Human Rights Developments

Defending Human Rights

The Role of the International Community

Although threats against human rights defenders were rare, a few activists faced serious abuses. On July 30, Elisabeth Ceballos was kidnapped, beaten and threatened by three masked men after her husband, journalist Miguel Hernández, participated in a demonstration at the house of Miguel Angel Pérez, a former army officer who had admitted to assassinating a political prisoner in 1976. Ceballos was finally left, bound and gagged, near the meeting place of a human rights group in the town of Cosquín, Córdoba. Hernández and other human rights activists in Cosquín also complained of a series of telephoned death threats, and on July 17 Hernández's house was stoned.