The governments of Paraguay and Argentina agreed to the formation of an International Rapporteur Commission for the clarification of the deaths of the Argentine girls Lilian Mariana Villalba and María Carmen Villalba, which occurred a year ago in the context of a military operation in the department of Concepción in Paraguay. The commission will be made up of forensic scientists from various countries and the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (EAAF).
The Foreign Minister of Paraguay, Euclides Acevedo Candia and his Argentine counterpart Santiago Cafiero they met at the Palacio San Martín. In a joint statement the ministers remarked “the need for common work against organized crime and drug trafficking, and agreed to deepen cooperation to exchange the use of technology and experiences that reinforce the shared security agenda. “
In the statement the diplomats also claimed the defense of human rights “In this context, they agreed to work on the case of the dead girls in the town of Yby Yaú”. In this sense, Cafiero and Candia undertook to advance towards creation of an International Rapporteur Commission made up of forensic scientists from Portugal, Spain, Paraguay and the EAAF, “respecting the jurisdictional sovereignty of Paraguay”, according to the joint text.
“With the Foreign Minister of Paraguay we work together to strengthen Mercosur and enhance our bilateral agenda. Thank you for your cordial visit to Argentina. I hope to do the same soon,” Cafiero wrote this morning on his Twitter account. Sources from the Argentine Foreign Ministry highlighted that it is “a great diplomatic achievement in the search for truth and justice.”
On September 2, 2020, the Joint Task Force (JTF), a cell of the Paraguayan army created by former President Horacio Cartes with the objective of persecuting and fighting the guerrilla group Paraguayan Army of the People (EPP), announced that it had killed several members of that organization. President Mario Abdo Benitez had presented the operation as successful. However, it was later known that the victims of the FTC were two Argentine girls: Lilian Mariana Villalba and María Carmen Villalba, 11 years old. The girls were cousins and lived with their grandmother in Misiones. At the end of 2019, they traveled to Paraguay to meet with their parents for the first time, but could not return to the country due to the closure of borders due to the pandemic.
The family and human rights organizations rejected the official version from the beginning and They denounced the destruction of evidence and the violation of investigation protocols. Two months after the attack in which the two Argentine girls died, a Human Rights Watch (HRW) uniform revealed the existence of “serious irregularities”. Both HRW and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, demanded an urgent and impartial investigation of the incident.
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