You're 16 years old, and life in high school is going pretty well. You've got lots of friends, you've got high ideals like everyone else and you are class delegate to the student government. But one night, police bust into your home and demand that your father hand you over. They tell your father that either he turns you in, or you will be killed. In a panic, your father contacts a lawyer who assures him that you are a minor and if you cooperate, you will be returned after questioning because you're only a child. Fearing for your life, he chooses the lesser of two evils, and before you know it you're at the police station. Only you aren't returned. You and others like you-teenage girls-are handcuffed and shackled with your hands tied to your feet and left on the floor for two weeks. Why did this happen? You are told you are a subversive-as the Student Union delegate, you dared to voice your high ideals. For over two years, you are one of los desaparecidos (the disappeared); you are kept prisoner without knowing where you are or what the charges are; you're held without a trial, without contact to a single person who knows you and could tell your family where you are or that you are still alive. For over two years, you are threatened with rape, sexually abused, beaten, starved, forced to drink from toilets and electrocuted.

On Wednesday, Nov. 30, Patricia Indiana Isasa talked at Brandeis about being an Argentinian political prisoner from 1976 to 1978. She and the other girls grew up in prison. As their bodies matured, they kept track of one another's height against a door frame. She is one of the lucky ones, because she lived. Though she must remember the horror every day, she tells others what happened in her quest for justice: This is lucky. She lived, but 30,000 others did not.

Where is the justice for this horror? Barely anywhere, it seems. In a documentary Isasa helped produce, which was shown at the event, the very people who participated in her imprisonment and torture were interviewed, and they denied it ever happened! After participating in her torture, three men went on to become a politician, a federal judge and a mayor! What kind of world are we living in when this can be true?

These should sound familiar: Las Madres de Plaza Mayo and Las Abuelas of Argentina, or Las Arpilleras in Chile, who lost family during the military dictatorships of those countries in the 70s and 80s. The really sad thing is, many of you have probably never heard of them. Did you know that pregnant women desaparecidos had their babies taken away from them, and that the children were given to members of the regime to raise as their own? Most of us don't know that college students and university professors were secretly drugged, weighed down and dropped into the sea so that their families would never, ever know what happened to them, let alone be able to mourn their deaths.

And if you did know these things, did you know that the people who committed these atrocities have not been held accountable? Patricia Isasa did say that since the documentary came out, eight people have been identified and proven to have been responsible for some of these acts of terrorism, and sent to jail. But there must be more. Not only should more of the criminals be brought to trial, but those handed a jail sentence must also apologize to the people of Argentina and Chile. Those convicted must be forced to listen to the people explain the impact their terrorist actions had on the lives of the surviving desaparecidos and their families. And the criminals who have not yet been tried need to be punished.

Why should you know about these things? Why should you care? Because what happens to anyone in the world happens to us. They are part of our worldwide family. If we hold the perpetrators accountable, maybe we can stop future terrorism. Isasa repeatedly complained that there has been no accountability for the people who illegally "disappeared" thousands of people in Argentina and Chile. The reason they could get away with it is because there were no consequences at the time, and 30 years later, the world is only slowly beginning to denounce their reign of terror. The reaction has not been severe enough. The consequence is that acts of terror and genocide committed by governments against their own people continue. If you can't imagine that what happened to Isasa could happen today, ask someone in STAND about what's going on in Sudan right now. To remain silent about this issue when we know the truth is to support it.