E/CN.4/2002/73/Add.1 page 18 2. Jewish minority 85. Representatives of the Jewish community reported respect for freedom of religion and, in general, freedom to manifest their religion or belief. 86. They were not able to provide statistics on the numbers of Jews in Argentina, but estimated that the community was some 180,000 strong. The number had decreased in recent years as a result of assimilation and emigration. 87. The Jewish representatives reported that there was no shortage of places of worship, schools, which catered to 17,000 pupils and received State aid (in common with all private schools in Argentina), social and sports organizations (membership in excess of 30,000) or social assistance; there were also three homes for the elderly and a hospital. They referred to the existence of soup kitchens and social solidarity networks and emphasized their successful integration in all sectors, including economic, social, political and scientific, of Argentine society, although some difficulties persisted, de facto if not de jure, owing to anti-discrimination legislation, in terms of access to senior levels in the armed forces and the police. 88. The representatives reported a number of difficulties: Firstly, while Argentina was not an anti-Semitic country, there were instances of anti-Semitism. However the representatives recognized that Jews sometimes levelled charges of anti-Semitism without justification, hence the creation of a legal department by the Jewish authorities to verify that complaints were well founded; Jewish tombs had been desecrated: since 1991, several Jewish cemeteries had been desecrated in the provinces of Buenos Aires, Paraná, Salta and Córdoba; According to information from non-governmental sources, arrests had been made in two cases involving Buenos Aires police officers. There is suspicion of police involvement in a majority of the other cases. Cases include the desecration on 19 September 1999, the eve of the Day of Atonement, of 62 tombs in the Tablada cemetery. Twelve days later, the graves of 11 children whose deaths had occurred between 1925 and 1930 were destroyed in the Ciudadela cemetery. The attacks, which occurred between the Day of Atonement, a religious holiday for Jews, and the High Holy Days, were characterized by the absence of slurs or swastikas on the tombs, which has been taken as a ploy so that the offence would be viewed as property damage, not falling within the scope of the Anti-Discrimination Act (see part I). Those responsible for the desecration have still not been identified; There is also a report of rescission of a judgement in first instance against skinheads. Information from non-governmental sources indicates that the first judgement in which the Anti-Discrimination Act had been applied, involving the sentencing of a group of skinheads to three years in prison, was quashed in 1999 by the Criminal Supreme Court. Of concern in this case are the grounds cited for rescission of the judgement, in particular, the absence of discrimination as a motivation for the attack;