El Salvador scraps amnesty law, opens door for prosecutions

[Latias]

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador — The striking down of El Salvador’s amnesty law is giving hope to thousands that justice for human rights abuses committed during the Central American country’s 12-year civil war could now be within reach.

Others, though, fear the Supreme Court’s scrapping of the law that protected the military, paramilitary groups and guerrilla fighters — some of whom are in the current government — could tear open old wounds in the still polarized country.

Even President Salvador Sanchez Ceren, who was part of the command structure of the rebel Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front during the war, could theoretically face prosecutions, legal experts said Thursday.

On a 4-1 vote Wednesday, the Supreme Court overturned the amnesty law, which had been enacted in 1993 five days after a truth commission’s report blamed the military for the vast majority of abuses during the war. The ruling made clear that amnesty was lifted for not only those accused of directly committing crimes, but also the command structures of the military and guerrilla forces who gave the orders.

“Today is an historic day for human rights in El Salvador,” said Erika Guevara-Rosas, Americas director for Amnesty International. “By turning its back on a law that has done nothing but let criminals get away with serious human rights violations for decades, the country is finally dealing with its tragic past,”

washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/high-court-strikes-down-el-salvadors-civil-war-amnesty-law/2016/07/14/721641aa-4978-11e6-8dac-0c6e4accc5b1_story.html

I read with some happiness.

There was an entire village that was massacred in El Mozote. Many children will brutally murdered. Clearly the murder of the children demonstrate that there were not strategic assassinations of individuals who posed a perceived significant military or political threat.

It disgusts me when the men who perpetrated these heinous crimes are actually celebrated as heroes.

When Salvadoran president Mauricio Funes came to El Mozote in 2012 on the 20th anniversary of the signing of the 1992 Peace Accords, one of the things he declared was that the military should stop celebrating human rights violators as heroes. Anyone listening knew that one of the figures he was referring to was Monterrosa. The president’s directive has been ignored by the military of which he is the commander-in-chief.

As you drive through San Miguel on the Pan American highway, you pass the military base of the third army brigade. In large letters, the base proclaims its name – Colonel Domingo Monterrosa. If your “seres queridos”, your loved ones, were raped, machine-gunned and killed by savage troops under Monterrosa’s command, how must you feel when you drive by that base and see his name displayed in a place of honor?

The army came again to Morazan last week. The army came to commemorate Monterrosa. This was the 29th anniversary of his death. El Faro has the story of the event. Military commanders from the eastern part of the country, came to the town of Joateca, to watch a military drill show and horse teams, as they memorialized the death of one of the army’s mythic figures.

luterano.blogspot.com/2013/11/where-murderers-are-still-celebrated.html

When not celebrate men such as Vice Admiral Takeo Kurita for his consideration of the lives of his men? Robert E. Lee, George Meade, Ulysses S. Grant, Georgy Zhukov, Ivan Konev, Vasily Chuikov, Erwin Rommel, Dwight Eisenhower, Chester Nimitz, Vo Nguyen Giap are all worthy of admiration compared to him.

He is nothing more than a right-wing Abimael Guzmán,

 

[Latias]

I post this in the wrong forum.

 

[John_Lazarus]

I post this in the wrong forum.

You should be able to ask the mods to move it.