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November 11: Prisoner without a Name
lawrencebush
November 11, 2010
Jacobo Timerman, an Argentine journalist and human rights activist who documented his torture by the military junta in his book, Prisoner Without a Name, Cell Without a Number, died on this date in 1999. Timerman was the publisher of La Opinión, a left-leaning newspaper that was reporting the names of activists who were “disappeared” by the military dictatorship, when his 2 1/2-year ordeal began. In 1979 he was stripped of his Argentine citizenship and forcibly exiled. Living in Israel, he wrote a scathing critique of the 1982 invasion of Lebanon. He also wrote books that were highly critical of the Chilean and Cuban systems. In 1984, Timerman returned to Argentina and reclaimed his newspaper and property. By then, the Argentine junta, responsible for the murder of tens of thousands of activists, educators, and innocents (and with a special vendetta against Jews), had been replaced by a civilian government following Argentina’s defeat by Great Britain in the Falklands Island war.
“No one had to impose my enemies on me. I selected them myself. I didn’t avoid them: I pointed them out, marked them, attacked them.” —Jacobo Timerman
