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 Days ahead of President Barack Obama's arrival in Argentina for a
rare visit by a U.S. leader, Perosino scoffs at praise from the
White House for Macri as a "strong voice" for human rights.
"The decision to shut down the bank's human rights office was a
decision that we see as a form of political and ideological
persecution," Perosino said.
She is not the only one concerned. Obama's visit, which coincides
with the March 24 anniversary of the 1976 coup that installed a
military junta, initially supported by the United States, has riled
victims of the seven-year dictatorship and raised questions about
Macri's credentials as a staunch defender of human rights.
Macri, who took office in December, has said that his leftist
predecessor former President Cristina Fernandez's push to punish
military repressors smacked of revenge.
His government's human rights office held its first meeting with
families who suffered at the hands of leftist militants in the 1970s
and early '80s, rather than victims of the military's crimes.
Then, in February, the government reinstated the rights of military
officials who participated in atrocities to receive treatment in
military hospitals.
 Rights campaigners talk of troubling infringements on civil rights.
Macri was criticized for the arrest of a popular community activist
and came under fire for the police's use of rubber bullets against a
community group rehearsing for Carnival that included children. The
president has also moved to grant police increased powers to shut
down public protests.
Fernandez was widely praised by human rights groups and the left for
re-opening trials dealing with abuses committed during the
dictatorship, though right-wing opponents accused her of reopening
old wounds.
The security forces killed up to 30,000 people. Many of them were
"forcibly disappeared" - a euphemism for kidnapped and murdered -
and hundreds of children were stolen from their imprisoned parents.
Macri's human rights chief, Claudio Avruj, said the government is
committed to defending human rights and that perpetrators of
dictatorship-era crimes would continue to face trial.
"We categorically reject everything the military coup stood for, the
persecution, the disappearance and death of Argentine and foreign
citizens," Avruj said.
Obama's trip marks the first bilateral visit by a U.S. president to
Argentina in nearly two decades. Relations soured sharply during
Fernandez's leadership.
During last year's presidential race, Macri pressed for Venezuela's
suspension from the regional Mercosur trade bloc, citing alleged
rights abuses by President Nicolas Maduro's socialist government.
"President Macri has been a strong voice for democracy and human
rights in Latin America," Obama's deputy security adviser, Ben
Rhodes, said last month.
BANK PROBE
But rights campaigners fret that Macri, whose PRO party has
previously voted against investigating economic crimes under the
dictatorship, is already unraveling some of the progress made under
Fernandez.
At the central bank, Perosino's four-person team had been
investigating financial crimes and how extensively civilian bank
employees colluded with the military during the 1976-1983 crackdown
against Marxist rebels, labor unions and other left-wing opponents.
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The team was established by Fernandez. Perosino said they were only
six months into their work and were still in the early stages of
pouring over the bank's archives.
Among lines of investigation, Perosino said she was delving into the
kidnap and murder of five central bank employees, ties between the
bank and the former SIDE spy agency, and how the bank helped large
private companies which complied with the generals by assuming their
debt.
A central bank spokesman said the office was shut down in January
"after it found nothing".
"Our work wasn't close to being done," said Perosino, standing among
protestors outside the central bank demonstrating against job cuts
at the regulator.
In a move to unearth new details about the "Dirty War," U.S.
national security adviser Susan Rice on Thursday said the United
States would declassify documents from U.S. military and
intelligence agencies related to that period at the request of the
Argentine government.
Carlos Munoz, a graphic designer who survived imprisonment and
torture in 1978 by agreeing to fabricate false documents for the
military, said shedding new light on the dictatorship would be a
welcome sign "the United State is real about human rights."
But he voiced concern that Macri's record on human rights has been
thin so far.
"We had made a lot of progress in ending dictatorship-era impunity.
I hope that we don't go backwards," said Munoz.
In an open letter to Obama earlier this month, Argentine Nobel peace
prize winner Adolfo Perez Esquivel urged the U.S. president to
acknowledge that Washington was an accomplice in military coups
throughout Latin America.
"Certainly you cannot deny that your country has many pending debts
with our country," wrote Esquivel, who was tortured and detained
without trial by the military junta.
Esquivel on Friday hailed the declassification of more U.S.
documents as an "act of good faith".
Faced with the threat of anti-U.S. protests, Obama will meet Macri
on March 23 and honor victims of the dictatorship era before
spending the coup anniversary in the Patagonian city of Bariloche
some 1,000 (1,600 km) miles away.
(Additional reporting by Richard Lough in Buenos Aires and Matt
Spetalnick in Washington; Writing by Richard Lough; Editing by
Christian Plumb and Alistair Bell)
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