On 2 September 2020, a special operations detachment of the Paraguayan Armed Forces attacked a camp of peasants who were militants of the Paraguayan political organisation called the ‘People’s Army of Paraguay’ (EPP). With brutal violence, he destroyed their crops, tortured to death two 11-year-old Argentine children, Maria Carmen and Lilian Mariana, and buried them in a mass grave. In a new attack on 30 November, Carmen Villalba (Lichita’s mother) and her sister Laura Villalba, the mother of one of the murdered girls, were arrested.
Two teenagers, Tamara, 14, and Tania, 19, managed to escape and crossed the border into Argentina on 23 December. Tamara’s twin sister, Carmen Elizabeth Oviedo Villalba, ‘Lichita’, was kidnapped and is still missing.
The struggle to find and free Lichita is international. Human rights organisations from Paraguay, Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil, Brazil, Ecuador and Mexico have already organised 40 online events to condemn the baby-killing fascist government of Paraguay. The petition ‘Where is Lichita?’ aims to reach one million signatures. The signatures will be delivered to the Paraguayan Prosecutor’s Office by 30 November 2024, the fourth anniversary of Lichita’s ‘disappearance’, at a public event attended by representatives of the participating countries.
In the tradition of struggle and solidarity of the International Conference of Marxist-Leninist Parties and Organisations (CIPOML), we are joining the campaign ‘One Million Signatures for Lichita’ by collecting signatures in our countries, organising public events and, if possible, going to Asunción, in order to pressure the Paraguayan government for an immediate solution and for Lichita to come out alive.
XXIX Plenary Session of the International Conference of Marxist-Leninist Parties and Organizations – CIPOML
Hamburg – Germany, November 2024