Latinnews Archive

Caribbean & Central America - 29 November 1985

Duarte's rights record disputed;UN REPORT CONDEMNS BOTH SECURITY FORCES AND FMLN

A report published by the United Nations' rapporteur for El Salvador, the Spaniard Jose Antontio Pastor, has damaged the Duarte government's campaign to paint a rosy picture of the country's current situation.

The report states that both police and military personnel are guilty of kidnappings, torture and other rights abuses. It cited 'indications that severe psychological pressure has been exerted, equivalent to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, in extra-judicial interrogations of some political prisoners.'


Although it praises efforts by President Jose Napoleon Duarte's government to 'humanise' the war with the FMLN guerrillas, it notes that 'agents of the state apparatus' have continued to to commit 'political murders of civilians, sometimes using the method of abduction and subsequently having the victims disappear.'

This ties in with information we were given by two representatives of the Comite de Madres y Familiares de Presos, Desaparecidos y Asesinados Politicos de El Salvador (Comadres), in London on a six-nation European visit.

The two women told us that an average of 30 people were currently disappearing every week. Of these, only about 10 were discovered, usually tortured and mutilated. The majority were lost without trace. (This, they said, contrasts with two years ago, when most of the 'disappeared' would reappear in the form of disfigured corpses.)

'It is part of the Duarte administration's effort to promote a good image. Bodies on the streets have the opposite effect,' they said.

The two comadres also claimed that indiscriminate military bombing campaigns of civilian targets had caused an unknown number of deaths which were difficult to verify because of a ban on reporters and human rights representatives entering the affected areas.

However, in his report, Pastor states that he does not believe that reports of 'indiscriminate bombing' are part of 'a deliberate and systematic policy on the part of the Salvadorean authorities.'

The comadres failed to mention any human rights violations by the guerrillas. In contrast, Pastor's report cites 'a disturbing increase' in the number of murders and kidnappings of non-combatant civilians by members of the FMLN guerrilla alliance.

Guerrilla spokesman in New York refuted accusations of rebel atrocities. They took issue with Pastor's assertion that the number of civilian casualties in the civil war had decreased this year, claiming the civilian death toll had quadrupled.

The government's position is that the human rights situation has improved over the last year.


Return to top