El Salvador urged to repeal Amnesty Law

[Judi Lynn]

AI Index: PRE 01/102/2010
23 March 2010

El Salvador urged to repeal Amnesty Law

Amnesty International today urged authorities in El Salvador to repeal an amnesty law that protects those responsible for thousands of killings and disappearances during the country's 12-year armed conflict, including the killing of Catholic priest Monsignor Romero on 24 March 1980.

The organization also called on the country's security forces to fully cooperate with any investigation by allowing full access to their files.

"It is unacceptable that those responsible for thousands of disappearances, killings and torture have not been held to account for their crimes," said Kerrie Howard, Americas Deputy Director at Amnesty International. "The Amnesty law must be urgently repealed and full investigations, initiated."

Monsignor Oscar Arnulfo Romero was shot and killed as he gave mass in the chapel of a hospital. During his funeral on 30 March over 20 of his supporters were killed by the military.

A report by El Salvador's Truth Commission in 1992 concluded there was evidence that former Major Roberto D'Aubuisson, now deceased, had ordered members of his security service, acting as a ''death squad'', to assassinate the Monsignor.

More:
http://www.amnestyusa.org/document.php?id=ENGPRE011022010&lang=e

Also posted in LBN:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x4317071

[Judi Lynn]

1. Archbishop Romero's last sermon, closing words:

~snip~
I would like to make a special appeal to the men of the army, and specifically to the ranks of the National Guard, the police and the military. Brothers, you come from our own people. You are killing your own brother peasants when any human order to kill must be subordinate to the law of God which says, "Thou shalt not kill." No soldier is obliged to obey an order contrary to the law of God. No one has to obey an immoral law. It is high time you recovered your consciences and obeyed your consciences rather than a sinful order. The church, the defender of the rights of God, of the law of God, of human dignity, of the person, cannot remain silent before such an abomination. We want the government to face the fact that reforms are valueless if they are to be carried out at the cost of so much blood. In the name of God, in the name of this suffering people whose cries rise to heaven more loudly each day, I implore you, I beg you, I order you in the name of God: stop the repression.

http://www.haverford.edu/relg/faculty/amcguire/romero.html

~~~~~~~
From the Wikipedia in his name:

~snip~
Assassination and funeral

Romero was shot by an M-16 assault rifle on March 24, 1980, while celebrating Mass at a small chapel located in a hospital called "La Divina Providencia", one day after a sermon where he had called on Salvadoran soldiers, as Christians, to obey God's higher order and to stop carrying out the government's repression and violations of basic human rights. According to an audio-recording of the Mass, he was shot while elevating the chalice at the end of the Eucharistic rite. When he was shot, his blood spilled over the altar.

It is believed that the assassins were members of a death squad. This view was supported in 1993 by an official U.N. report, which identified the man who ordered the killing as former Major and School of the Americas graduate Roberto D'Aubuisson.<12> He had also planned to overthrow the government in a coup. Later he founded the political party Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA), and organized death squads that systematically carried out politically-motivated assassinations and other human rights abuses in El Salvador. Álvaro Rafael Saravia, a former captain in the Salvadoran Air Force, was chief of security for Roberto D'Aubuisson and an active member of these death squads. In 2003, a U.S. human rights organization, the Center for Justice and Accountability, filed a civil action against Saravia. In 2004, he was found liable by a US District Court under the Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA) (28 U.S.C. § 1350) for aiding, conspiring, and participating in the assassination of Archbishop Romero. Saravia was ordered to pay $10 million dollars for extrajudicial killing and crimes against humanity pursuant to the ATCA. Doe v. Rafael Saravia, 348 F. Supp. 2d 1112 (E.D. Cal. 2004) (providing an excellent account of the events leading up, and subsequent, to Archbishop Romero's death).

Romero is buried in the Metropolitan Cathedral of San Salvador (Catedral Metropolitana de San Salvador). The funeral mass (rite of visitation and requiem) on March 30, 1980, in San Salvador was attended by more than 250,000 mourners from all over the world. Viewing this attendance as a protest, Jesuit priest John Dear has said, "Romero’s funeral was the largest demonstration in Salvadoran history, some say in the history of Latin America."

During the ceremony, a smoke bomb exploded on the Cathedral square (Plaza Gerardo Barrios) and subsequently there were rifle-fire shots that came from surrounding buildings, including the National Palace. Many people were killed by gunfire and during the following mass panic; official sources talk of 31 overall casualties, journalists indicated between 30 and 50 dead.<12> Some witnesses claimed it was government security forces that threw bombs into the crowd, and army sharpshooters, dressed as civilians, that fired into the chaos from the balcony or roof of the National Palace. However, there are contradictory accounts as to the course of the events and "probably, one will never know the truth about the interrupted funeral."<12> This proved to be a turning point in the history of the Salvadoran conflict, a peak in the power of popular organizations aligned with the left, whose popularity declined after this event under the suspicion that they attempted to capitalize on this tragic event for political gain.

Twenty-five years later, the BBC recalled the horror:

"Tens of thousands of mourners who had gathered for Romero's funeral Mass in front of the cathedral in San Salvador were filmed fleeing in terror as army gunners on the rooftops around the square opened fire.... One person who was there told us he remembered the piles of shoes left behind by those who escaped with their lives."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%93scar_Romero

[naaman fletcher]

2. Do you consider Amnesty to be a reliable source of human rights info in Latin America? nt