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Text File | 1994-05-02 | 47KB | 837 lines

<text> <title> El Salvador </title> <article> <hdr> Human Rights Watch World Report 1992 Americas Watch: El Salvador </hdr> <body> Human Rights Developments Nineteen ninety-one saw a number of advances in respect for human rights in El Salvador. A unilateral truce declared by guerrillas of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) in November could be a prelude to a final cease-fire agreement, ending over a decade of brutal civil war. U.N.-mediated peace talks between the government and the FMLN produced several agreements which, if fulfilled, could transform the political landscape inside the country. In April, government and rebel negotiators agreed to establish a nonjudicial "Commission on Truth" to investigate major human rights cases over the past decade and make recommendations for their resolution; in mid-December, U.N. Secretary General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar appointed the three members of the Commission on Truth and announced that it would begin its work in 1992. (Those named were Belisario Betancur, former president of Colombia, Reinaldo Figueredo, former foreign minister of Venezuela, and Thomas Buergenthal, president of the Inter-American Institute for Human Rights.) In September, the two sides agreed in principle to reduce the size of the armed forces, eliminate two of the security forces most known for human rights atrocities--the Treasury Police and the National Guard--and create a new police force under civilian control that would be open to FMLN combatants. Negotiators agreed to establish an ad hoc commission to examine the records of senior officers with an eye toward purging human rights violators after a settlement. More concretely, the United Nations launched in July an unprecedented effort to monitor human rights amidst the ongoing military conflict. With over one hundred observers (including thirty-one military and police advisers) and six regional and subregional offices, the United Nations Observer Mission in El Salvador (ONUSAL) is positioned to have a major impact on the observance of human rights in the country. (ONUSAL was established pursuant to a July 26, 1990 Agreement on Human Rights [known also as the San José Accord] between the Salvadoran government and the FMLN. ONUSAL was originally designed to monitor human rights only after a cease-fire, but a consensus quickly emerged in Salvadoran society that it should set up office earlier.) Since the arrival of ONUSAL, both the armed forces and the FMLN appear to have taken greater care to avoid civilian casualties. In part, this can be attributed to the mission's deterrent effect; it can deploy its personnel anywhere in the country without prior notice, and visit prisons unannounced. However, the most important challenge facing ONUSAL remains that of encouraging the development of governmental institutions that have an interest in and responsibility for safeguarding human rights. In many respects, however, the human rights situation remained grim, characterized by the steady diet of assassinations, abductions and violations of the laws of war to which the world has sadly grown accustomed over the last decade. There were fewer targeted political killings in 1991 than in the past, and greater freedom to organize politically. Nonetheless, the army and security forces remained responsible for numerous cases of torture, illegal detention, and indiscriminate attacks on the civilian population. Corpses mutilated beyond recognition continued to appear along roadsides or were dumped in local cemeteries, suggesting ongoing activities of death squads. Beginning in late May, a new group, the Salvadoran Anti-Communist Front (FAS), issued several death threats against international humanitarian organizations and political activists, and appears to have been linked to the assassination of a trade unionist late in the year. ONUSAL and several members of the international press corps received written threats from FAS in November, as tensions related to an approaching cease-fire agreement rose. (The far right reacted strongly to progress in the peace talks, accusing President Cristiani and ARENA president Armando Calderón Sol of treason.) The government pledged to investigate the FAS, but so far has come up with nothing. The FMLN also committed serious violations of international humanitarian law, murdering two wounded U.S. servicemen, engaging in indiscriminate attacks that endangered or took civilian lives, and kidnapping and murdering civilians. Although the FMLN pledged to conduct a trial of two combatants it detained for the murder of the two U.S. advisers, it had yet to do so almost a year after their deaths. The delay raised serious questions about the FMLN's commitment to eradicate impunity within its own ranks. Fighting throughout the country increased in mid-1991, as both the army and the FMLN attempted to enhance their positions in the U.N.-brokered talks prior to a cease-fire. War-related violations by the armed forces, including indiscriminate attacks and summary executions, rose as a result. However, human rights abuses were only partly related to the rhythm of the war; as in the past, they continued to occur because of the impunity enjoyed by those responsible for attacks on unarmed civilians. Although the late-September conviction of an army colonel and one of his lieutenants for the 1989 murders of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter was the first successful prosecution of a senior officer for a human rights violation, it is too early to say whether the verdict represents a break with impunity for high-ranking military abusers of human rights. An indication that the prosecution in the Jesuit case may have stopped short of senior military levels came in late November, when U.S. Representative Joe Moakley, chair of the Speaker's Task Force on El Salvador, announced that, according to his sources, high-ranking officers, including the current Minister of Defense, had participated in the meeting in which the decision to murder the Jesuits was made. On March 10, 1991, El Salvador held municipal and legislative elections which were preceded by more election-related political violence than had accompanied the presidential elections of 1989. This increase occured despite the FMLN's restraint from carrying out military actions on and near election day. In late February, heavily armed men riding in a pick-up truck assassinated a candidate from the leftist Nationalist Democratic Union (UDN) along with his pregnant wife. Just days before the election, another UDN candidate was shot and wounded when a caravan of vehicles from the ruling Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) party opened fire on campaign workers putting up posters. The Usulután offices of the Democratic Convergence, a coalition of left-of-center parties, suffered a grenade attack in late January; the offices were located two blocks from the Sixth Infantry Brigade, which is well guarded. Official investigations of these murders and attack have yielded no suspects and are going nowhere. In addition, in early February, the offices of the left-of-center daily Diario Latino were burned to the ground. The investigation has focused on internal squabbles at the paper and the theory that the plant was set afire by its own workers, largely ignoring the possibility that arson was committed by persons hostile to Diario Latino's political perspective. Despite this violence, leftist political parties scored unprecedented victories at the polls, picking up nine seats in the Legislative Assembly as the ARENA party lost its majority. Throughout the year, opposition politicians and members of church and grassroots organizations representing peasants, women and repatriated refugees were subjected to death threats, detention, surveillance and break-ins. Some of the more notorious episodes from the months of June and July alone include the followin