| | |  Editorials | Issues | August 2008 
Central America: Backsliding on Human Rights
 Raúl Gutiérrez - Inter Press Service
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San Salvador - Central America is backsliding badly on human rights issues, and social unrest could flare up into civil wars like those experienced in the last decades of the 20th century, according to a new report on Human Rights and Conflicts in Central America 2007-2008.
The seven Central American non-governmental organisations that released the report this week say they are concerned about abuses, policies and practices that undermine civil and political rights in the region, and attacks on defenders of human rights.
In Nicaragua, "the situation has deteriorated in the last few years. We are under constant attack by the authorities, including the human rights ombudsman, who supports President Daniel Ortega and accuses us of being paid by the oligarchy and of spying" for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Georgina Ruiz, of the Nicaraguan Human Rights Centre (CENIDH), told IPS.
The report, launched on Tuesday, documents an increase in the number of threats, torture and crimes, like the March 2007 murder of Villanueva Delgadillo, whose sons, Raúl and William, were tortured by police in the town of Nueva Guinea, 280 kilometres southeast of Managua.
After she reported the torture of her sons, Delgadillo was shot to death by four hooded assailants wearing military and police uniforms.
Since Ortega took office in January 2007, "access to public information has become complicated" in practice, despite the law that safeguards the right to such information. There have also been attacks on the media, especially outlets that "express the people’s discontent with the government," Ruiz said.
"We are disappointed and frustrated" with the Ortega administration, she added.
The Central American human rights monitoring team that produced the report is made up of CENIDH, the Mutual Support Group of Guatemala (GAM), the legal department of the Costa Rican Lutheran Church, the Salvadoran Committee of Relatives of Victims of Human Rights Violations (CODEFAM), and the Research Foundation for the Application of Law (FESPAD), also based in El Salvador.
The Honduran Centre for Investigation and Promotion of Human Rights (CIPRODEH), the Honduras-based Committee for the Defence of Human Rights (CODEH), and the Human Rights Committee of Panama (CONADEHUPA), also contributed to the support, which was sponsored by the Lutheran World Federation (LWF).
Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua were torn by civil wars between 1960 and 1996, the year the Guatemalan peace agreement was signed, ending the last of the region’s conflicts which left hundreds of thousands dead, and thousands more injured or disappeared.
Since Guatemalan President Álvaro Colom took office in January this year, there has been "progress with regard to respect for freedom of expression, and fewer violations of human rights, but we still have a long way to go," said Estuardo Galeano of GAM.
One of the challenges facing Colom is "strengthening the National Reparations Programme, which is intended to indemnify thousands of victims of the 1960-1996 armed conflict for the economic and moral damages they suffered," Galeano said.
Galeano noted that 53 community leaders, candidates and activists were murdered during the 2007 election campaign.
El Salvador’s Human Rights Ombudsman, Óscar Luna, said the increase in attacks against people’s physical integrity, such as mistreatment, excessive use of force and abuse of power "is worrying," while the right to freedom is being violated by arbitrary detentions, intimidation and harassment by the National Civil Police (PNC).
In 2007, the Human Rights Ombudsman’s Office received 2,779 complaints, of which 1,826, equivalent to 66 percent of the total, were against the PNC.
Luna told IPS that "the structural conditions that generated the armed conflict have not been overcome" in the 16 years since the peace accord was signed in January 1992.
"Another concern is the climate of impunity" which hinders clarification of the crimes committed during the Salvadoran armed conflict, said Armando Pérez, of CODEFAM. The amnesty law passed by the administration of then President Alfredo Cristiani in 1993 prevents prosecution of those responsible for human rights violations.
"If states cannot take measures to clarify human rights violations committed in the past and in the present, there will be a crisis of governance, and state institutions will become discredited because they are hijacked by corporate interests, organised crime, or political parties" that seek to dominate society for their own benefit, Celia Medrano of the LWF told IPS.
The 53-page report also sounds a warning about "sources of conflict" which, if left unaddressed, could generate conflicts as serious as the civil wars 25 years ago, in every country in the region, Medrano said.
This year’s report was drawn up in coordination with the Latin American and Caribbean Platform for Conflict Prevention and Peace Building, and focuses on impunity and violence.
Platform coordinator Andrés Serbin said the setbacks in terms of human rights are due to "marked shortcomings" in building strong democratic institutions able to guarantee people’s political, civil, socioeconomic, cultural and environmental liberties since the civil wars came to an end.
Any conceptualisation of conflict prevention has to seek the root causes of the conflicts: poverty, social exclusion, inequality, political exclusion, and absence of the rule of law, Serbín told IPS.
If the causal factors remain, conditions for violations of human rights will obviously be aggravated, he concluded. |
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