The AEDD association of people who were illegally arrested during the 1976-1983 dictatorship blasted the "grotesque" analogy of President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner comparing soccer with the illegal detentions of the dictatorship, and said they felt "attacked" by Kirchner's remarks.

Meanwhile Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, who won the Nobel peace prize for his role in the investigation into the dictatorship, blasted the statements, which he said were "an atrocity."

"It was an offense to the ethics and the values of Argentine people," Pérez Esquivel added.
Deputy elect Ricardo Alfonsín, decribed the President's speech as "demagogic," and said she had "insulted" the cause of the disappeared.

Yesterday, at national televised conference, as the President was defending the government's decision to buy the television rights of soccer games, she compared soccer goals to the disappeared.

"It's not possible that only a few people can afford watching soccer games. Because, even if somebody pays, they continue to kidnap the goals until Sunday, as well as words and images, as they kidnapped 30,000 Argentines," she said on national television.

"This trivialization of the issue also happened with the construction of a museum at the ESMA, which is being used for anything, including cooking courses and even percussion lessons," said Calvo.

Calvo said that "for those of us who were disappeared, soccer is a synonym of the dictatorship: from the ESMA mechanics school of the navy one could hear the screams of the audience shouting the goals during the 1978 world cup."

"Bread and hunger are in fact kidnapped in Argentina," added Calvo. She was arrested at an illegal detention centre in Banfield in the late seventies. She gave birth to a child while she was under arrest.