Even as democracy has advanced in Argentina, the country still faces a number of serious human rights problems, including police brutality, lack of independence of the judiciary, and harassment of journalists who expose such problems.

Many police officers are abusive, corrupt, and ill-prepared to prevent or investigate crimes. Officers have been implicated in multiple extrajudicial executions and even "disappearances." In one of the most infamous recent cases, evidence linked members of the Buenos Aires provincial police force to the 1994 terrorist bombing of the Israel-Argentine Mutual Association, an attack that killed eighty-four people and wounded over one hundred others. Meanwhile, a politicized judiciary prevents full accountability in many cases of corruption and other abuses. Corruption cases against Menem's cabinet members, relatives, and other high-ranking officials have not resulted in a single conviction.

Journalists who investigate corruption and human rights violations suffer severe, and at times violent, harassment, and are subject to multiple lawsuits by government officials intent on silencing them. One of the most notorious cases was the 1997 murder of photojournalist José Luis Cabezas, who was investigating police corruption. Cabezas was handcuffed, beaten, and shot to death; then his body was burned. Last year, Adolfo Scilingo, the only Argentine Navy officer to have voluntarily confessed to serious human rights abuses during the military dictatorships from 1976 to 1983, was abducted by armed men with police credentials. He was beaten and threatened, and the initials of three prominent Argentine journalists to whom he had told his story were carved in his face.

"Although the Menem government is clearly an improvement over the brutal dictatorships of the past," said José Miguel Vivanco, executive director of the Americas Division of Human Rights Watch, "it has a long way to go. Argentine journalists may know this best of all."

Question for President Carlos Menem: You expanded the Supreme Court from five justices to nine at the beginning of your term, but the nominees were approved at a Congressional hearing without the opposition present, and without previous screening of the candidates. How do you now intend to restore faith in the judiciary?