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1994-05-02
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<text>
<title>
South America: Human Rights Watch
</title>
<article>
<hdr>
Human Rights Watch World Report 1992
Americas Watch: Overview
</hdr>
<body>
<p>Human Rights Developments
</p>
<p> The trend witnessed over the last decade toward elected
civilian government in Latin America and the Caribbean
experienced a serious challenge in 1991, as the Haitian
military on September 30 overthrew the only freely elected
government that Haiti has known in its nearly two hundred-year
history of independence. The coup was accompanied by a killing
rampage by Haitian troops unparalleled even in that troubled
nation's recent history. Nonetheless, encouragement can be drawn
from the unified response of the hemisphere's governments, which
have coordinated diplomatic and trade efforts through the
Organization of American States (OAS) to reverse the coup and
restore Jean-Bertrand Aristide to the presidency.
</p>
<p> Elsewhere in the hemisphere, the spread of elected
government continued with the May 25 presidential elections in
Suriname, reinstating an elected civilian government after a
December 1990 military coup. The government's principal
challenge is to assert civilian authority over military
strongman Colonel Desi Bouterse, who has exercised de facto
control, when not formally governing the country, since
overthrowing the elected civilian government in a prior coup in
February 1980. In Paraguay, the nation's first-ever municipal
elections on May 26 marked a significant broadening of political
pluralism there. Only the government of Fidel Castro in Cuba
continued to resist pressure to open up its political system,
instead jailing scores of independent activists for their
peaceful advocacy of change and subjecting others to violent
"acts of repudiation" orchestrated by security forces.
</p>
<p> Despite this salutary trend toward democratic governance,
the hemisphere's worst human rights offenders remain the
security forces of some elected civilian governments. In
Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala and Peru, government forces are
engaged in widespread political assassination, disappearance and
torture of civilians perceived as opponents. The use of torture
by the police also is frequent in Ecuador and Honduras, both of
which have been governed by elected civilians for at least a
decade, and in Mexico, where elections have been held for more
than sixty years, albeit amid sustained charges of widespread
fraud. The persistence of violent abuses in these countries
illustrates the dictum that elections, even when free and fair,
do not in themselves guarantee human rights.
</p>
<p> Efforts to end internal armed conflicts moved ahead in
Colombia, El Salvador and Guatemala in 1991, but as of
December, had yet to bring peace to any of these nations. In
each country, serious breaches of the laws of war were committed
by government and guerrilla forces, even while peace talks
proceeded. In El Salvador, negotiations produced significant
informal agreements on human rights issues such as the
establishment of a "Truth Commission" and the purging of human
rights violators from the officer corps. Moreover, the United
Nations installed a human rights verification commission of over
one-hundred members--an unprecedented development. These
accomplishments leave room for optimism about the human rights
situation in El Salvador, although they have yet to bring a halt
to the steady stream of assassinations, disappearances and
torture that has plagued El Salvador over the last decade.
</p>
<p> In Colombia, negotiations with one of the country's three
largest guerrilla organizations--the Popular Liberation Army
were successfully concluded in 1991, while discussions with the
two major groups still in arms were initiated in mid-year but
failed to reach a cease-fire. Those still fighting--the
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia and the National
Liberation Army--killed many civilian leaders in the
countryside in 1991 and conducted kidnappings-for-ransom, all
violations of the laws of war. For its part, the Colombian army
continued to employ "dirty war" tactics in its war against the
guerrillas, including disappearances, massacres, selective
assassinations, arbitrary arrests, and aerial strafing and
bombardment of civilian targets. Hundreds of civilians continued
to flee conflictive areas and join the ranks of the displaced
living precariously in urban areas.
</p>
<p> The tremendous violence associated with the government's war
against the Medellín drug cartel all but ended in the second
half of 1991 as the government negotiated the surrender of
major traffickers in exchange for an end to extradition and
leniency for those who turned themselves in. Paramilitary
groups responsible for scores of massacres of civilians in 1988
and 1989--continued to carry out violent abuses, although in
1991 there were fewer mass killings than in those years. A
series of decrees enacted by the former government of Virgilio
Barco contributed to delegitimizing these groups, which had
enjoyed a quasi-legal status as "self-defense" associations.
</p>
<p> In Peru, both official forces and the insurgent Shining Path
continued to murder and torture with abandon and to force
civilians into the conflict, while the lesser rebel group, the
Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement, carried out selective
assassinations and bombings. For four straight years, Peru led
the world in new disappearances reported to the United Nations.
Although there was some reduction in new disappearances in
1991, the practice continued at a high rate. President Alberto
Fujimori, who completed a year in office in July, has failed to
offer the fresh approach to counterinsurgency that his campaign
had advertised, and instead has delegated ever-widening
authority to the military to conduct the war its way. The
government has expanded the territory under state of emergency--effectively military government--to encompass nearly half
the national territory and more than half the population. Human
rights abuses historically have risen in areas placed under
emergency rule.
</p>
<p> The Guatemalan government of Jorge Serrano Elías, which will
complete one year in office in January, has also initiated
peace talks, with guerrillas who have been fighting for more
than a decade. However, the dialogue reached a deadlock in
September over human rights issues, and there is little hope for
a quick end to fighting. While actual combat is sporadic
compared to the warfare engulfing large areas of Colombia, El
Salvador and Peru, the army exercises a profoundly repressive
form of permanent counterinsurgency in conflictive rural areas.
In addition to the assassinations, disappearances, torture,
threats, intimidation and illegal detentions carried out
directly by the army, important parts of the counterinsurgency
effort--and accompanying abuses--are delegated to
military-organized civil patrols installed in most highland
villages. The army also commits massive violations of the
freedoms of association and movement through forced
participation in civil patrols and forcible relocation of
displaced civilians to so-called model villages.
</p>
<p> Rural violence against peasants and their advocates in the
context of land disputes remains a significant concern of
Americas Watch, particularly in Brazil, Ecuador, Honduras,
Mexico and Paraguay. Americas Watch takes no position on the
question of rightful ownership of the lands in question; rather,
we address the use of violence against those who try to defend
their claims, when that violence is supported or tolerated by
agents of the state.
</p>
<p> In Brazil, forced labor on remote rural ranches in the
northern and western frontier states persists, largely because
of the government's failure to pursue reported incidents.
Meanwhile, the government of the Dominican Republic responded
to mounting international pressure to end the widespread use of
forced Haitian labor in its state sugar industry by striking
back at the victims, summarily and abusively deporti