Argentine human rights activist dies, aged 106

The Argentine human rights activist Rosa Roisinblit has died at the age of 106, her organisation says.

She was honorary president and a founding member of the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, a group that searched for children stolen during Argentina’s military dictatorship between 1976 and 1983.

“We only have words of gratitude for her dedication… and the love with which she searched for the grandsons and granddaughters until the very end,” the campaign group said in a statement.

Some 30,000 people were killed or forcibly disappeared during Argentina’s “Dirty War”. Children of detained opposition activists were seized and given up for adoption.

Rosa Roisinblit was born in 1919 in Moises Ville, a town of Jewish immigrants in central Argentina.

She worked as an obstetrician and moved to Buenos Aires in 1949, where she married in 1951.

After the military coup of March 1976, the junta moved to eradicate the opposition. Tens of thousands of activists were snatched in raids and held in clandestine detention and torture centres.

Many were thrown into the sea on notorious “death flights”. An estimated 500 of their babies were stolen.

Roisinblit’s pregnant daughter Patricia, son-in-law José Pérez Rojo and 15-month old granddaughter Mariana, were kidnapped in 1978. The couple had been left-wing activists.

The family was transferred to a school, known as Esma, which was the largest detention centre in Buenos Aires.

Patricia Roisinblit was kept alive long enough to give birth to her son in a basement. The couple’s bodies were never found, and Mariana was returned to Rosa, who raised her.

The new-born baby was given to an air-force intelligence officer to bring up.

After her family’s abduction, Roisinblit joined the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo and served as treasurer for six years before working as vice-president from 1989 to 2022.

Her grandson was tracked down in 2000 by his sister Mariana and through the work of the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo.

He was reunited with Rosa and Mariana after DNA tests confirmed they were related.

He had been given the name Guillermo Francisco Gómez by the adoptive parents: Francisco Gómez and Teodora Jofre.

Roisinblit was in the courtroom in 2016, when Goméz was jailed for life over the boy’s abduction. Jofre was separately jailed for three years.

Later that year, two men – a former air force chief an ex-intelligence officer – were sentenced to 25 years for the abduction and torture of Patricia and José. They were among hundreds of soldiers and leaders prosecuted for human-rights abuses.

At the age of 96, Roisinblit attended the trial with Guillermo and Mariana.

A year later, she told AFP news agency: “This wound never heals… But to say I’m stopping? No, I’ll never stop.”

An estimated 140 babies have been reunited with their biological parents through the work of organisations like the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo.

Hundreds are still missing.

“We fight but the heroes are our children who rose up against a fierce dictatorship and gave their lives for a better country,” Roisinblit said.

Guillermo is a human rights lawyer and works with the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, continuing his grandmother’s legacy.

In a post on X on Saturday, he said: “My Grandma has passed away, and beyond the sadness I feel, it comforts me to think that after 46 years she is reunited with my mom and with her great love, my grandfather Benjamín.”