a new generation of supporters that have made an impact in open 
elections, extremists in Argentina, a country founded on immigration, 
remain marginalized in the political arena.

The Argentine authorities appear unconcerned at their activities. 
"Our intelligence reports do not indicate that the extreme right is 
very active," says President Eduardo Duhalde's spokesman, Eduardo 
Amadeo. "They keep talking about racial issues, and anti-Semitism has 
never been a vote-winner in Argentina."
  


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