AMERICAS 91 OVERVIEW

Human Rights Developments dence that the country’s armed forces contin- Contrasts marked the year in the Ameri- ued to be implicated in human rights violations cas. The already dire situation in Colombia as well as in support for the paramilitary deteriorated further, and the deep political groups responsible for the majority of serious and institutional crisis in Peru continued to abuses. Troops attacked indiscriminately and make broad respect for human rights but a killed civilians, among them six elementary distant goal. On the other hand, in Mexico, school children on a field trip near Pueblo where presidential elections in July heralded Rico, Antioquia, on August 15. According to the first change of party in the presidential witnesses, soldiers fired on the group for forty mansion in more than seventy years, hopes minutes. grew that the new president would undertake The character of the conflict changed much-needed human rights reforms. A coup with the entry of the United States as a major in Ecuador and a failed coup attempt in investor, providing an infusion of U.S. $1.3 Paraguay reminded the region of the fragility billion of mostly military aid for the govern- of democracy. Meanwhile, Chile moved for- ment. The package included seven rigorous ward in its attempt to prosecute former human rights conditions, including the need dictator Augusto Pinochet, and an Argentine for the Colombian armed forces to demon- judge requested his extradition to face crimi- strate a break with the paramilitaries. The U.S. nal charges for the 1974 Buenos Aires car- secretary of state certified that Colombia had bombing of former Chilean army commander- met only one of the conditions, related to in-chief general Carlos Prats and his wife. ensuring civilian, not military, jurisdiction Distress signals from Haiti included electoral over crimes against humanity committed by fraud and unchecked street violence, while in soldiers; President Bill Clinton waived the Argentina, nine people, including two mem- other conditions on national security grounds, bers of the former military junta, remained effectively sending the message that U.S. under house arrest, under investigation for policy subordinated human rights to other their role in the kidnapping of babies during interests. the former military regime. A burgeoning crisis in Peru did nothing to Through the year’s ups and downs, alleviate the shadow that Colombia cast over though, one thing remained constant: the the region. In April, after manipulating the everyday violation of human rights—includ- constitution to allow him to run, President ing police abuse, torture, and lack of access Alberto Fujimori won a third presidential to effective justice systems—required far victory in an electoral process roundly de- greater attention from policy makers than nounced as fraudulent by Peruvian and inter- they were willing to recognize or give. national observers. Then, in September, scan- Colombia constituted the region’s most dals involving his government’s bribery of urgent human rights crisis. As fighting inten- opposition politicians and his security chief’s sified in the thirty-year conflict, human rights alleged undercover sale of arms to Colombia’s abuses proliferated. The victims were largely leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Co- civilians caught between the parties to the lombia (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de conflict, all of which—the military and the Colombia, FARC) led to an abrupt change of paramilitaries with whom they maintained plans. Fujimori disolved the feared National close ties, and the opposition guerrillas— Intelligence Service (Servicio de Inteligencia committed atrocities with impunity. De- Nacional, SIN), and announced that he would spite claims to the contrary by the Colom- call new elections but not stand again for the bian government, there was irrefutable evi- presidency. Nonetheless, ten years of 92 AMERICAS OVERVIEW

Fujimori’s abusive leadership left the officers and members of the intelligence ser- country’s judicial and political systems in vices under Pinochet’s former military gov- shambles, virtually assuring that efforts to ernment. In July, two former army majors and rebuild democracy would be hobbled. At this a cadet received life sentences for the 1982 writing, Fujimori remained in the presidency, murder of Juan Alegría Mandioca, the scape- and his former security chief, Vladimiro goat for the murder of a union leader. Montesinos, had returned to the country The same Spanish judge who had or- after unsuccessfully seeking asylum in dered Pinochet’s arrest in London, Baltasár Panama. Garzón, also sought the detention of former Mexico, too, experienced the promise of Argentine military officer Ricardo Miguel political change, but with a decidedly more Cavallo in August. Living in Mexico, Cavallo upbeat forecast than in Peru. After more than was accused of genocide, terrorism, and tor- seventy years in power, the Institutional ture stemming from his alleged role as a Revolutionary Party (Partido Revolucionario torturer at Argentina’s infamous Navy Me- Institucional, PRI) lost presidential elections chanics School under military rule. At this in July. The victor, Vicente Fox of the Na- writing, Cavallo fought extradition while tional Action Party (Partido Acción Nacional, waiting in a Mexican prison. PAN), demonstrated an openness to human Argentine authorities also contributed rights unprecedented among Mexico’s lead- to the fight against impunity in cases related ers. Scheduled to take office on December 1, to the kidnapping of children during the Fox quickly met with human rights groups in military dictatorship in the 1970s and 1980s. Mexico, Canada, the United States, and Ger- Nine people, including former presidents many. He announced a thorough and much- brigade general Reynaldo Bignone and general needed overhaul of the country’s justice sys- Jorge Videla, and former junta member admi- tem and called for the establishment of a ral Emilio Massera, were under house arrest “transparency commission,” to seek answers in relation to the alleged kidnapping of over to long-standing questions about some hu- 200 children. man rights abuses and corruption under suc- The fight against impunity received a cessive PRI governments. setback in Italy, though, in a case involving With a few setbacks, efforts to obtain another accused Argentine human rights vio- justice for past human rights violations in the lator. Former army Maj. Jorge Olivera was region prospered. Cause for optimism in the detained in Rome in August, following an fight against impunity surfaced in Chile, where extradition request from a French judge, Roger Pinochet was stripped of his parliamentary Le Loire. Olivera stood accused of torture, immunity after returning home in March, kidnapping, and “disappearance” in the case following seventeen months of house arrest in of French citizen Marieann (or Marie Anne) the United Kingdom. Released for health Erize in 1976, but was released after an Italian reasons, Pinochet had been held for possible court ruled that Erize was dead, not “disap- extradition to Spain to face human rights peared,” and that the statute of limitations charges there. The former dictator faced more had run out for the other crimes. The court than sixty criminal complaints within Chile, made its finding on the basis of what later lodged since January 1998 by relatives of turned out to be a falsified death certificate. victims of extrajudicial executions, “disap- The United States contributed to an- pearances,” and torture, and by political par- other serious setback to the otherwise posi- ties, trade unions, and professional groups. In tive worldwide trend toward the application August, the country’s Supreme Court con- of universal jurisdiction for crimes against curred with a lower court that there was humanity. In March, based on legislation enough evidence against Pinochet to warrant obliging the United States to prosecute tor- removing his immunity. Advances also took turers, justice department officials detained place in other cases against former military Peruvian army intelligence agent Maj. Tomás AMERICAS OVERVIEW 93

Ricardo Anderson Kohatsu, sparking hope attempt to oust President Luis González that he might be prosecuted for serious human Macchi. rights abuses that he allegedly committed in A host of other human rights violations Peru. Anderson was implicated in numerous also took place during the year. In countries violations, including the torture of a former including Argentina, Brazil, Guatemala, Haiti, intelligence agent who was left paraplegic as Mexico, and Venezuela, abuses by security a result. But in a regrettable decision, the forces and impunity remained serious prob- Department of State obtained Anderson’s lems. A common denominator was the failure release, claiming that he enjoyed immunity of these countries’ justice systems to provide because he was brought to the U.S. to partici- effective remedies for victims of human rights pate in a hearing before the Inter-American violations. The case of Teodoro Cabrera García Commission on Human Rights. and Rodolfo Montiel Flores in Mexico high- Within the United States, two former lighted the problem. Environmental activists military leaders in El Salvador faced wrongful from Pizotla, Guerrero, they were accused by death charges in a federal court in Florida. authorities of drug- and weapons-related of- Former defense minister Gen. José Guillermo fenses. Despite evidence that soldiers planted García and Gen. Carlos Eugenio Vides the evidence used against them, and that the Casanova, who headed that country’s noto- defendants were forced to sign incriminating riously brutal National Guard, stood accused statements, they were found guilty, demon- of the wrongful death of four U.S. church- strating the abysmal failure of Mexico’s jus- women who were raped and murdered in El tice system. In Guatemala, where United Salvador in 1980. In 1984, lower-ranking Nations officials documented more than two members of the National Guard were con- dozen extrajudicial executions, the weak jus- victed in the case in El Salvador. The civil case tice system led to a climate of insecurity and was brought in the United States by relatives lynchings of alleged criminals by vigilantes. of the victims. The case of Sandro do Nascimento dem- The cause of truth, if not justice, also onstrated the problem in Brazil. Nascimento’s received a boost in Guatemala, after the Janu- attempt at armed robbery in Rio de Janeiro ary inauguration of President Alfonso Portillo. ultimately led to kidnapping and murder. Just months after taking office, he declared a Deserving of a trial for his serious offenses, national day in honor of the estimated 200,000 police strangled him to death instead, shortly victims of Guatemala’s thirty-five-year civil after his arrest. In São Paulo state, police conflict, ratified the Inter-American Conven- killings of civilians surged from 525 in 1998 tion on Forced Disappearances, and admitted to 664 in 1999, the highest total since 1992, state responsibility for past violations in when police killed 111 inmates in a massacre many well-known cases, including the 1990 at Carandiru prison. This violent trend inten- murder of anthropologist Myrna Mack and sified over the first six months of 2000, as the December 1982 Dos Erres massacre of at police in the nation’s most populous state least 162 people. killed 489 civilians, an increase of 77.2 per- If cause for optimism was to be found in cent over the comparable 1999 figure. A efforts to hold human rights violators to study released in July by the police ombuds- account, events in Ecuador and Paraguay man shed light on these shockingly high underscored the fragility of democracy in the figures. Analyzing the autopsy reports of region. On January 22, the Ecuadoran mili- 222 persons killed by police gunfire in 1999— tary, allied with a coalition of indigenous one-third of the victims of fatal police ac- groups, toppled elected President Jamil tions—it reported that 51 percent had been Mahuad, replacing him briefly with a three- shot in the back and 23 percent had been shot man junta. Just days later, the military stepped five or more times. The findings suggested aside for Vice-President Gustavo Noboa. In that many had been summarily executed, and Paraguay in May, army officers failed in an not killed as a result of legitimate use of lethal 94 AMERICAS OVERVIEW

force in shootouts, as authorities routinely eral important areas, including by removing reported. jurisdiction from military courts over cases of In Haiti, electoral fraud and unchecked journalists accused of sedition or espionage politically motivated street violence raised under military laws, and by repealing the serious concerns about the government’s will- crime of “contempt of authority” from the ingness and ability to apply the law. Much of State Security Law. the violence was carried out by supporters of Inhumane conditions of detention re- Fanmi Lavalas, the party of former President mained a common feature throughout the Jean-Bertrand Aristide, in the context of region, with particularly abusive situations parliamentary elections held in May. found in Venezuela, Brazil, Haiti, Panama, Human rights violations in Venezuela and El Salvador. The continued growth of also continued. Following flooding and mud inmate populations exacerbated overcrowd- slides in December 1999, the armed forces ing, at the root of a host of other problems. murdered suspected looters in Vargas state. Yet, all over the region, prisons and jails were Army paratroopers, police, and members of not crammed with convicted prisoners, but the National Guard were blamed for the instead with pretrial detainees, turning the execution-style killing of what the state om- presumption of innocence on its head. budsman said were more than sixty people. The number of extrajudicial executions of Defending Human Rights criminal suspects elsewhere in the country The burgeoning of the human rights also increased over the prior year; the nongov- movement, even in countries with environ- ernmental Venezuelan Program for Education ments hostile to activism, remained a regional and Action on Human Rights (Programa highlight. In addition to groups focusing on Venezolano de Educación-Acción en Derechos the traditional array of civil and political Humanos, PROVEA) said it knew of sev- rights, nongovernmental organizations enty-six reports of violations of the right to (NGOs) emerged over the last decade in the life by police during the first six months of the defense of women’s rights, children’s rights, year alone. the rights of indigenous populations, refugee Press freedom also remained precarious rights, and in some countries gay and lesbian in the region, most severely in Cuba, where rights. With increasingly sophisticated meth- authorities maintained almost total control ods of documentation and advocacy, these over the flow of news within the island. In groups played an indispensable role in moni- Haiti, Radio Haïti-Inter journalist Jean Domi- toring and reporting on human rights develop- nique was ambushed and killed on April 3, ments in the region. along with station bodyguard Jean-Claude Yet, even in countries where human Loiussant. Dominique was an outspoken rights defenders could work with no apparent proponent of the rule of law. In Chile, too, personal risk, they frequently faced an un- journalists suffered restrictions. José Ale sympathetic public, suspicious of their de- Aravena, court reporter for the daily La fense of criminal suspects and other despised Tercera, was convicted in February of “in- groups. Worse, in a number of countries they sulting” former chief justice Servando Jordán were the subject of threats, harassment and in an article summarizing the judge’s contro- physical violence. versial career. The journalist’s 541-day sus- Colombia remained the most dangerous pended sentence reminded the country of the country in which to monitor human rights, authoritarian mentality of some Chilean judges with four defenders killed and three and the weak free speech protections offered “dissappeared” during the first ten months of under the law. A new law to regulate the press 2000. Elizabeth Cañas, a member of the was pending in Congress at this writing. If Association of Family Members of the De- passed, as expected, the law would provide tained and Disappeared (Asociación de greater and much-needed protection in sev- Familiares de Detenidos Desaparecidos-Co- AMERICAS OVERVIEW 95 lombia, ASFADDES), was shot and killed in representative of the Center for Legal Action July. Cañas lived in Barrancabermeja, where in Human Rights (Centro para la acción legal paramilitaries systematically intimidated en Derechos Humanos, CALDH) was de- human rights defenders, sending dozens of tained, beaten and robbed by individuals death threats over the course of the year. Also posing as journalists but thought to have links slain were Demetrio Playonero, an internally with active and retired military officers. displaced person (IDP) and human rights Death threats, frequent in Colombia, leader; Jesús Ramiro Zapata, the only remain- were also reported in Guatemala, Chile, Bra- ing member of the Segovia Human Rights zil, Mexico, Argentina, and Peru. In Cuba, Committee; and Margarita María Pulgarín human rights monitors, whose legitimacy the Trujillo, a government prosecutor who was government stubbornly refused to recognize, developing cases that linked paramilitaries to faced harassment and criminal prosecution the army and drug traffickers. for their activities. Civilian groups, including human rights In Venezuela, the Supreme Court deter- organizations, also faced attack from the mined in separate decisions in June and Au- FARC, which in October 2000 characterized gust that human rights organizations that them as “paid killers [for the Colombian received funding from abroad were not mem- military].” In a statement on why they failed bers of “civil society,” thereby depriving to honor an invitation to an October 2000 them of the right to participate in the nomi- peace meeting in San José, Costa Rica, spon- nation of candidates for the Supreme Court, sored by a broad coalition of human rights, to be ombudsman, and for other important peace, and community groups, the FARC government posts. dismissed the effort as organized by “the Authorities continued to apply pres- enemies of Colombia and its people.” In this sure to human rights monitors in Mexico, too, way, the guerrillas contributed to a general where they were sometimes blamed for some atmosphere of fear and intolerance that en- of the crime problems suffered in the country. dangered human rights defenders. Losing presidential candidate Francisco The Colombian government’s efforts to Labastida of the PRI, for example, noted protect threatened defenders were slow and during the campaign, “Let it be known that the inadequate. Moreover, recklessly endanger- law was made to protect the human rights of ing defenders’ lives, members of the Colom- citizens, not criminals.” This anti-human rights bian military continued to make public state- rhetoric contributed to a hostile environment ments accusing government investigators and for human rights defenders. According to the human rights groups of guerrilla sympathies. nongovernmental All Rights for All Network Failed assassination attempts were re- of Human Rights Organization (Red de ported in Brazil. In September, a jeep carry- Derechos Humanos Todos los Derechos para ing members of a commission that monitored Todo, known as the Red), its offices in rural violence and land reform issues was fired Mexico City were under surveillance by agents upon in the northeastern state of Paraíba, but of the federal National Security System its occupants survived. That same month, (Sistema Nacional de Seguridad, SISEN) in São Paulo representatives of Amnesty Inter- June. national and of a gay pride organization re- ceived bombs in the mail, but the police safely The Role of the International deactivated the devices. Community In an alarming development, particu- larly when viewed in historical perspective, Organization of American States Guatemala witnessed a notable increase in The OAS’s electoral observation ca- threats, harassment, and targeted violence pacities were severely tested this year in both against human rights organizations and activ- Peru and Haiti, where election monitoring ists. In one disturbing incident in August, a missions nevertheless successfully avoided 96 AMERICAS OVERVIEW

the shortcomings of past such teams. In Peru, occurred when Trinidad and Tobago was still a mission led by former Guatemalan minister bound by the convention. of foreign affairs Eduardo Stein conducted a In a contrary and positive direction in forthright, transparent, and proactive obser- the Caribbean, Barbados recognized this year vation of the electoral process. In Haiti, the jurisdiction of the court. Barbadian Ambassador Orlando Marville led a team of observers that were the first to United Nations discover the fraudulent calculation method The United Nations maintained a per- that tainted the results of senatorial elections. manent human rights presence in Colombia Both bodies ended up deciding to quit their and Guatemala, and to a lesser extent in Haiti. host countries prior to the completion of the In other countries, visiting special rapporteurs elections, after it had become clear that elec- and other mechanisms lent their expertise to toral abuses would not be remedied. efforts to address human rights problems. But the OAS showed less initiative in The August-September mission of the U.N. dealing with the results of its monitoring special rapporteur on torture to Brazil, for efforts. With regard to Peru, in particular, the example, drew public attention to prison OAS Permanent Council rejected a proposal abuses and strengthened the credibility of by the United States and Costa Rica for an ad local monitoring groups. Earlier in the year, hoc meeting of foreign ministers under Reso- at the April meeting of the U.N. Commission lution 1080—the provision appropriate to on Human Rights, a resolution censuring the responding to interruptions of democracy— Cuban government for its intolerance of peace- to discuss sanctions against Peru. By a ful dissent, among other problems, was in- substantial majority, member states showed strumental in maintaining pressure for re- themselves to be unwilling to take strong form. measures to respond to unfair elections. This The Bogotá office of the U.N. High consensus revealed the limits of the OAS’s Commissioner for Human Rights continued effectiveness in managing interruptions of the its invaluable work in 2000, visiting regions democratic process that fall short of a coup shaken by war and pressing the Colombian d’etat. The limits of Resolution 1080 were authorities to implement needed reforms. also on display in the case of the coup in The office’s annual report was an accurate Ecuador. Despite the ouster of the president, and compelling portrayal of the dire state of the OAS failed to take action. human rights in Colombia. In a wise decision, Nor did the OAS take concrete actions the Colombian government agreed to main- with regard to Haiti. At this writing, OAS tain the office until April 2002. Yet, disturb- Deputy Secretary General Luigi Enaudi was ingly, U.N. staff noted a marked drop in engaged in negotiations with the Haitian au- cooperation from Colombian officials. thorities to try to alleviate the worst aspects The United Nations Verification Mis- of the summer’s elections, but no reforms had sion in Guatemala (Misión de Verificación de yet been announced. las Naciones Unidas en Guatemala, The Inter-American Commission on MINUGUA), established after the 1996 Human Rights sent multiple death penalty peace accords, published reports on the peace cases against Trinidad and Tobago to the process that included detailed analyses of Inter-American Court. In 1998, the country human rights issues. Under the 1996 peace announced that it would withdraw from the accords, the mandate of MINUGUA was due American Convention on Human Rights so as to expire at year’s end. Although President to eliminate the inter-American human rights Portillo had requested that MINUGUA ex- system as an avenue of appeal for death row tend its stay, at this writing the U.N. General inmates. The withdrawal became effective in Assembly had not yet decided on the exten- 1999, but the cases referred by the commis- sion. sion to the court involved incidents that had In Haiti, the six-year-old U.N. human AMERICAS OVERVIEW 97 rights monitoring mission departed the coun- hold up the major objective to achieve the try in early 2000, together with the U.N. minor.” peacekeeping mission. A smaller human In December 1999, the first U.S.-trained rights mission was subsequently installed: Colombian army battalion completed its train- the United Nations International Civilian ing and was deployed. A second battalion Support Mission in Haiti (Mission began to train the following August. U.S. law internationale civile d’appui en Haïti, mandated that fewer than 500 U.S. troops be MICAH). in-country at any one time barring an emer- High Commissioner for Human Rights gency. But reflecting a global trend to “out- Mary Robinson visited Mexico in November source” war, some analysts projected that as 1999, signing an agreement with the govern- many as 1,000 U.S.-related personnel could ment to undertake a human rights technical be in Colombia on any given day, many of cooperation program. At this writing, the them working for private companies under U.N. and Mexican government had not agreed contract to the U.S. military. on the exact nature of the program. Following The southern Colombian department of the high commissioner’s visit, the special Putumayo, home to 50 percent of Colombia’s rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary, or ar- illegal coca crop, was to be the first target of bitrary executions released a report on Mexico. the U.S. eradication strategy. Officials ac- Although it noted that the government had knowledged that forced population displace- taken some positive steps, the report con- ment was a likely outcome of the eradication cluded: “Unfortunately, these positive un- effort, and proposed to set up government- dertakings have not been sufficient to correct controlled “temporary” camps to distribute the situation.” assistance. Groups working with the inter- nally displaced protested, saying that the United States planned activities risked “fomenting the con- The year 2000 marked the emergence of flict, targeting innocent civilians, and sub- the United States as a major player in the stantially increasing internal displacement in armed conflict in Colombia, with the ap- Colombia.” proval of the U.S. $1.3 billion aid plan. The Clinton Administration, backed by Debated heatedly yet passed overwhelm- Congress, initially took a strong line against ingly by the U.S. Congress, the Colombia aid the manipulation of the electoral process in package was the largest ever approved for a Peru that led to Fujimori’s third term. Presi- Latin American country. Although the aid dent Clinton directly suggested that the U.S. was conditioned on Colombia’s compliance relationship with Peru would be damaged if with strict human rights conditions, Presi- democracy was not respected. Yet, when dent Clinton waived six of the seven condi- other OAS members states failed to rally to tions for reasons of U.S. national security on the U.S. call for an ad hoc meeting of ministers August 22. under Resolution 1080, the U.S. did not Clinton’s use of the waiver, made just appear to push hard for the measure. prior to his visit to Colombia, allowed aid to Behind-the-scenes negotiations of U.S. go forward even as U.S. officials acknowl- officials during the September video scandal edged that the forces they were funding main- were said to be critical in convincing Fujimori tained ties to paramilitary groups, had failed to agree to leave office and to dismantle his to suspend or prosecute implicated officers, hated intelligence apparatus. Yet instead of engaged in human rights abuses, and refused promoting full accountability in Peru’s return to enforce civilian jurisdiction over human to democratic rule, the United States threw its rights crimes. With brutal candor, a spokes- weight behind a scheme by which intelligence person for the office of White House adviser chief Vladimiro Montesinos escaped to and drug czar retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey Panama to seek political asylum. In October, explained the president’s decision: “You don’t Montesinos returned to Peru after unsuc- 98 AMERICAS OVERVIEW

cessfully seeking asylum in Panama. yield more than a small volume of actual On the positive side, important progress business. Because of compromises with was made in the declassification of U.S. conservative lawmakers opposed to loosen- documents relating to human rights violations ing the restrictions, no U.S. export credits or in Chile under military rule. By mid-year, in private financing would be allowed on food accordance with a 1999 declassification direc- sales. And on the negative side of the balance, tive, thousands of documents from the State the legislation codified restrictions on the and Defense Departments and other U.S. travel of U.S. citizens to Cuba. agencies, including the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), were released. Some files were The Work of Human Rights Watch held back on the order of the CIA’s director, While responding to crises throughout George Tenet, supposedly to conceal sensi- the hemisphere, the Americas division of tive information about intelligence-gathering Human Rights Watch primarily focused at- methods. At this writing, the CIA and other tention on a core group of countries experi- government agencies were preparing for an- encing the most serious human rights prob- other massive release of documents. lems. Human Rights Watch sought, in each A breakthrough in understanding the country, to address the most pressing human role of the CIA in Chile came in September, rights issues: the Pinochet prosecution and in response to a 1999 amendment to the fiscal freedom of expression in Chile; violations of 2000 Intelligence Authorization Act authored international human rights and humanitarian by member of the House of Representatives law in Colombia; unfair election conditions, Maurice Hinchey. It required the CIA to weakening of the rule of law, and impunity in submit a report to Congress on its relations Peru; deficiencies in the justice system in with Pinochet’s military government, among Mexico; political violence and electoral fraud other aspects of CIA involvement in Chile. In in Haiti; accountability in Argentina; the the report, the CIA revealed that it had protection of NGOs and human rights de- maintained a liaison with Manuel Contreras, fenders in Guatemala; the use of excessive the infamous director of Chile’s security force by police and military in Bolivia; and agency from 1974 to 1977. The relationship overall human rights conditions and the U.S. lasted throughout the period in which human embargo in Cuba. rights were grossly and systematically abused In addition to documenting abuses in Chile, and it ended a year after the car-bomb through published reports, Human Rights murder in Washington, D.C. of Allende’s Watch responded rapidly to breaking events former foreign minister, Orlando Letelier, and by directly addressing high-level government his colleague Ronni Moffitt, for which officials and representatives of relevant re- Contreras had been indicted in the United gional and international bodies, and generally States and convicted in Chile. pressing our human rights concerns in a firm, Small but symbolic steps were also concise, and timely way. Human Rights taken toward easing the decades-old U.S. Watch also conveyed its views in meetings economic embargo on Cuba, an outmoded with senior government officials of Argen- policy instrument that Human Rights Watch tina, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Haiti, Guate- and many other observers believed to be mala, Mexico, Panama, and Venezuela. In counterproductive to the human rights cause. meetings and correspondence, we made spe- After months of debate in congressional com- cific recommendations for improving human mittees, both houses of Congress passed rights conditions. legislation in October to allow limited food As the region’s gravest human rights and medicine sales to Cuba. The measure crisis, Colombia was the division’s major signaled the first meaningful retreat in nearly focus during 2000. In February, just as the four decades in the U.S. policy of economic U.S. Congress was debating a massive mili- sanctions against Cuba, but was unlikely to tary assistance package for Colombia, Hu- AMERICAS OVERVIEW 99 man Rights Watch released its report, “The deficiencies in Peru’s electoral conditions. In Ties That Bind: Colombia and Military- June, after the election, the division’s execu- Paramilitary Links.” This documented the tive director attended the OAS General As- continuing close relationship between Co- sembly in Windsor, Canada, urging member lombian military and paramilitary forces, states to press Fujimori to “restore the inter- directly rebutting the Colombian rupted democratic process” in Peru. In Sep- government’s claim that the military was not tember, as the political crisis unfolded in Peru, responsible for paramilitary abuses. And to Human Rights Watch sought to ensure that ensure that the message was heard, the the human rights abuses committed during division’s executive director and Colombia Fujimori’s decade in power were not left in researcher both testified before the U.S. Sen- impunity, including by directly challenging ate as to the report’s findings, arguing that the efforts of Vladimiro Montesinos to secure tough human rights conditionality be included immunity from potential prosecution by in any proposed assistance to Colombia. obtaining political asylum in Panama. In pur- The report made front-page headlines in suit of this, Human Rights Watch wrote to the Colombia, where top military leaders tried to Panamanian president, setting out the rea- discredit its findings by suggesting, gro- sons why any granting of asylum would be tesquely, that Human Rights Watch was in profoundly mistaken, and sent a delegation to the pay of drug traffickers. Not long after, Panama to discuss the question with relevant Cuban government representatives facing cen- officials. sure at the U.N. Human Rights Commission The historic prosecution of Pinochet mounted a similar attack, alleging that Human was Human Rights Watch’s primary focus in Rights Watch received substantial funding Chile. In late April, the division’s executive from U.S. “special services.” But such politi- director published an opinion piece in the cally motivated invective rightly carried no Chilean daily El Mercurio that critically ana- weight or credibility, the more so because lyzed Pinochet’s due process arguments neither source could refute the carefully docu- against prosecution. This was published mented facts that were the basis for Human shortly before the Santiago Appeals Court Rights Watch’s conclusions. began hearings on stripping Pinochet of his After President Clinton invoked the parliamentary immunity from prosecution. Colombia aid law’s national security interest Human Rights Watch’s Chile researcher at- waiver—after the State Department found tended the hearings, the only international that Colombia had failed to meet six of the observer permitted to do so, and closely law’s seven human rights-related conditions— monitored the legal developments that culmi- Human Rights Watch vigorously protested nated in the lifting of Pinochet’s immunity. the Administration’s subjugation of human The Americas division made important rights imperatives to counter-narcotics inter- strides toward the broad dissemination of its ests. Members of the European Union, human rights information by entirely re- skeptical of Plan Colombia, approved only a vamping Human Rights Watch’s Spanish- third of the funds requested, and dedicated all language website. With materials arranged of their aid to nongovernmental organiza- chronologically by country and by issue, the tions, as opposed to official entities. site presented a detailed picture of human Fujimori’s crisis of legitimacy domi- rights conditions in the region. The goal was nated Human Rights Watch’s work on Peru. to be comprehensive—providing documents On the advocacy front, Human Rights Watch that ranged from letters to reports to opinion urged the OAS and others in the international pieces on each country and issue—as well as community to adopt a firm posture on Peru’s timely—effecting the simultaneous release in democratic deficit. In early May, Human electronic and traditional formats of all of the Rights Watch wrote to OAS Secretary Gen- division’s public materials. eral Cesar Gaviria, comprehensively detailing 100 ARGENTINA

provincial police, Paulino Zenón Cobresí, ARGENTINA admitted that the police beat detainees, al- though he denied that such treatment was Human Rights Developments systematic. Fernando de la Rúa was inaugurated as Another detainee who apparently died Argentina’s president on December 10, 1999, in police custody was twenty-five-year-old having been elected at the head of a coalition Juan Carlos Sánchez. Sánchez was detained of opposition parties. His government faced by the Corrientes provincial police on Janu- its first major human rights test with the ary 10, and taken to the headquarters of the arrests in August of two former members of Special Crimes Division (formerly the Inves- Argentina’s armed forces. The two men, tigations Brigade) in the provincial capital, a arrested separately in Mexico and Italy, faced building where at least fifteen people had prosecution in European courts for abuses reported being tortured in recent years. His committed under military rule. The De la Rúa parents were later told that he had been administration did not attempt to obstruct released, although witnesses said he had not the cases and provided no more than consular left the building. Workers near the site later assistance to the detainees. Argentina’s cur- claimed to have heard screams from that rent human rights record was marred by location. Although the body was never found, serious violations, notably those committed eight police officers were indicted on charges by police forces. Torture and deaths in police of torturing Sánchez to death. stations were frequently reported, and while The Sánchez case was not the only some cases of abuse were investigated and suspicious death at the hands of this Corrientes prosecuted, others were not. police division: on February 9, twenty-six- Among the suspicious deaths reported year-old Germán Morales was shot dead in in 2000 was that of twenty-two-year-old front of witnesses near his home by four Ramón Rojas, found hanged in the Ninth police officers. No investigation into the Police Station in the provincial capital of events was conducted. In July, however, a Santiago del Estero on March 19. Another commissioner and three police officers were detainee in that city, construction worker detained and accused of torturing twenty-six- Aldo Bravo, claimed that he had been kid- year-old Jorge Marcelo González, a prisoner napped from his home by ten to fourteen on furlow, and then shooting him dead on June hooded and armed men on July 7, and held for 30. The Corrientes provincial police chief three days at the police station, during which resigned following the case, and seventy- time he was tortured. The police acknowl- three other officers were forced to retire. edged having detained Bravo, but denied his In Jujuy province, the local delegation of claims of torture, despite corroborating medi- the Federal Police was believed responsible cal evidence. In September, the head of the for the shooting death of a storekeeper on July municipal office for children and adolescents, 2. Ten police officers, participating in an anti- Father Mario Tenti, accused the Santiago del drug raid, fired more than forty shots at Estero provincial police of torturing three Manuel Fernández, who was killed by a shot minors on September 2. The police denied the to the head fired at point-blank range. Police charges, saying that the boys’ injuries were said that the shooting occurred because the result of their fighting amongst them- Fernández was carrying drugs and offered selves. None of these cases had been pros- resistance, but relatives alleged that he was ecuted as of this writing. shot because he had witnessed an illegal act by In La Rioja, a police officer was detained the police who later shot him. The ten officers for the hanging death of nineteen-year-old were in detention at this writing. Cristian Ruiz in a police cell in March 1999, Buenos Aires provincial governor Carlos after it was confirmed that Ruiz had been Ruckauf, who took office in December 1999, tortured to death. The head of the La Rioja reestablished the post of a single police com- ARGENTINA 101 missioner for the whole of the province, related to a police “mafia,” and twenty offic- undoing reforms undertaken by the former ers were detained. On August 24, the trial governor. Ruckauf then appointed Eduardo began of seven former Mendoza police offic- Raúl Martínez, who had been prosecuted on ers implicated in the killing of seventeen- charges of torturing a German citizen in 1978, year-old Sebastián Bordón, whose body was although the case was later dismissed. Ruckauf, found on October 12, 1997, after he had been who during his electoral campaign had called in police detention. The trial continued at this for a harder line on criminals—urging that writing. they be shot—named former rebel army of- In Córdoba, a transvestite known as ficer Aldo Rico to the post of provincial Vanesa Lorena Ledesma died in police cus- minister of security. Rico was forced to resign tody on February 16, after being held incom- a few months later and was replaced by retired municado at the eighteenth precinct for five police commissioner Ramón Oreste Verón, days. The cause of death was reported as who claimed to be the officer with the largest “cardiac arrest” but the body reportedly number of killings to his name in provincial showed signs of torture and beatings. As in history. previous years, there were frequent allega- On August 30, the president of the tions of human rights violations against sexual Buenos Aires provincial Supreme Court, minorities throughout Argentina, with police Guillermo David San Martín, called on Secu- arbitrarily detaining gay men and transves- rity Minister Ramón Verón to take steps to tites for infractions such as “crimes against stop the torture of minors in police stations. public decency” or scandalous conduct. San Martín made the demand after reviewing Fourteen members of the Federal Police allegations that five young people had been were detained after violently suppressing an ill-treated in Buenos Aires provincial police April 19 demonstration against the stations in Virreyes, San Fernando, Villa government’s announced labor reform. The Martelli and Escobar (all in Greater Buenos police beat demonstrators, who offered little Aires). According to a report by the govern- resistance, attacked one with a knife and shot ment adviser for minors in San Isidro, allega- another man in the testicles. In all, thirty-five tions of beatings of minors in police stations demonstrators were wounded by police, while doubled in the first seven months of 2000, fifty others were detained. reaching a total of 159 cases in thirty-three Attacks and threats against journalists police stations. continued to be reported. Two of the most The director of security of the munici- serious cases involved the provincial news- pality of San Miguel (whose mayor was Aldo papers El Liberal (Santiago del Estero) and La Rico), former army officer Hugo Vercellotti, Voz del Interior (Córdoba). In early August, asserted in July that the police do and should a fake bomb was placed under the car of El kill criminals, lamenting that the law repre- Liberal journalist Gregorio Layus. The news- sented “an obstacle in the fight against inse- paper, in a previous editorial, had accused the curity.” provincial government of Carlos Juárez (gov- In Mendoza province, two alleged po- ernor since 1949 virtually without interrup- lice informers, twenty-eight-year-old José tion) of seeking to ruin it. Claiming to be the Segundo Zambrano, and twenty-five-year- only independent voice in the province, the old Pablo Marcelo Rodríguez, “disappeared” newspaper stated that it and its journalists on March 25, reportedly after meeting with had been the subject of persecution, espio- a police corporal. Their bloodstained car was nage and legal harassment due to its investi- found several days later, but their bodies were gation of corruption and irregularities in the not discovered until July 3, when they were provincial government. La Voz del Interior found in an area used by the police for reported that its correspondent in Santiago shooting practice. The police corporal was del Estero had received telephone calls in July accused of the killings, which were said to be warning him that he could “suffer an accident” 102 ARGENTINA

if he continued to write critical articles about had rejected a petition from the Supreme the governor, and had later received explicit Council of the Armed Forces to hand jurisdic- death threats. tion over the case to the military courts. Shattering the myth that international Although the armed forces publicly ac- justice was a matter of northern countries cepted the prosecution of retired officers in imposing their will on the south, an Argnetine connection with the kidnapping of children, judge requested that former Chilean dictator they expressed concern over judicial efforts Augusto Pinochet be extradited to face crimi- to collect information from officers still on nal charges for his responsibility for the active service. In July, army chief Lt. Gen. assasination of Gen. Carlos Prat and his wife. Ricardo Brinzoni sent his secretary general, They were killed by a car bomb in Buenos Eduardo Alfonso, to visit Armando Barrera, Aires on Spetember 30, 1974. The judge also a former officer detained in Bahia Blanca for sought the extradition of other Chileans in the refusing to testify before a federal court case, including the former chief of Chile’s investigating those cases. The government secret police, Manuel Contreras Sepulveda, also expressed support for a proposal by who was in prison in Chile for having carried Brinzoni to establish a “reconciliation panel,” out a 1974 car-bombing in Washington, D.C. involving the army, human rights groups and that took the life of former foreign minister the Catholic Church, as a means to try to Orlando Letelier and his assistant Ronnie determine the fate of the “disappeared” with- Moffitt. out resorting to the courts, a proposal Nearly a quarter century after the coup scrapped when human rights organizations d’etat that brought to power the military rejected it outright. government that ruled from 1976 until 1983, Argentina continued to grapple with its cruel Defending Human Rights legacy of killings, “disappearances,” and other Although threats against human rights abuses. Federal judge Adolfo Bagnasco in- defenders were rare, a few activists faced vestigated the theft of babies during military serious abuses. On July 30, Elisabeth Ceballos rule, a case brought by the Grandmothers of was kidnapped, beaten and threatened by Plaza de Mayo (Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo) three masked men after her husband, journal- in 1996 that was not excluded by the country’s ist Miguel Hernández, participated in a dem- amnesty laws. The case involved the armed onstration at the house of Miguel Angel forces’ practice of taking babies who were Pérez, a former army officer who had admit- forcibly “disappeared” with their parents or ted to assassinating a political prisoner in who were born in captivity after the detention 1976. Ceballos was finally left, bound and of their parents, and of handing them over to gagged, near the meeting place of a human military families and others not considered rights group in the town of Cosquín, Córdoba. subversive. Over 200 children are alleged to Hernández and other human rights activists in have been kidnapped in such circumstances. Cosquín also complained of a series of tele- Nine defendants remained under house arrest, phoned death threats, and on July 17 including former presidents brigades general Hernández’s house was stoned. Reynaldo Bignone and general Jorge Videla, former junta member admiral Emilio Massera, The Role of the International and former Buenos Aires security zone chief Community general Carlos Guillermo Suárez Mason. On August 10, another officer was placed under European Union house arrest: retired Gen. Santiago Omar On December 30, 1999, Spanish judge Riveros, the former commander of Military Baltazar Garzón issued an international ar- Institutions implicated in the theft of babies rest warrant for forty-eight former officers, born in the Campo de Mayo military hospi- previously indicted by him in November, tal. The previous week, the Supreme Court with a view to making a formal extradition ARGENTINA 103 request. In August, Justice Minister Ricardo already been judged by the Argentine courts Gil Lavedra stated that the request involved and released under the Due Obedience Law, “political questions” relating to national sov- noting, in addition, that the army was compil- ereignty, relevant to the executive not the ing information with a view to advising other courts, and indicated that the defendants military officers who might travel abroad and would not be detained since their crimes had face prosecution for human rights violations. already been dealt with in Argentina. In May, Le Loire requested authoriza- The most encouraging development in tion from the Argentine government to travel Garzón’s prosecution was the August 24 to the country in order to question some 140 arrest of Ricardo Miguel Cavallo in Mexico. military officers linked to the forced “disap- Cavallo, accused of being a former torturer in pearance” of French citizens. The petition the Navy Mechanics School (ESMA), was was received by the Argentine Ministry of allegedly implicated in the deaths of at least Justice days after the detention of Olivera, two people who “disappeared” under mili- and was under consideration at this writing. tary rule. After the arrest, French judge Roger Suits against General Suárez Mason Le Loire also announced that he would seek being pursued in the Italian courts since 1986, Cavallo’s extradition. Argentine Interior which involved the “disappearance” of eight Minister Federico Storani indicated that the people of Italian origin during the military government would not intervene in the case government, were upheld by the First Penal and would take no steps to prevent extradi- Court of Rome in March. The court rejected tion, although consular advice would be avail- the defense lawyers’ argument that the cases able to the detainee. On a September visit to were barred because of Argentina’s Full Stop Mexico, President De la Rúa said that he did and Due Obedience Laws. In his ruling, judge not discuss the Cavallo case in his official Renato D’Andria also underscored the Ar- meetings. When questioned by the press, he gentine authorities’ lack of cooperation with did, however, express support for the prin- his investigations of these cases. ciple of territoriality, indicating that such crimes should be tried in Argentina. Israel Just a few weeks earlier, on August 6, The Israeli Parliament announced in former army Maj. Jorge Olivera was detained August that it had formed an inter-ministerial in Rome following an extradition request from commission to investigate the fate of some French judge Le Loire. Olivera was accused of 1,800 Jewish Argentines who “disappeared” responsibility for the kidnapping, torture and in the period 1976 to 1983, in order to “disappearance” of French citizen Marie Anne establish the whereabouts of their bodies and Erize in San Juan province on October 15, bury them with appropriate religious rites. 1976. On September 18, however, an Italian court of appeal ordered Olivera’s release on Organization of American States the basis of a purported death certificate The OAS special rapporteur on freedom indicating that Erize had died on November of expression, Santiago Cantón, condemned 11, 1976, although the certificate was later the threats and attacks suffered by the news- shown to have been falsified. Reasoning that papers El Liberal and La Voz del Interior, Erize was not “disappeared” but dead, the calling on provincial authorities to investigate court ruled that the statute of limitations the incidents and punish those found respon- under Italian law had run for the other crimes sible. The Inter-American Commission on of which Olivera was accused. Human Rights (IACHR) received 123 com- The armed forces made no comment on plaints relating to Argentina during 1999, and, the case while Olivera was in detention, but as of mid-2000, maintained fifty-eight open following Olivera’s release army chief cases on the country. Brinzoni called the detention an offense against In one important case, the IACHR re- Argentine justice. He argued that Olivera had quested the Argentine government to provide 104 ARGNETINA/BRAZIL

information on police powers of detention. The commission was examining a controver- BRAZIL sial November 1998 decision of the Argentine Supreme Court, in which the court upheld the Human Rights Developments power of the police to detain a person, with- On June 12, Sandro do Nascimento, a out an arrest warrant, solely on the grounds former street child and survivor of the 1993 that he or she was deemed to have been acting Candelária massacre of eight youths by Rio de “suspiciously.” Janeiro police, boarded a Rio city bus intend- The IACHR also reiterated its call for ing to rob its passengers. Informed of the hold the thirteen prisoners convicted of the 1989 up, police blocked off a street and surrounded attack on the La Tablada barracks to be the bus while Nascimento held the passengers granted a new trial, in light of the serious hostage for several hours, and television irregularities marring the first proceedings. crews assembled and began broadcasting the Abundant evidence suggested that the pris- siege on national television. After more than oners had been tortured while in the custody four hours, Nascimento exited the bus, point- of the army, while others had been killed. On ing a gun at the head of the hostage, Geisa September 6, it was announced that the re- Gonçalves. Before negotiations could move mains of Iván Ruíz and Carlos Quito Burgos, forward, a police officer fired at Nascimento two of the five persons who “disappeared” but struck the hostage. Nascimento then fired after attacking the barracks, had been identi- three shots, killing the hostage before police fied. Both had apparently been shot by overpowered him and took him away. An members of the army, probably after capture. hour later, they left Nascimento’s lifeless In Congress, a bill was introduced to permit body at a local hospital. During the ride there, the conditional release of the prisoners while autopsy reports later confirmed, the officers their conviction was being reviewed, but as of had strangled him to death. this writing it had not been debated. The incident was an emblematic one, By invitation of the Argentine govern- typifying the problems of urban violence and ment, the IACHR was also to send an ob- police abuse in Brazil. It involved a social server to review investigations of the 1994 outcast, abandoned by society, a brutal inci- bombing of the Argentine-Israeli Mutual dent terrorizing not only those directly af- Association Association (Asociación Mu- fected but also millions of observers appalled tual Israelita-Argentina, AMIA), an attack in by the brazenness of the criminal attack, an which eighty-six people died. incompetent police response and, in the end, two cold-blooded murders. Despite the grue- United States some and unjustified police response—a fla- On a brief visit to Buenos Aires in grant violation of basic rights—reaction to the August, U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine event focused almost entirely on the initial Albright met with NGO representatives and crime and the police failure to protect the Jewish community leaders, and promised hostage, rather than the assailant’s killing. U.S. government cooperation in investigating However, the public prosecutor’s office in- the AMIA bombing and the 1992 bombing of dicted the five officers involved on homicide the Israeli embassy. Albright also vowed to charges after they had served thirty days in cooperate in the investigation of abuses that pretrial detention. Unsurprisingly, the mas- occurred during the military government, stat- sive public outcry that followed the incident ing that she would seek to ensure that the State led to the approval of a national public secu- Department opened its archives on the re- rity package loaded with crime-fighting mea- pression of that period. sures but conspicuously lacking in reforms to control police abuse or professionalize the security forces. Throughout the year, Brazilian authori- BRAZIL 105 ties, media and the public viewed a range of contexts as well. In São Paulo state, police human rights abuses—including police kill- killings of civilians surged from 525 in 1998 ings, torture, and problems in prisons and to 664 in 1999, the highest total since 1992, juvenile detention centers—through the lens when police killed 111 inmates in a massacre of public security. Urban residents felt them- at Carandiru prison. This violent trend inten- selves to be most vulnerable to crime, but even sified over the first six months of 2000, as rural conflicts, particularly those involving police in the nation’s most populous state the Landless Workers’ Movement killed 489 civilians, an increase of 77.2 per- (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem cent over the comparable 1999 figure. A Terra, MST), were seen as public security study released in July by the police ombuds- issues. Indeed, the federal government seized man shed light on these shockingly high the opportunity presented by a series of high- figures. Analyzing the autopsy reports of profile MST building occupations to try to 222 persons killed by police gunfire in 1999— portray the issue of rural poverty and under- one-third of the victims of fatal police ac- development as one of law and order. tions—it reported that 51 percent had been The most visible example of police vio- shot in the back and 23 percent had been shot lence in response to social protest came five or more times. The findings suggested during celebrations of the arrival of the first that many had been summarily executed, and Portuguese explorers to Brazil in 1500. Dur- not killed as a result of legitimate use of lethal ing the ceremonies to mark the 500-year force in shootouts, as authorities routinely anniversary of this event, military police in reported. More than half of the victims had Bahia state beat demonstrators and fired no prior criminal record. rubber bullets into crowds, injuring at least In Rio de Janeiro, efforts to improve the thirty demonstrators and arresting more than human rights record of the police suffered a one hundred. The police decision to impede serious setback when Gov. Anthony a march organized by 2,000 indigenous lead- Garotinho drove noted reformer Luis Eduardo ers from throughout Brazil, and the violence Soares, the assistant secretary of public secu- employed by shock troops against indig- rity, from office in March. Governor Garotinho enous activists, led the president of the insisted that Soares’ removal was legitimate, government’s indigenous institute, FUNAI, but the circumstances suggested that he was to resign in protest. removed due to pressure from the Rio police, This incident was the most widely pub- with whose corrupt and violent elements he licized case of police violence against protest- had been coming increasingly into conflict. ers, but it was not the most serious in Several other reformers in the Garotinho outcome. At two other protests, military government, including Police Ombudsperson police shot and killed unarmed landless dem- Julita Lemgruber, resigned in protest at Soares’ onstrators. On May 2, police prevented removal. buses carrying hundreds of landless workers On June 28, a group of Rio de Janeiro from entering Curitiba, capital of Paraná state. police officers, acting without an arrest war- Officers beat protesters, hurled tear gas can- rant or probable cause, seized Anderson Carlos isters and fired rubber bullets into the crowd. Crispiniano from his home in the Morro do Nearly 200 protesters were injured, and po- Adeus favela (shantytown) and took him to lice shot Antônio Tavares Pereira, age thirty- a local police station. According to press eight, in the chest with a live bullet, killing reports of the incident, and statements by him. On July 25, police fired into a group of Crispiniano’s family to the Brazilian NGO landless demonstrators, killing José Marlúcio Global Justice, the officers beat the young da Silva, age forty-seven, in Recife, capital of man severely, tore out his toenails on one Pernambuco state. foot, and threatened to plant narcotics on him Police violence continued to stand out as and charge him with drug trafficking unless he Brazil’s major human rights problem in other convinced his family to pay a ransom in 106 BRAZIL

excess of U.S. $2,000. After more than twelve officer, Cpt. Vitório Régis Mena Mendes, hours, the police, through an intermediary, who was sentenced to nineteen years in released Crispiniano in exchange for the sum prison for three homicides. demanded. Three weeks later, Crispiniano In August, a Rio de Janeiro jury acquit- died from his injuries. The Crispiniano case ted former police officers Hélio Vilário Guedes, attracted significant attention in the local Paulo Roberto Borges da Silva, William media, as well as the concern of the U.N. Moreno da Conceição and Hélio Gomes special rapporteur on torture, both before and Lopes, who had been charged with homicide during his August-September visit to Brazil. for their roles in the 1993 massacre of twenty- Nonetheless, at this writing, the internal po- one residents of the Vigário Geral favela in Rio lice investigation into the case was at a stand- de Janeiro. The following month, the same still. jury convicted former military policeman Accountability for police crimes re- José Fernandes Neto, and the court sentenced mained elusive. After the August conviction him to forty-five years in prison. In October, of two low-ranking police officers—Daniel the court jury convicted Alexandre Bicego, da Silva Furtado, sentenced to sixteen years another former military policeman, for the in prison for two homicides, and Airton homicides; the court imposed a sentence of Ramos Morais, sentenced to eighteen years seventy-two years. The verdicts meant that for three homicides—for the massacre of more than seven years after the incident only landless squatters in Corumbiara, Rondônia six police officers had been convicted of the state, prosecutors overtly politicized the killings, significantly fewer than the thirty to proceedings. The trial was based on events fifty police involved in them. Nineteen police that occurred on August 9, 1995 when, in the had been acquitted; six others awaited trial at early morning, heavily armed police entered this writing. the Santa Elina fazenda (large commercial Led by the MST, the landless rural poor farm) in Corumbiara to forcibly evict squat- embarked on a national campaign of occupy- ters, who resisted them. In the initial skir- ing farms and government buildings, part of a mish, two police and several of the squatters larger effort to force the authorities to accel- were killed. After the situation had been erate the process of land reform. The federal brought under control, the police tortured and government responded to these actions by humiliated the survivors, killing several more creating a division within the federal police to of them and arresting a landless worker whose investigate agrarian conflicts, and by expand- corpse surfaced days later in a nearby river. ing federal jurisdiction to cover occupations In the course of one of the trials, in which of municipal and state buildings, as well as the prosecution itself requested the acquittal federal institutions. These measures were of two officers (permitted under Brazilian criticized by rights groups, which contrasted law) who oversaw the operation, state attor- the government’s eagerness to expand federal ney Tarciso Leite de Mattos referred to the competence to manage social movements landless as “Nazis” and told the jury that with its continued failure to establish federal “Either Brazil does away with the landless jurisdiction over human rights violations. movement, or they will do away with Brazil.” The MST’s occupations frequently After three weeks of proceedings, the jury evoked a violent response. Although the convicted two landless leaders for their role in Pastoral Land Commission (Comissão Pas- the conflict, and the court sentenced Cícero toral da Terra, CPT) had not yet released data Pereira Leite Neto to six years and two for the year 2000 at this writing, their figures months in prison and Claudemir Gilberto showed that twenty-four people were killed Ramos to eight years and six months in in land disputes in 1999, down from 1998 prison. After the initial convictions of the figures but consistent with figures from re- two officers, the jury acquitted nine military cent years. Nonetheless, areas with high police officers and convicted one ranking numbers of land occupations showed an in- BRAZIL 107 crease in violence. Prominent among these frequently subject to extreme forms of vio- was the southern state of Paraná. From 1997 lence at the hands of special police forces and to late June 2000, fifteen laborers were killed guards. On June 2, after a disturbance at the in Paraná and twenty more survived attempted Americana City Jail in São Paulo state, the homicides. Seven laborers were tortured by special police made more than one hundred state police during 1999 and the first half of detainees strip and then run a gauntlet. Police 2000. While eighteen were injured in police in two parallel lines beat the semi-naked actions in 1999, this number soared to 232 in prisoners with whips, bats, iron bars, bottles, the first half of 2000. During the course of and other objects; afterwards, they poured forced evictions in 1999, the police in Paraná vinegar and saltwater over the prisoners’ arrested 173 people, mostly without prob- open wounds. A week later, at the Fiftieth able cause, detaining them for extended peri- Police District, twelve police officers entered ods in police lockups and jails; in the first six the lockup, forced detainees to strip to their months of 2000, this figure rose to 141. underwear, and engaged in an abuse session Detention conditions continued to vio- that included severe beatings with bats and late international norms. The latest census metal bars, and electric shocks. Police repeat- figures—from August 1999—showed that edly beat detainee Nilson Saldanha on the while Brazilian prisons had capacity for just head, injuring him so severely that he died ten over 107,000 inmates, 194,074 were con- days later. fined. According to research by the U.N. Conditions of detention for juveniles Latin American Institute for the Prevention remained well below international standards of Crime and Treatment of Offenders as well as the minimum guarantees set out in (ILANUD), the prison population surpassed Brazil’s progressive Children’s and Adoles- 200,000 in 2000. Official figures indicated cents’ Statute (Estatuto da Criança e do that from 1995 to 1999 the number of prison- Adolescente). The tenth anniversary of the ers increased by 30.5 percent. In São Paulo, law was celebrated in the midst of a wave of where the government raised capacity by flagrant abuses against youths held in the more than 12,000 over the past several years detention centers of the Foundation for the through new prison construction, the inmate Well Being of Minors (Fundação pelo Bem population reached 90,000 in September. Estar do Menor, FEBEM) in São Paulo. Over The state prison system, however, had ca- the course of 2000, rights groups documented pacity for only 44,872, forcing the authorities numerous cases of mass beatings; on several to maintain 34,232 prisoners in jails and occasions, public prosecutors entered FEBEM police lockups that were themselves designed detention centers and also filmed the fresh to accommodate at most 17,635 short-term wounds of dozens of detainees. detainees. Not surprisingly, the miserable conditions of such places—characterized by Defending Human Rights overcrowding, abysmal sanitary facilities, no Human rights organizations, neighbor- job training or educational infrastructure, and hood and community associations, religious constant physical violence—sparked numer- groups and unions documented and denounced ous inmate riots over the course of the year. violations of human rights without formal Contributing to the ongoing prison crisis was legal impediment throughout the year. None- the failure of judges to sentence eligible con- theless, several who demonstrated the cour- victs to non-prison terms, in accordance with age to accuse officials responsible for abuses the provisions of law no. 9.714/98, passed in faced intimidation, including meritless law November 1998. While São Paulo’s prisons suits, harassment, threats, and even attempted administration secretary had 1,942 slots for murder. On September 5, a jeep carrying non-prison sentences, only 650 were being several members of the CPT in the northeast- used in late 2000. ern state of Paraíba was struck by 12-gauge Prisoners in such facilities were also shotgun fire. Father João Maria Cauchí, the 108 BRAZIL

CPT’s state coordinator, and sister Maria The Role of the International Ferreira da Costa were both injured but sur- Community vived the attempt on their lives. On two consecutive days in September, United Nations representatives of Amnesty International and Visits by key human rights officials a gay pride organization, both in São Paulo, demonstrated the U.N.’s commitment to received packages containing bombs through promoting respect for basic rights in Brazil. the ordinary mail. Police deactivated the In May, U.N. High Commissioner for Human bombs without injury. At the same time, Rights Mary Robinson visited Brasília, São Renato Simões and Ítalo Cardoso, the presi- Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, reaching a working dents of the human rights commissions of the agreement with the government regarding São Paulo State Legislative Assembly and the technical assistance. City Council, respectively, received letters The second visit of a U.N. human rights containing threats directed at themselves and official—a mission by the special rapporteur others who defend human rights. At this on torture in August and September—pro- writing, neither the state nor federal police vided an important platform for groups in- had succeeded in identifying those respon- vestigating and denouncing this abuse to make sible for the bombs and threats. themselves heard. In three weeks of intensive Other human rights defenders faced on-site research that took him to Brasília, São threats and unwarranted criminal and civil Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Belo Horizonte, Recife, lawsuits. In February, Darcy Frigo, an attor- Belém, and Marabá, the special rapporteur, ney with the CPT in Paraná state, received Sir Nigel Rodley, documented scores of cases death threats by phone, as did another CPT of severe beatings and torture. At the end of employee, Dionísio Vandresen, in June. Frigo his visit, he expressed deep concern over the also faced charges of resisting a judicial order state of the country’s detention facilities, in connection with a mass eviction operation explaining that Brazilian prisoners were rou- on November 27, 1999, in Curitiba, Paraná, in tinely subject to subhuman conditions and which he was badly beaten by police. The severe physical abuse. His full report—to be incident took place before members of the released during the 2001 session of the U.N. local and national media and hundreds of Human Rights Commission—was awaited onlookers, including the local Catholic bishop, with great anticipation. Dom Ladislau Biernaski, a defense witness in the proceedings against Frigo. Authorities in Organization of American States Natal, Rio Grande do Norte, indicted Human In June, for the second time in five years, Rights Watch’s former Brazil director James the Inter-American Commission on Human Cavallaro for the crime of defamation, initiat- Rights (IACHR) visited Brazil. The previous ing criminal proceedings against him. In visit—in December 1995—led to a substan- previous court testimony and interviews with tial report on the country’s human rights a local newspaper, Cavallaro had provided situation. This visit, by several commission information regarding suspects in the 1996 members, underscored the importance of the murder of human rights lawyer Gilson work of the OAS’s primary human rights Nogueira. body on individual petitions. During its stay Human rights commissions of state, in São Paulo, the IACHR received dossiers municipal, and federal legislative bodies, al- from groups working on violations ranging though governmental by definition, contin- from prison conditions and the situation in ued to demonstrate significant independence juvenile detention centers, to abuses in rural throughout the year, reviewing allegations of Brazil, racism, and women’s rights. abuse, monitoring police, prisons and other In its annual report, released in June, the state agents, and denouncing abuses to pros- IACHR published its findings in three cases ecutors and the media. against Brazil, including one condemning the BRAZIL/CHILE 109 government’s failure to prosecute the mili- more than sixty domestic criminal complaints tary police responsible for the massacre of lodged since January 1998 by relatives of 111 inmates in the Carandiru prison complex victims of extrajudicial executions, “disap- in October 1992. Brazilian rights groups pearances,” and torture, and by political par- made greater use of the petitions process ties, trade unions, and professional groups. during the year. Unfortunately, the Brazilian While Pinochet was on his way home, government failed to heed the IACHR’s rec- human rights lawyers acting for the victims ommendations in cases already decided, failed made a formal request to the appeals court to respect deadlines, and did not submit judge investigating the complaints, Juan complete responses to some petitions. Guzmán Tapia, that Pinochet be stripped of his immunity as a senator (a process known United States as desafuero) so that he could face trial. Under Over the year, the U.S. gave relatively the 1980 constitution, Pinochet had awarded little direct assistance to Brazil. For fiscal himself the non-elected post of lifetime sena- year 2000, Congress approved U.S. $1.5 tor when he stepped down as president. million in counter-narcotics assistance; for On May 23, the Santiago Appeals Court fiscal year 2001, the administration requested voted by thirteen to nine to remove his $2 million for the same item. For fiscal year immunity, finding that there were sufficient 2000, Congress approved $225,000 for Bra- grounds for Pinochet to be prosecuted. The zil through the International Military Educa- Supreme Court confirmed the decision by an tion and Training (IMET) program. The even larger majority—fourteen to six—on administration requested $250,000 in IMET August 8. The verdict was greeted as a land- funding for fiscal year 2000. mark victory for justice both in Chile and The State Department’s chapter on internationally. Although Pinochet’s poor Brazil in its Country Reports on Human health made it unlikely that his trial would be Rights Practices for 1999 fairly portrayed the concluded, his shield of immunity, which a country’s human rights situation. few years earlier had seemed impenetrable, was in tatters. Moreover, the Chilean judi- ciary, which had been widely questioned for its failure to defend human rights during CHILE Pinochet’s rule, had shown independence in resisting pressure, thereby consolidating the Human Rights Developments rule of law. On March 11, Ricardo Lagos Escobar, Then, in October, Argentine judge Juan candidate of the center-left coalition that has Jose Galeano requested the extradition of governed since former dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet and other former military officials to Pinochet left power in 1990, began a six-year face criminal charges in the 1974 Buenos presidential term, replacing President Eduardo Aires car-bombing that killed former army Frei. His inauguration was overshadowed by commander-in-chief general Carlos Prats and Pinochet’s return to Chile on March 3, after his wife, Sofía Cuthbert. British Home Secretary Jack Straw ordered There were also important advances in the former dictator’s release on medical other human rights cases involving former grounds from house arrest in England. Pinochet military officers and members of the intelli- was detained in London on October 14, 1998, gence services under the military government. and had spent more than sixteen months in On July 19, the Seventh Chamber of the England under police guard in a secluded Santiago Appeals Court sentenced two former residence, after Spain and three other Euro- army majors and a cadet to life imprisonment pean countries requested his extradition to for the murder in 1982 of a carpenter, Juan face trial for human rights violations. At the Alegría Mandioca. Alegría’s body had been time of his return to Chile, Pinochet faced found with a suicide note in which he “con- 110 CHILE

fessed” to the murder of another victim of ate without forfeiting his protection from extrajudicial execution, trade union leader prosecution. Human Rights Watch, which Tucapel Jiménez. Approximately twenty shared the concern of Chilean human rights former police and army agents were on trial lawyers that the reform could give Pinochet for Jiménez’s murder, one of the most noto- additional legal immunity as well as establish rious cases of the 1980s. a worrying regional precedent, wrote to Presi- The dramatic developments in the courts, dent Lagos urging him to veto the measure. and in particular Pinochet’s loss of immunity, The reform became law in April, but Pinochet led to some tense moments between Presi- had not resigned his Senate position at this dent Lagos’s government and the armed forces writing. and their civilian supporters. President Lagos Although there were more than seventy made it clear at every opportunity that his criminal suits open against him, the desafuero government would not intervene in court proceedings concerned one case in particular, decisions, and that whatever political agree- the so-called Caravan of Death. One month ments were reached on the human rights after the military coup that brought Pinochet legacy, justice must proceed regardless. He to power in 1973, a helicopter-borne army headed off military pressure in the days unit under the command of one of the coup- leading up to the Supreme Court verdict and makers, Gen. Sergio Arellano Stark, had vis- replied to military protest afterward by firmly ited the towns of Cauquenes in the south, and asserting his constitutional authority. La Serena, Copiapó, Antofagasta, and Calama Pinochet returned to a country already in the north. They secretly executed seventy- accustomed to his absence. He had scarcely two political prisoners removed from local been mentioned by either candidate during the prisons. General Arellano had acted as election campaign. The business-as-usual Pinochet’s personal emissary, with written atmosphere changed, however, the moment orders “to streamline the administration of the former dictator set foot on the tarmac at justice for political prisoners.” Santiago’s airport. A contingent of top mili- In July 1999, the Supreme Court had tary brass, former ministers of his govern- unanimously confirmed the indictment of ment, and their families was awaiting his General Arellano and four other senior retired arrival. Pinochet’s unassisted walk to greet army officers for kidnapping nineteen of the his supporters and his raised stick salute victims, whose bodies had never been located. shocked many who were expecting to see the Arellano and the others were accused of man whom the United Kingdom had released aggravated kidnapping, a charge that allowed on humanitarian grounds carried from the the prosecution to surmount an amnesty law plane on a stretcher. The army ferried him by decreed by the military government in 1978. helicopter to the roof of the Military Hospi- Since the fact of death could not be estab- tal, pointedly flying over the presidential lished, the court held, it was impossible to palace, and escorting him from the aircraft know that the nineteen had been killed within behind a wall of heavily armed soldiers. In a the five-year period covered by the amnesty public statement, President Frei said he had law, and the amnesty was therefore found to kept his promise to bring Pinochet home be inapplicable. before the end of his mandate. But, he pointed At the oral hearings in the Santiago out, “All our efforts to get Senator Pinochet Appeals Court, held during the last week of home have had a sole objective: that it should April 2000, Pinochet’s counsel, Ricardo be Chilean courts not those of another coun- Rivadaneira, argued that Pinochet’s health try that apply the law.” was too poor for him to instruct his defense, Congress approved a constitutional re- and that the proceedings violated his right to form giving parliamentary immunity to former due process. However, on May 3 the court presidents that have served a full term, thus rejected ordering medical tests before ruling encouraging Pinochet to resign from the Sen- on Pinochet’s immunity. While the court CHILE 111 studied the dossier, the armed forces stretched branch of the armed forces, including the their constitutional role to the limit in pro- uniformed police, the Carabineros, agreed to claiming their support for the former ruler. On provide the fullest information possible on several occasions, however, President Lagos the whereabouts or fate of the “disappeared” firmly reminded them of their constitutional at the end of six months. They also acknowl- obligation to remain neutral. After the four edged “ the responsibility of agents of organi- commanders-in-chief met on May 15 for a zations of the State” for grave human rights widely publicized lunch in an elegant Santiago violations during the military regime, the first restaurant, Lagos stated pointedly that “it is such admission since Pinochet relinquished not necessary to show to anyone the unity of power to an elected government a decade ago. the armed forces, because the armed forces are On June 21, Congress, acting by an over- united behind the president of Chile.” whelming majority, passed legislation enact- The Supreme Court verdict confirming ing the agreement. the desafuero not only held that Pinochet At this writing, Congress was expected could be prosecuted on the kidnapping charge. to pass shortly a law to regulate the press, It argued that, even if the crimes were even- which it had been debating since 1993. The tually found to be homicides, he could still be new law would strengthen freedom of expres- stripped of his immunity, since it was up to sion guarantees in several important respects. the trial judge to establish whether or not the Courts would no longer have powers to ban amnesty or a statute of limitations was appli- reporting of sensitive criminal cases, and cable. The judges referred to the vertical would have to respect the confidentiality of chain-of-command in the armed forces as a journalists’ sources. Military tribunals would prima facie indication of Pinochet’s responsi- no longer exercise jurisdiction over journalists bility, quoting the general’s own aphorism, charged with sedition or espionage under “The most useless person in life is he who military laws. The bill would also remove the knows neither how to give orders nor to crime of contempt of authority from the State obey.” The court also referred to a declaration Security Law. Article 6(b) of that law pun- by one of the caravan of death officers, Col. ished those who insulted the president, cabi- (Rtd.) Sergio Arredondo, who indicated that net ministers, senior judges, commanders-in- he had known the true, lethal purpose of the chief of the armed forces, or members of mission before it began. congress. At least thirty people had been The Council for the Defense of the State charged and several convicted under this law (Consejo de Defensa del Estado, CDE), an since 1990, many for criticizing Pinochet or autonomous body that represents the inter- members of the Supreme Court he had ap- ests of the state in criminal proceedings, pointed. announced on March 7 that it had decided In December 1999, a new statute gov- unanimously to join the proceedings as a erning public administration and local govern- party against Pinochet. The previous June, ment entered force, establishing for the first the CDE had turned down a government time that official documents were public, and request to make itself a party. providing a legal mechanism for redress if During the year, the armed forces par- officials arbitrarily denied access to such ticipated in talks, known as the Roundtable public documents. Legislation to amend the Dialogue (Mesa de Diálogo), with human constitution in order to end film and video rights attorneys and representatives of censorship, and to restructure and revise the churches and civil society, which had been powers of the board of film censors, was also convened under the government of President under parliamentary debate, but had not been Eduardo Frei. Although the discussions were approved at this writing. While President almost abandoned more than once due to deep Lagos inherited these freedom of expression disagreements between the parties, the par- reforms from his predecessor, he had prom- ticipants signed an accord on June 13. Each ised during the elections to give them high 112 CHILE

priority. public’s right of access to information in the The conviction in February of journal- public interest. ist José Ale Aravena, court reporter for La Tercera, was a reminder of the authoritarian Defending Human Rights mentality of many of Chile’s senior judges, The Supreme Court’s decision strip- and the meager protection they have given to ping General Pinochet of his parliamentary freedom of expression through a decade of immunity was a triumph for Chile’s human democratic rule. On February 15, the Second rights movement, and especially for the vic- Chamber of the Supreme Court sentenced Ale tims of his rule who had campaigned for to a 541-day suspended prison term for justice for twenty-five years. Often their “insulting” former Chief Justice Servando work incurred personal risk. On December Jordán in an article summarizing the judge’s 15, 1999, Viviana Díaz Caro and Mireya controversial career. Ale, who had referred in García, president and secretary general, re- his article to comments that Jordán had been spectively, of the Association of Relatives of a member of a privileged clique in the judi- the “Disappeared” (Agrupación de Familiares ciary, had been acquitted repeatedly by lower de Detenidos Desaparecidos, AFDD) re- courts. The judge who drafted the sentence ceived a Christmas card with the inscription, insulted and threatened the journalist at a “Lets hope that Father Christmas will give us public gathering two weeks before the ver- the opportunity to meet face to face in the dict, calling him a “professional slanderer,” year 2000, so that we can blow your brains thereby removing any semblance of impar- out. Enjoy your last Christmas. . . you will not tiality from the verdict. President Lagos be around for the next. Greetings to your granted Ale a presidential pardon. The law family. . . . Merry Christmas to all. FNL— regulating “insult” that led to his conviction Villa Grimaldi Editions.” was due to be removed from the statute books Villa Grimaldi is the name of a former as part of the new press law. torture center in Santiago, now converted into Paula Afani Saud, also of La Tercera, a “park for peace.” A group calling itself the was facing charges of breaching the secrecy of Nationalist Front for Fatherland and Free- a criminal investigation under the Law on dom (Frente Nacionalista Patria y Libertad, Abuses of Publicity and a similar charge under FNL), believed to be made up of pro-Pinochet the Law against Illegal Drug-Trafficking fanatics and former military personnel, had brought by the CDE in April. In June 1998, menaced other individuals and groups during Afani had written a series of articles in La the year. After Pinochet’s return to Chile, Tercera and La Hora about a high-profile however, no further threats were reported. investigation being conducted by the CDE A group of young people known as the into a drug-trafficking and money-laundering Funa, whose activities are dedicated to un- conspiracy, which became known as “Opera- masking former torturers, was the object of a tion Ocean.” The articles included the testi- criminal complaint lodged in August by an mony of former members of the criminal opposition member of the Chamber of Depu- group who were interviewed in prison in the ties, who accused them of “criminal associa- United States by Chilean police officials. tion.” The group engaged in nonviolent vigils, Afani had refused to identify to the police her accompanied by drums, whistles, and chant- sources of information, and was consequently ing, outside the homes or offices of individu- held solely responsible by the CDE for the als known from legal records to have partici- leaked information, an offense that carried a pated in torture and killings. The evening five-year prison sentence under the drug- newspaper La Segunda referred to them as trafficking law. The case established a trou- “an ultra-left group that decided to exchange bling precedent at a time when the govern- their molotov cocktails for a more sophisti- ment had committed itself to protecting the cated weapon: character assassination.” confidentiality of journalists’ sources and the CHILE/COLOMBIA 113

The Role of the International and systematically abused in Chile, and it Community ended a year after the car-bomb murder in Washington, D.C. of former Allende foreign United States minister Orlando Letelier, and his colleague Following Pinochet’s arrest in London, Ronni Moffitt, for which Contreras had been the White House ordered U.S. national secu- indicted in the United States and convicted in rity agencies to release confidential docu- Chile. At this writing, the CIA and other ments that shed light on human rights viola- agencies were preparing for a release of 16,000 tions in Chile from 1968-1990. By mid-2000, declassified documents related to the U.S. some 7,500 documents had been released, but role in Chile. they did not include crucial Central Intelli- The U.S. continued to investigate gence Agency (CIA) documents believed to Pinochet’s role in the Letelier-Moffitt assas- reveal the details of U.S. covert action in Chile sination. On March 22, U.S. law enforcement prior to and following the election of the officials arrived in Santiago to question wit- Allende government that was overthrown by nesses, after the Chilean Supreme Court agreed the military coup of 1973, and information on to subpoena forty-two people at the request U.S. support for the military junta. Follow- of the U.S. government. Without the presence ing pressure from freedom of information of the U.S. investigators, a Chilean judge groups, the CIA carried out a search of its asked the witnesses, including Contreras, archives and gave written assurances to the questions provided by the U.S. authorities. National Security Council that its documents The Chilean Supreme Court has requested the would be declassified in time to be released in extradition of one of the DINA agents con- September 2000. However, CIA Director victed in the U.S. for the Letelier crime, George Tenet went back on this commitment Armando Fernández Larios, to answer charges in August, by deciding not to release hundreds in the caravan of death case. of documents on grounds that they could compromise intelligence sources and opera- tional methods. Of particular concern was the fact that the missing documents might contain COLOMBIA information crucial to Pinochet’s trial in Chile, such as the functioning of his secret police, the Human Rights Developments DINA, and the CIA’s liaison with it. During the year, Colombia saw little During a visit to Santiago in August, progress beyond rhetoric toward a negotiated however, U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine end to prolonged conflict. Both the Revolu- Albright pledged to push for the “fullest tionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas possible declassification.” A breakthrough in Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, understanding the role of the CIA in Chile FARC) and the Camilist Union-National Lib- came the following month, in response to a eration Army (Unión Camilista-Ejército de 1999 amendment to the fiscal 2000 Intelli- Liberación Nacional, UC-ELN) sent delega- gence Authorization Act authored by mem- tions to Europe in government-approved ber of the House of Representatives Maurice efforts to further talks. Yet, in Colombia, Hinchey. It required the agency to submit a individuals who spoke out in favor of peace report to Congress on its relations with and protection for civilians were eliminated Pinochet’s military government, among other ruthlessly by all sides. Continuing a disturb- aspects of CIA involvement in Chile. In the ing trend from 1999, the average number of report, the CIA revealed that it had main- victims of political violence and deaths in tained a liaison with Manuel Contreras, the combat rose in 2000 from twelve to fourteen DINA’s infamous director, from 1974 to per day according to the Colombian Commis- 1977. The relationship lasted throughout the sion of Jurists (Comisión Colombiana de period in which human rights were grossly Juristas, CCJ). All parties to the conflict 114 COLOMBIA

routinely committed violations of interna- While these atrocities were being carried tional humanitarian law. out, the Colombian navy’s First Brigade Colombia’s armed forces continued to maintained roadblocks around El Salado that be implicated in serious human rights viola- prevented the International Committee of the tions as well as support for the paramilitary Red Cross (ICRC) and others from entering. groups considered responsible for at least 78 Thirty minutes after paramilitaries had with- percent of the human rights violations re- drawn safely with looted goods and animals, corded in the six months from October 1999. navy troops entered the village. Troops attacked indiscriminately and killed Officers implicated in serious abuses civilians, among them six elementary school remained on active duty, and only in excep- children on a field trip near Pueblo Rico, tional cases were they suspended. Military Antioquia, on August 15. According to wit- judges generally continued to ignore a 1997 nesses, soldiers fired for forty minutes, ignor- Constitutional Court decision requiring that ing the screams of the adult chaperones. cases involving soldiers accused of gross Colombian army commander Gen. Jorge Mora human rights violations be prosecuted in seemed to justify the attack by telling journal- civilian courts. According to the Bogotá- ists, “These are the risks of the war we are based office of the U.N. High Commissioner engaged in.” Another case took place on June for Human Rights, the Superior Judicial Coun- 18, when troops belonging to the Rebeiz cil (Consejo Superior de la Judicatura, CSJ), Pizarro Battalion fired on a car carrying six charged with resolving jurisdictional disputes, adults and two children returning from a also continued to flout the Constitutional party, wounding all. Court and continued to transfer “cases of There continued to be abundant, de- serious human rights and international hu- tailed, and continuing evidence of direct col- manitarian law violations to military courts.” laboration between the military and paramili- Defense Minister Luis Fernando tary groups. Government investigators, for Ramírez declared in July that military tribu- example, contended that active duty and nals had already transferred 533 police and reserve officers attached to the army’s Third military cases to civilian jurisdiction, demon- Brigade in Cali had set up and actively sup- strating compliance with the 1997 decision. ported the Calima Front. In the twelve months However, after a review of 103 cases that the since it began to operate in July 1999, the army disclosed to Human Rights Watch, only Calima Front was considered responsible for thirty-nine were found to be cases that could at least 200 killings and the displacement of be considered human rights violations. Most over 10,000 people. of these involved low-ranking soldiers; none On February 18, some 300 armed men were senior officers alleged to have ordered or belonging to the paramilitary Peasant Self- orchestrated human rights violations. Many Defense Force of Córdoba and Urabá of the 103 were prosecuted for offenses such (Autodefensas Campesinas de Córdoba y as drug trafficking, theft, lying, and brawling. Urabá, ACCU) set up a kangaroo court in the Dozens of cases involving high ranking mili- village of El Salado, Bolívar. For the next two tary officials that Human Rights Watch has days, they tortured, garroted, stabbed, de- followed since the 1980s should have been capitated, and shot residents. Witnesses told transferred to civilian jurisdiction, but re- investigators that they tied one six-year-old mained shielded before military tribunals. girl to a pole and suffocated her with a plastic The government claimed major improve- bag. One woman was reportedly gang-raped. ments in curtailing abuses by paramilitaries, Authorities later confirmed thirty-six dead. but the facts did not bear this out. Paramili- Thirty other villagers were missing. “To tary activity increased and paramilitary groups them, it was like a big party,” a survivor told were considered responsible for ninety-three the New York Times. “They drank and danced massacres in the first five months of 2000. and cheered as they butchered us like hogs.” Most arrest warrants issued by the attorney COLOMBIA 115 general against paramilitaries were not en- U.N. officials, and Wall Street billionaires in forced due to inaction by the military, and the five southern municipalities ceded to paramilitary leaders remained at large and them to promote peace talks, but continued collected warrants like badges of honor. At to murder civilians, execute captured govern- this writing, there were twenty-two out- ment soldiers and rival guerrilla combatants standing arrest warrants against Carlos after surrender, threaten and kill civilians who Castaño, the main paramilitary leader, for refused to accede to their demands, take massacres, killings, and the kidnapping of hostages, and force thousands of Colombians human rights defenders and a Colombian to flee and become displaced. The group senator, among other crimes. maintained an estimated seventy battle fronts The government repeatedly claimed that throughout Colombia thought to include at it had set up special units to pursue least 17,000 trained, uniformed, and armed paramilitaries, but these groups appeared members. little more than paper tigers. One, the “Coor- In dozens of attacks, the FARC em- dination Center for the Fight against Self- ployed methods that caused avoidable civil- Defense Groups,” announced with fanfare on ian casualties in violation of international February 25, had not even met more than six humanitarian law, including the use of gas months later. canisters packed with gunpowder and shrap- Carlos Castaño often announced pub- nel and launched as bombs. In an attack on licly and well in advance what his forces Vigía del Fuerte, Antioquia, in March, for planned to do, yet military commanders com- example, FARC-launched canisters left the monly failed to deploy troops to protect town a virtual ruin and caused numerous civilians, even when local authorities informed civilian casualties, including the town mayor. them about threats. Since January, Human Witnesses told journalists that some of the Rights Watch learned through publicly avail- twenty-one police agents who died were able sources of over twenty threatened at- executed by the FARC, among them several tacks on villages that were later carried out. who had sought medical attention in the local Only in exceptional cases were measures hospital. taken to protect civilians and pursue After a visit to the FARC area in June, paramilitaries known to be in the area. Au- Human Rights Watch investigated evidence thorities also received reliable and detailed linking the group to at least twenty-six mur- information about the location of permanent ders there. In addition, the office of the Public paramilitary bases, often within walking dis- Advocate (Defensoría) reported sixteen cases tance of military sites, yet failed to act against of missing persons, either forcibly recruited, them, contributing to an atmosphere of terror. killed by the FARC, or forced to flee. Thou- Castaño, who claimed to command sands more were believed to have fled the area 11,200 armed and trained fighters, maintained as forcibly displaced. The FARC publicly many permanent bases and roadblocks, moved acknowledged nineteen executions. himself and his troops with apparent ease, In an interview with Human Rights and used computers, the Internet, radios, Watch in Los Pozos, Caquetá, FARC com- vehicles, and helicopters to prepare death mander Simón Trinidad dismissed interna- lists and coordinate massacres. In an unprec- tional humanitarian law as “a bourgeois con- edented hour-length television interview in cept.” March, Castaño described himself as the The FARC rarely punished its members “fighting arm of the middle class.” for committing abuses. To the contrary, the Armed opposition guerrillas also com- few cases they acknowledged showed that mitted abuses, and were considered respon- punishment amounted to little more than a sible for 20 percent of the killings of civilians slap on the hand and rarely extended to the recorded in the six months from October commanders who ordered or covered up kill- 1999. The FARC received foreign dignitaries, ings. For example, the two guerrillas who 116 COLOMBIA

killed Americans Terence Freitas, Lahe’ena’e concessions, a violation of international hu- Gay, and Ingrid Washinawatok on March 5, manitarian law. Colombian police estimated 1999, were eventually sentenced to construct that half of the over 3,000 kidnappings carried fifty meters of trench and clear land. out each year were the work of guerrillas; the For their part, far from respecting dis- rest were attributed to common criminals. In sent, UC-ELN guerrillas threatened groups April, FARC commander Jorge Briceño, that supported humanitarian accords meant known as “Mono Jojoy,” announced that all to protect civilians, among them Children, Colombians with assests of over U.S. $1 Planters of Peace (Niños, Sembrando Semillas million should pay the FARC what he cyni- de Paz) and Conciudadanía, both based in cally termed a “peace tax” or risk being taken Antioquia. The group continued attacks on hostage. Some hostages, including a three- oil pipelines and power pylons, and for year-old and a nine-year-old, were impris- prolonged periods prevented transit on vital oned in the area reserved for government roads, converting thousands of detained trav- talks. As of this writing, three passengers elers into human shields against army coun- seized on an Avianca airlines flight on April terattack. 12, 1999, remained in UC-ELN custody, used In northeastern Colombia, where the as bargaining chips to compel the government UC-ELN attempted to win government sup- to make concessions. port for a protected territory where they Forced displacement of civilians re- could operate openly and hold talks on social mained acute. In a report released in 2000, change and possible peace, violence was par- Francis Deng, the U.N. secretary-general’s ticularly acute. In the municipalities of San representative on internally displaced per- Pablo, Cantagallo, and Yondó, thousands of sons, described Colombia’s situation as civilians protested the proposed government “among the gravest in the world. . . . withdrawal, fearful of guerrilla abuses, [D]isplacement in Colombia is not merely paramilitary retaliation, and more war. At the incidental to the armed conflict but is also a same time, the area was increasingly con- deliberate strategy of war.” trolled by advancing paramilitaries appar- According to the U.S. Committee for ently tolerated by the Colombian military. A Refugees, there were at least 1.8 million report by nongovernmental organizations forcibly displaced people in Colombia and found that over 3,700 people in the region had between 80,000 and 105,000 Colombian refu- been forcibly displaced during the first three gees in Venezuela, Ecuador, and Panama, months of 2000 and dozens had been mur- although they were not recognized as such by dered. the governments of these countries. In only The UC-ELN tried to generate talks the first six months of 2000, an estimated similar to those between the government and 134,000 Colombians were newly displaced, the FARC, and even negotiated the tempo- most by paramilitaries, followed by guerrillas rary release of jailed leaders to take part in and the armed forces. July discussions in Geneva, Switzerland, and Although law 387, passed in 1997, out- an October meeting in San José, Costa Rica. lined a broad and comprehensive plan to However, talks appeared to bring little hope, assist the forcibly displaced, it had yet to be and the group’s estimated 1,500 fighters were implemented and key elements, like a national increasingly pressed in the field by offensives network of information, remained unad- launched by Colombian the armed forces, dressed. Indeed, Colombia’s Constitutional paramilitaries, and rival FARC units. Court ruled in August that the state had failed In areas where control was contested to enforce the law and was in violation of its and around its camps, the UC-ELN continued duties. However, it appeared unlikely that to use landmines. even this unusual decision would stimulate Both the FARC and UC-ELN continued the political will necessary to address the to kidnap civilians for ransom or political problem. COLOMBIA 117

In January, Panama granted temporary La Modelo prison, and killed eleven inmates. protection to 393 Colombians who had fled Four months later, paramilitaries attacked the combat in Juradó, Chocó. Most later returned La Modelo cellblock housing common crimi- to Colombia. Church workers in Sucumbíos, nals. After a day of fighting, authorities counted Ecuador, estimated that in the first seven thirty-two dead, including one dismembered months of 2000, at least 5,000 Colombians prisoner, and dozens wounded. Overcrowd- had crossed into Ecuador. Nevertheless, only ing remained a serious problem. 120 had gained formal status as refugees and received assistance from the United Nations Defending Human Rights High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR). Human rights defenders, community In 2000, the Canadian government provided leaders, government investigators, and jour- resettlement to over 500 refugees from Co- nalists continued to face threats, attacks, and lombia. death throughout the year. Four human rights Journalists continued to be attacked and defenders were killed and three “disappeared” threatened for their work. In one particularly during the first ten months of 2000. brutal incident, El Espectador reporter Jineth Threats were particularly acute in the Bedoya was abducted on May 25 by oil-refining city of Barrancabermeja, long the paramilitaries while inside La Modelo, home of a vibrant and broad-based human Bogotá’s maximum security prison. Bedoya rights movement. On July 11, Elizabeth was taken from the lobby in full view of Cañas—whose son and brother were seized guards, drugged, bound, gagged, and driven to by paramilitaries in 1998 and have yet to be a city three hours away. There she was found—was shot and killed in beaten, tortured, and raped by four men who Barrancabermeja. Cañas was a member of the accused her of being a guerrilla sympathizer. Association of Family Members of the De- Before abandoning her at a local garbage tained and Disappeared (Asociación de dump, the men told her they had plans to kill Familiares de Detenidos Desaparecidos-Co- more journalists. lombia, ASFADDES). By September, doz- In February, FARC commander Manuel ens of human rights defenders and trade Marulanda Vélez told journalists that they unionists had received death threats. Almost had been unfair to his group and would be all appeared to be the work of paramilitary made to pay. At the time, the FARC was groups who vowed to “sip coffee” in guer- holding seventy-three-year-old media busi- rilla-controlled neighborhoods by year’s end. nessman Guillermo “La Chiva” Cortés hos- Angel Quintero and Claudia Patricia tage. Cortés was later rescued. Other journal- Monsalve, also ASFADDES members, were ists who wrote frequently about the war, “disappeared” in Medellín, Antioquia, on including Francisco Santos of El Tiempo and October 6. Indigenous activist Jairo Bedoya Ignacio Gómez of El Espectador, left the Hoyos, a member of the Antioquia Indig- country because of threats. enous Organization (Organización Indígena The government made limited progress de Antioquia, OIA) who worked on human in establishing legal structures intended to rights issues, was also “disappeared” on protect human rights. On January 13, Presi- March 2. dent Andrés Pastrana signed the Ottawa The Regional Corporation for the De- Convention on landmines and promised to rid fense of Human Rights (Corporación Re- the country of an estimated 50,000 devices. gional para la Defensa de los Derechos After languishing for twelve years, a bill Humanos, CREDHOS) received over a dozen criminalizing “disappearance,” torture, and telephone death threats in August and Sep- forced displacement was made law. tember. Its members were featured on a death Political conflict extended to Colombia’s list circulated in Barrancabermeja in Septem- 168 prisons. In December 1999, a paramili- ber; a trade unionist on a separate list was tary group broke through a wall at Bogotá’s murdered in July, a lawyer remained in critical 118 COLOMBIA

condition after an attack, and another lawyer killings of Jesús Valle Jaramillo and Eduardo had fled Colombia. Umaña Mendoza; and the 1999 killing of Julio Demetrio Playonero, a displaced person González and Everardo de Jesús Puerta— and human rights leader, was murdered, ap- remained either under investigation or with parently by paramilitaries, on March 31. only the material authors of the crimes iden- After shooting him in the head in front of his tified or under arrest. In all cases, the people wife at his farm outside Yondó, Antioquia, who planned and paid for the killings re- the gunmen breakfasted, then stole the farm’s mained at large. cattle. In May, Jesús Ramiro Zapata, the only Members of the Colombian military remaining member of the Segovia Human continued to accuse government investiga- Rights Committee, was killed near Segovia. tors, agencies, and nongovernmental organi- Government prosecutor Margarita María zations of having been infiltrated by opposi- Pulgarín Trujillo, part of a team investigating tion guerrillas, and questioned the legitimacy cases linking paramilitaries to the army and of investigations. The Colombian Armed regional drug traffickers, was murdered in Forces General Command maintained on its Medellín on April 3, apparently because of official web site a text that directly accused her work. Several of her colleagues had al- Human Rights Watch and the U.S. embassy’s ready fled Colombia because of death threats human rights officer of forming part of a from a gang of hired killers known as “La “strange and shameful alliance” with a crimi- Terraza,” close allies of Carlos Castaño. Al- nal drug trafficking cartel. After the February though several members of “La Terraza” were 2000 release of Human Rights Watch’s re- either dead or under arrest by October 2000, port, “The Ties That Bind: Colombia and the group remained active and able to instill Military-Paramilitary Links,” Gen. Fernando terror in those it threatened. Tapias, Colombia’s commander-in-chief, and Civilian groups, including human rights army General Mora, echoed this rhetoric by organizations, also faced attack from the suggesting that Human Rights Watch was in FARC, which in October 2000 characterized the pay of drug traffickers. them as “paid killers [for the Colombian military].” In a statement on why they failed The Role of the International to honor an invitation to an October 2000 Community peace meeting in San José, Costa Rica, spon- sored by a broad coalition of human rights, United Nations peace, and community groups, the FARC The Bogotá office of the U.N. High dismissed the effort as organized by “the Commissioner for Human Rights undertook enemies of Colombia and its people.” In such invaluable work, visiting regions shaken by ways, the guerrillas contributed to a general war and pressing Colombian government atmosphere of fear and intolerance that en- authorities on the dozens of recommenda- dangered human rights defenders. tions made by U.N. rapporteurs and others Government efforts to protect threat- that remained unaddressed. Presenting the ened defenders continued to be slow, inad- office’s blistering annual report, Mary equate, and often irrelevant. Even as govern- Robinson noted that the situation “has dete- ment offices provided bullet-proof glass to riorated significantly. This is a sad and sober- threatened offices and distributed bullet-proof ing comment to have to make, as I reflect back vests, defenders continued to be murdered by on my own visit to Bogotá in October 1998.” experienced killers who often benefitted from The report paid special attention to impunity. Cases involving the murder of continuing evidence of ties between the mili- human rights defenders—among them the tary and paramilitary groups. The office 1996 killing of Josué Giraldo Cardona; the noted that “disciplinary and judicial investi- 1997 killings of Mario Calderón, Elsa gations reveal that direct links between some Alvarado, and Carlos Alvarado; the 1998 members of the Armed Forces and paramili- COLOMBIA 119 tary groups persist” and described the whelmingly by the U.S. Congress, the Co- government’s efforts to break these links as lombia package was the largest single military virtually nonexistent. assistance program ever approved for a Latin However, a weaker message was sent in American country. The plan included $519.2 April, when the Commission on Human million for the Colombian military, most Rights issued an unusually mild chairperson’s designated for the purchase of UH-60 Black statement, drafted by the E.U. and adopted Hawk and UH-1H Huey helicopters, logisti- by consensus. The statement welcomed “the cal support, intelligence, and training; $116 continued readiness of the Colombian Gov- million for the Colombian National Police; ernment to cooperate with the permanent $68.5 million for alternative development, office of the High Commissioner,” ignoring crop substitution, and assistance for peas- the Bogotá office’s reports to the contrary. ants who may be forced to abandon their Even as the Colombian government agreed to farms; $58 million for law enforcement and allow the office to remain until April 2002, judicial reform; $51 million for human rights U.N. staff noted a marked drop in coopera- programs; and $37.5 million for programs tion by Colombian officials. benefitting the forcibly displaced. These concerns were echoed in July, Among those actively supporting the when Secretary-General Kofi Annan ex- aid were Occidental Petroleum, which has pressed “deep concern” about human rights major drilling sites in Colombian war zones; in Colombia, “particularly the high incidence Lockheed Martin, manufacturer of the P-3 of kidnapings and massacres of civilians.” “Orion” radar surveillance airplane used to The UNHCR continued to expand its track drug smuggling and included in the presence in Colombia, and opened three field package; Texas-based Textron, which will offices in 1999 and 2000, in Barrancabermeja, make the UH-1H Huey helicopters included Apartadó, and Puerto Asís. in the plan; and United Technologies, whose Connecticut-based subsidiary, Sikorsky, will United States make the UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters. The character of Colombia’s conflict Although the package featured strict changed with the entry of the United States human rights conditions, President Clinton as a major investor. The $1.3 billion infusion waived all but one for reasons of U.S. national of mostly military aid was meant to be only security on August 22, allowing aid to go one part of Plan Colombia, a multinational forward even as American officials acknowl- proposal to assist the country; yet, as of this edged that the forces they were funding main- writing, there were few other contributions to tained ties to paramilitary groups, had failed what was meant to be support totaling $7.5 to suspend or prosecute implicated officers, billion. engaged in abuses, and refused to enforce In response, the FARC announced re- civilian jurisdiction over human rights crimes. wards for the capture of combat pilots, in- “You don’ t hold up the major objective to creased attacks on military helicopters and achieve the minor,” said a spokesperson for airplanes, and reportedly began arming villag- the office of White House adviser and U.S. ers in southern Colombia to resist the fumi- drug czar retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey. gation of drug-producing crops, meant to be Human Rights Watch protested the a centerpiece of the U.S. effort. Guerrillas waiver and single certification issued by the used mainly rifles and rocket-propelled gre- State Department, issued after President nades, and claimed to have downed at least Pastrana signed a directive based on the en- one National Police helicopter in April. In trance into law of a new military penal code. September, a FARC spokesperson declared Along with Amnesty International and the U.S. military personnel “legitimate targets” Washington Office on Latin America, Human of guerrilla operations. Rights Watch argued that the directive com- Debated heatedly yet passed over- plied only partially with U.S. law, so should 120 COLOMBIA

have resulted in a denial of certification. placement was one likely outcome of the The persistence of human rights abuses strategy, and proposed setting up govern- within the Colombian military was under- ment-controlled “temporary” camps to dis- scored in September, when the U.S. sus- tribute assistance. However, groups working pended aid and training to the army’s Twelfth with the internally displaced protested, argu- and Twenty-Fourth brigades. Both had pre- ing that this strategy risked “fomenting the viously passed the vetting process carried out conflict, targeting innocent civilians, and sub- by U.S. officials and mandated by the Leahy stantially increasing internal displacement in Amendment, which prohibits the United States Colombia.” from funding foreign security force units The potential for new human rights accused with credible evidence of having abuses became clear as the U.S. strategy was committed human rights violations. implemented. Paramilitaries virtually took Colombia’s neighbors also expressed over Putumayo’s urban centers, such as Puerto serious concern that the U.S. plan could push Asís, where armed fighters walked with guns coca growing and drug trafficking across in their belts, yet with no interference from Colombia’s borders, generate new refugee either the army or the police. In September flows, and cause fighting to spread. During a and October, an armed strike called by the visit to Colombia, Ecuadoran President FARC had left residents without food, gas, Gustavo Noboa reportedly asked President medicine, or telephone service, and combat Pastrana to notify his government of all between guerrillas and paramilitaries raged military operations in southern Colombia so while government troops remained largely in that the Ecuadoran army could prepare for their barracks. repercussions. Brazilian leaders openly criti- cized the aid, and began to reinforce their Europe border with Colombia. European leaders proved deeply skep- In December 1999, the first U.S.-trained tical of the U.S. military build-up in Colombia Colombian army battalion completed its train- even as the E.U. and member states sup- ing and was deployed. A second battalion ported negotiations with guerrillas and greater began to train the following August. U.S. law respect for human rights. Although President mandated that fewer than 500 U.S. troops and Pastrana asked the EU to contribute $1.5 300 contractors be deployed in Colombia at billion to Plan Colombia, at a July donors’ any one time barring an emergency. But summit of twenty-six nations in Madrid, he reflecting a global trend to “out-source” war, came away with almost nothing. Of the E.U. some analysts projected that as many as member states, only Spain pledged $100 1,000 U.S.-related personnel could be in million. France’s Le Monde termed the meet- Colombia on any given day, including retired ing a “crushing failure for Colombian diplo- U.S. special forces members employed by for macy.” civilian companies such as DynCorp Inc. and Prior to the meeting, 150 delegates rep- Military Professional Resources Inc. (MPRI), resenting Colombian and international non- which were hired by the U.S. State and governmental organizations, academics, en- Defense Departments. vironmentalists, and human rights groups The department of Putumayo, along met in Madrid and called on the international Colombia’s southern border with Ecuador community to fund peace initiatives, not the and home to 50 percent of Colombia’s illegal Colombian military. The E.U. found that coca crop, was to the be the first target in the argument persuasive, and in October an- U.S. strategy, which had as its centerpiece a nounced that its $144 million contribution to “Push into Southern Colombia” to eradicate Plan Colombia would go to nongovernmental, coca bushes, destroy cocaine laboratories, economic, and humanitarian aid programs and disrupt supply and shipment routes. focused on peace, human rights, and eco- U.S. officials acknowledged that forced dis- nomic development. COLOMBIA/CUBA 121

The E.U. publicly denounced abuses by aspects of the thirty-eight-year-old U.S. eco- all sides and called on the Colombian govern- nomic embargo against Cuba gained momen- ment to address “persistent grave violations.” tum. After her September visit to Colombia, Brit- Cuba’s repressive human rights prac- ish cabinet minister Mo Mowlam, an archi- tices were undergirded by the country’s legal tect of the Northern Ireland peace accords, and institutional structure. The rights to said that the United Kingdom and most Eu- freedom of expression, association, assem- ropean countries would withhold individual bly, movement, and of the press remained donations to Plan Colombia unless the Co- restricted under Cuban law. By criminalizing lombian security forces reformed. enemy propaganda, the spreading of “unau- Five countries—France, Spain, Swit- thorized news,” and the insulting of patriotic zerland, Norway, and Cuba—pledged to help symbols, the government effectively denied the Colombian government negotiate with the freedom of speech under the guise of protect- UC-ELN. Yet, even as some of these govern- ing state security. The authorities also im- ments met with the UC-ELN leadership to prisoned or ordered the surveillance of indi- discuss possible talks, the European Union viduals who had committed no illegal act, exerted strong pressure to end kidnappings relying upon laws penalizing “dangerous- and release all hostages. ness” (estado peligroso) and allowing for “official warning” (advertencia oficial). The Relevant Human Rights Watch government-controlled courts undermined the Reports: right to a fair trial by restricting the right to a The Ties That Bind:Colombia and Military- defense, and frequently failed to observe the Paramilitary Links, 2/00 few due process rights available to defendants under the law. Even Cubans’ right to leave their coun- try was severely restricted, as the govern- CUBA ment prosecuted persons for “illegal exit” if they attempted to leave the island without Human Rights Developments first obtaining official permission to do so. Despite a few positive developments Such permission was sometimes denied arbi- over the course of the year, the Cuban trarily, or made contingent on the purchase of government’s human rights practices were an expensive exit permit. generally arbitrary and repressive. Hundreds Pro-democracy activists planned a se- of peaceful opponents of the government ries of protests to coincide with the ninth remained behind bars, and many more were annual Ibero-American Summit, held in Ha- subject to short-term detentions, house ar- vana in November 1999. Yet, the authorities rest, surveillance, arbitrary searches, evic- cracked down hard on public dissent, arrest- tions, travel restrictions, politically-moti- ing over 200 dissidents in the weeks before vated dismissals from employment, threats, and after the summit. Many of them were and other forms of harassment. placed under house arrest, while others were Although Cuba’s human rights condi- temporarily detained in police stations. This tions improved little in 2000, U.S. policy wave of repression continued through Febru- toward Cuba did begin to change. The high- ary 2000. The Cuban Commission of Human profile case of Elián González, the six-year- Rights and National Reconciliation (Comisión old Cuban shipwreck survivor who stayed Cubana de Derechos Humanos y seven months in the United States against the Reconciliación Nacional), a respected Ha- wishes of his father, brought increased public vana-based nongovernmental group, an- attention to the United States’ policy of nounced in early March that 352 dissidents isolating Cuba. After the boy returned home had been arrested over the preceding four in June, congressional efforts to relax some months, while another 240 had their freedom 122 CUBA

of movement restricted, normally by being de Todos), an analytical paper on the Cuban ordered to remain at their homes. economy, human rights, and democracy. While the vast majority of those arrested Whether detained for political or com- were eventually released without any crimi- mon crimes, inmates were subjected to abu- nal charges being brought against them, a few sive prison conditions. Prisoners frequently were prosecuted. The most serious case was suffered malnourishment and languished in that of thirty-eight-year-old Dr. Oscar Elías overcrowded cells without appropriate medi- Biscet González, who received a three-year cal attention. Some endured physical and prison sentence on February 25 for protests sexual abuse, typically by other inmates with that included turning the Cuban flag upside- the acquiescence of guards, or long periods in down and carrying anti-abortion placards. isolation cells. Prison authorities insisted Biscet, the president of the Lawton Human that all detainees participate in politically Rights Foundation, was convicted of dishon- oriented “re-education” sessions or face pun- oring patriotic symbols, public disorder, and ishment. Political prisoners who denounced instigating delinquency. It was reported in the poor conditions of imprisonment were August that he had experienced severe weight punished with solitary confinement, restricted loss in prison, suffered from health problems, visits, or denial of medical treatment. including an untreated gum infection, and had At least twenty-four prisoners faced the been held in solitary confinement for months death penalty, according to a list circulated in at a time. August by the Cuban Commission of Human Also on February 25, immediately after Rights and National Reconciliation, which Biscet’s trial, Eduardo Díaz Fleitas, vice- also provided the names of twenty-one oth- president of the Fifth of August Movement ers who had been executed in 1999. Although (Movimiento 5 de Agosto), and Fermín Scull the organization noted that all of the execu- Zulueta, were convicted of public disorder by tions involved defendants convicted of homi- the same court. Díaz Fleitas was sentenced cide, Cuban law permitted the use of the death to a year of incarceration, while Scull Zulueta penalty for numerous other crimes, including received a year of house arrest. Like Biscet, international drug trafficking and the corrup- they were anti-abortion protesters, and had tion of minors. Cuba’s secrecy regarding the carried signs at a November 10 demonstra- application of the death penalty—the gov- tion. ernment did not provide information on ex- The most encouraging development of ecution—made it difficult to ascertain the the year came in May when three leaders of actual number of death sentences imposed the Internal Dissidents Working Group and carried out. The Cuban legal system’s (Grupo de Trabajo de la Disidencia Interna, serious procedural failings and lack of judicial GTDI) were freed prior to the expiration of independence, which violated the rights of all their sentences. Economists Martha Beatriz criminal defendants, were especially prob- Roque Cabello, engineering professor Félix lematic with regard to capital offenses. Mis- Antonio Bonne Carcasses, and attorney René carriages of justice were also unlikely to be Gómez Manzano were granted provisional remedied upon review by a higher court, since liberty within two weeks of each other, but Cuban law afforded convicts sentenced to Vladimiro Roca Antúnez, the fourth leader of death minimal opportunities to appeal their the group, remained incarcerated at this writ- sentences. ing. The four had been sentenced in March The Cuban government maintained a 1999 to several years of imprisonment for firm stance against independent journalism, “acts against the security of the state,” after regularly detaining reporters and sometimes having spent nearly nineteen months in pre- prosecuting them. On November 10, 1999 trial detention. They were first detained in Angel Pablo Polanco, the director of Noticuba, July 1997, a month after the GTDI released was arrested and held for a week, allegedly to “The Homeland Belongs to All” (La Patria es prevent him from reporting on protests sur- CUBA 123 rounding the Ibero-American Summit. On portedly detained by police on June 18 after January 20, 2000 José Orlando González meeting with independent journalists as part Bridón, president of the Cuban Confedera- of her research for an article on the Cuban tion of Democratic Workers (Confederación independent press. In August, three Swedish de Trabajadores Democráticos de Cuba) and journalists were arrested in Havana by state writer for the Cuba Free Press, was detained security agents. They had traveled to Cuba for several hours. Police reportedly ques- on tourist visas but had held a seminar on tioned him about his writings and threatened press freedom for independent journalists. to prosecute him. Other journalists detained The three were deported after spending two and questioned for brief periods over the days in detention. Earlier that same month, course of the year included Ricardo González French journalist Martine Jacot was detained Alfonso, Jadir Hernández, Jesús Hernández, and interrogated at the Havana airport by six and Luis Alberto Rivera Leiva. Others were members of the Cuban security forces. She harassed or prevented from working by po- had spent a week in Cuba interviewing inde- lice. pendent journalists and family members of Victor Rolando Arroyo Carmona, a long- incarcerated journalists. Jacot’s equipment, time government opponent who wrote for the including a video camera, was seized, as were Union of Independent Cuban Journalists and some documents. Writers (Unión de Periodistas y Escritores While the government permitted greater Cubanos Independientes), was sentenced on opportunities for religious expression than in January 25 to six months of imprisonment for past years and allowed several religious-run “hoarding” toys. Police had confiscated toys humanitarian groups to operate, it continued that he had planned to give away to poor to maintain tight control over religious insti- children in his area; they had been paid for by tutions, affiliated groups, and individual be- Cuban exiles in Miami. Just after Arroyo’s lievers. trial, the Cuban authorities freed another The government recognized only one independent journalist, Leonardo de Varona labor union, the Worker’s Central of Cuba González, who had served a sixteen-month (Central de Trabajadores de Cuba, CTC), and sentence for “insulting” President Fidel Castro. restricted labor rights by banning indepen- At least three other independent journalists dent labor groups and harassing individuals remained incarcerated: Bernardo Arévalo attempting to form them. It tightly controlled Padrón and Manuel Antonio González workers employed in businesses backed by Castellanos, serving sentences of six years foreign investment. Under restrictive labor and of two years and seven months, respec- laws, the authorities had a prominent role in tively, for “insulting” Castro; and Jesús Joel the selection, payment, and dismissal of work- Díaz Hernández, serving four years for “dan- ers, effectively denying workers the right to gerousness,” who was reportedly held in bargain directly with employers over ben- solitary confinement until early August. efits, promotions, and wages. Cuba also con- On October 16, after his release from tinued to use prison labor for agricultural prison, Arroyo was reportedly beaten and camps and ran clothing assembly and other insulted by state security agents. He and factories in its prisons. The authorities’ insis- another dissident were picked up from a tence that political prisoners work without friend’s house, driven to the police station in pay in poor conditions violated international Güines, beaten en route, and then driven labor standards. dozens of miles away and released after being beaten again. Defending Human Rights Foreign journalists too faced govern- The Cuban government continued its ment harassment if they attempted to work systematic harassment and repression of with or assist their Cuban colleagues. Italian human rights defenders. The authorities freelance journalist Carmen Butta was re- routinely used surveillance, phone tapping, 124 CUBA

and intimidation in its efforts to restrict access to U.N. human right monitors, includ- independent monitoring of the government’s ing thematic rapporteurs and mechanisms.) human rights practices. In some instances, While criticizing the U.S. embargo for its they employed arbitrary searches, evictions, adverse impact on Cuban women, the report travel restrictions, politically-motivated dis- urged the Cuban authorities to undertake legal missals from employment, threats and other reforms to deal more effectively with the forms of harassment against local activists. problems of domestic violence, rape, and The Cuban government denied interna- sexual harassment. It also denounced the tional human rights and humanitarian moni- arbitrary detention of women whose political tors access to the country. The International views are unacceptable to the government. Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) had not The report evoked a stridently defen- been allowed to conduct prison visits in Cuba sive response from the Cuban authorities, since 1989, making Cuba the only country in who sent a note verbale to the Office of the the region to deny access to the ICRC. Human High Commissioner for Human Rights that Rights Watch had not been allowed to send complained that the special rapporteur’s visit any representatives to monitor human rights was “manipulated” by the U.S. government, conditions in Cuba since 1995. and that challenged the applicability of the special rapporteur’s “bourgeois democratic- The Role of the International liberal concept of human rights.” The Cubans Community also vociferously attacked Human Rights Watch, whose 1999 book on Cuban human United Nations rights conditions was among the sources cited At its April session, the United Nations in the special rapporteur’s report. It errone- Commission on Human Rights voted once ously asserted that Human Rights Watch again to censure Cuba for its human rights received substantial U.S. government fund- abuses. The resolution passed by a wider ing, when, in fact, the organization accepts no margin than in previous years, but did not funding from any government, either directly make provision to appoint a special rappor- or indirectly. teur to monitor human rights conditions. Sponsored by the Czech and Polish govern- Ibero-American Countries ments, the resolution criticized Cuba’s treat- The Ibero-American Summit brought ment of political dissidents and urged the the Spanish king to Cuba, in what was the first Cuban authorities to allow visits by U.N. visit to the island by a reigning Spanish human rights investigators. Cuba retaliated monarch, as well as high officials from twenty- the vote by staging a mass demonstration one countries. Heads of state from all over outside the Czech embassy in Havana and Latin America were in attendance, although a temporarily recalling its ambassador from few declined to participate because of Cuba’s Argentina. (Argentina was among the twenty- lack of progress on democracy and human one countries that supported the resolution.) rights. In a welcome break from the usual In February, just prior to the protocol, a number of officials, including commission’s session, U.N. Special Rappor- Spain’s Prime Minister José María Aznar teur Radhika Coomaraswamy released her and Portugal’s President Jorge Sampaio, took report on violence against women in Cuba. advantage of their visit to meet with promi- The report, which was fair, objective, and nent dissidents such as veteran activist comprehensive, was the fruit of an unprec- Elizardo Sánchez. edented mission to Cuba undertaken by the The summit culminated in the adoption special rapporteur in June 1999. (The Cuban of a series of documents, including the Havana authorities had once allowed the U.N. high Declaration, in which signatory states ex- commissioner for human rights to visit the pressed a commitment to democracy and island, but had otherwise consistently denied human rights and called for the U.S. to end its CUBA 125 embargo against Cuba. With several bilateral agreements being signed in recent years, all E.U. member states had Organization of American States official bilateral economic relations with Cuba. Latin American political leaders had a further opportunity to collectively assess United States their engagement with Cuba during the thirti- The issue of the decades-old economic eth Organization of American States (OAS) embargo on Cuba received renewed congres- General Assembly, held in Windsor, Canada, sional attention in 2000, and steps, albeit in June. While a number of Caribbean coun- small ones, were taken toward easing it. After tries spoke up for Cuba’s reintegration into months of debate in congressional commit- the OAS—Cuba was suspended from the tees, both houses of Congress passed legisla- regional grouping in 1962—no concrete steps tion in October to allow limited food and were taken toward this end. medicine sales to Cuba. Farmers, agricultural interests and pharmaceutical companies had European Union lobbied heavily for access to the Cuban mar- The European Union’s relationship with ket. Cuba remained formally defined by its 1996 But the practical impact of the legisla- Common Position, which conditioned full tion was likely to be less than its symbolic economic cooperation on human rights re- importance. While it signaled the first signifi- forms. But in 2000 there were indications that cant rollback of U.S. sanctions against the the E.U.’s approach to Cuba was changing. In island in nearly four decades, the package was February, Cuba formally requested integra- unlikely to yield more than a small volume of tion into the multilateral grouping established actual business. Because of compromises under the Lomé Convention, a trade and aid with conservative lawmakers opposed to agreement linking the European Union to loosening trade restrictions, no U.S. export African, Caribbean and Pacific states. The credits or private financing would be allowed application sparked considerable debate re- on food sales. Indeed, as the bill reached a final garding whether Cuba’s association would be vote in the House of Representatives and consistent with the agreement’s criteria on Senate, Havana denounced its conditions as democracy and human rights. In April, how- “humiliating and unjust.” An editorial pub- ever, just after the adoption of the U.N. lished on the front pages of the Communist human rights resolution supported by many Party daily Granma promised that Cuba E.U. states, the debate was mooted by Cuba’s would “not buy a single cent of food or decision to withdraw its application. The medicine from the United States.” Cuban government also cancelled an ambi- And in a step backwards, the bill con- tious visit planned for late April by senior tained provisions codifying the rules that E.U. officials. Yet, in August, once again, generally banned U.S. tourism to Cuba. To Cuba reportedly expressed interest in associ- travel legally to Cuba, Americans had to ating with the E.U.’s aid pact, now called the obtain a license, available only to narrow Cotonou Agreement. categories of visitors, or be invited by a non- Although Cuba remained the only Latin U.S. group that met the costs. By limiting American country not to have entered into a travel to Cuba, these restrictions violated formal development and cooperation agree- article 19 of the International Covenant on ment with the European Union, the regional Civil and Political Rights, to which the United bloc still provided the largest amount of States is a party. international aid to Cuba. European trade and U.S. authorities continued to detain and investment in Cuba also continued to flour- repatriate Cuban asylum seekers aboard ves- ish, with countries such as Spain, Italy and sels intercepted at sea, giving them only on- France being among Cuba’s most significant board screening interviews to determine partners in the areas of trade and finance. whether they had a “credible fear” of perse- 126 CUBA/GUATEMALA

cution in their homeland. As exemplified by Mission in Guatemala (Misión de Verificación the case of Elián González, whose mother de las Naciones Unidas en Guatemala, died attempting the voyage, large numbers of MINUGUA), established after the 1996 Cubans continued to risk their lives at sea in peace accords, reported twenty-two instances the hope of reaching and obtaining asylum in of lynching or attempted lynching in the first the United States. half of 2000, resulting in five deaths and thirty serious injuries to victims. In 1999, there were forty-eight deaths from lynching. In April, a Japanese tourist and his bus driver were killed GUATEMALA by a mob in the village of Todos Santos apparently because of rumors that the tour Human Rights Developments group was planning to steal local children. Human rights issues received unprec- Nine people were arrested in May for the edented official attention following the Janu- lynching. In July, eight men apparently ary 2000 inauguration of President Alfonso suspected of kidnapping and rape were doused Portillo. Within two months, President with gasoline and burned by a mob of 200 Portillo declared a national day in honor of the villagers in Xalvaquiej. MINUGUA reported estimated 200,000 victims of Guatemala’s in August that military personnel were be- thirty-five-year civil conflict, ratified the In- hind some of these apparently vigilante ac- ter-American Convention on Forced Disap- tions. pearances, and, before the Inter-American On- and off-duty officers of the Na- Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), tional Civilian Police (Polícia Nacional Civil, admitted state responsibility for past viola- PNC) were reportedly responsible for nu- tions, including the 1990 murder of anthro- merous human rights abuses, notably those pologist Myrna Mack and the December involving excessive use of force. MINUGUA 1982 Dos Erres massacre of at least 162 found that inadequate recruitment, selection, people. President Portillo also called the and training of police fostered abuses, which brutal 1998 murder of Bishop Juan Gerardi were further encouraged by ineffective inter- and its botched investigation a “national nal disciplinary mechanisms. In February, a embarrassment,” publicly committing him- PNC officer in an Esquintla nightclub report- self to bringing those responsible to justice. edly shot and killed a waiter. That same Yet, serious human rights problems re- month, in a separate confrontation, PNC mained. The country’s weak judicial system members shot and killed a marketplace ven- continued to allow perpetrators virtual impu- dor in Guatemala City. In May, plainclothes nity. The new government’s record was also SIC agents were allegedly responsible for the marred by increased threats against and ha- “disappearance” of Mynor Pineda, a suspect rassment of human rights activists, killings of previously in their custody, whose where- community leaders, and retrograde steps on abouts remained unknown at the time of this capital punishment. Moreover, President writing. MINUGUA also found that the Portillo’s political alliance with Gen. Efraín Criminal Investigation Service (Servicio de Ríos Montt, Guatemala’s former military Investigación Criminal, SIC) of the PNC used ruler, who became president of the Congress torture to elicit confessions from suspects. in January 2000, was a worrisome reminder Under the 1996 peace accords, the mili- of the country’s inability to surmount its tary was to give up its role in internal security legacy of repression. and devote itself to external defense. In June, The absence of effective law enforce- however, Congress approved a decree allow- ment and the high incidence of common crime ing the military to assist the PNC in fighting contributed to a climate of insecurity, and the common crime. continued use of lynching as a form of vigi- MINUGUA reported twenty-six extra- lante justice. The United Nations Verification judicial killings and nineteen cases of torture GUATEMALA 127 from October 1999 through June 2000. In Gerardi—which occurred shortly after the March, the body of Garifuna leader Giovanni bishop released a church-sponsored report Roberto Sanchez was found at the Livingston on human rights violations during the armed Hotel where he was employed; he had been conflict—the six-month deadline passed with- hanged and his body showed evidence of out any resolution of the case. In April, Flor beating. In May, community worker and de María García Villatoro, the third judge to mayoral candidate José Anacio Mendoza handle the case, ordered that Father Mario was murdered in Camotán, Chiquimula; his Orantes, a close colleague of Bishop Gerardi, body was found in a well and also showed and cook Margarita López, stand trial for the signs of torture. In July, Mayan leader José murder. In May, Judge García Villatoro Quino and his colleague, María Mejía, were ordered that charges also be brought against killed after being ambushed by unknown Obdulia Villanueva, former member of the assailants near Lake Atitlan. Presidential General Staff (Estado Mayor In May, Human Rights Ombudsman Presidencial, EMP), Captain Byron Miguel Julio Arango identified possible instances of Lima Oliva, and his father, retired Col. Byron “social cleansing,” characterized by an appar- Disrael Lima Estrada. The trials of the five ently greater degree of premeditation than suspects were scheduled to begin in October. lynching, after four bodies were found with Witnesses, prosecutors, judges and the their hands and feet tied together and bearing Archbishop’s Human Rights Office (Oficina signs of torture. MINUGUA established the de Derechos Humanos del Arzobispado, possible involvement of the PNC and an ex- ODHA), which Gerardi had headed prior to military commissioner in these murders. his death, continued to receive threats related Journalists and other representatives of to the case. In August, Carmen Zanabria, after the media were targeted for harassment and receiving a series of threats, became the fifth other abuses apparently to influence their important witness to flee the country for reporting. In July, Prensa Libre columnist security reasons. Eduardo Villatoro reported receiving threats Even though President Portillo accepted demanding that he stop writing articles criti- the principle of state responsibility for past cal of the Mixco authorities. Earlier, in human rights crimes, formidable barriers to February, the television program “T-mas de justice existed in practice. U.N. Special Rap- Noche” was canceled apparently due to its porteur on the Independence of Lawyers and critical stance toward the government. This Judges Param Cumaraswamy issued a report sparked a national debate over the ownership on Guatemala in March. This described how of four of Guatemala’s television stations by the justice system continued to suffer from an individual with family connections in the the deficiencies that it had exhibited during the Ministry of Communications. After an April armed conflict, including corruption, influ- visit to Guatemala, Organization of American ence peddling, lack of resources, and threats States (OAS) Special Rapporteur on Free- and intimidation of lawyers and judges. dom of Expression Santiago Cantón recom- Cumaraswamy found that only 10 percent of mended the implementation of clear rules to all homicide cases went to trial, and that very avoid any conflict of interest between public few of these ever resulted in convictions. He authorities and the media. President Portillo also found that the country’s indigenous expressed concern over the “T-mas de Noche” majority continued to face discrimination in incident and proposed the establishment of a seeking access to justice, particularly because state-run, public television channel as a mecha- of the absence of translation services in judi- nism to address some of the problems high- cial proceedings. lighted by Cantón. In November 1999, an appeals court Despite President Portillo’s self-im- extended the sentences, commutable by pay- posed deadline to bring to justice those re- ment, of ten of the twenty-five soldiers con- sponsible for the 1998 killing of Bishop Juan victed for the 1995 killing of eleven people in 128 GUATEMALA

the community of Xamán, to include twelve- kidnapping and murder, were given lethal year prison terms. However, it absolved the injections; their executions were broadcast other fifteen defendants. In April, the Su- live on national television. preme Court of Justice (Corte Suprema de As of late October, some thirty people Justicia, CSJ) overturned these decisions, remained on death row. In February, an stating that the case was fraught with irregu- appeals court commuted the death sentences larities; it ordered the ten convicted men to of three former Civil Patrol members con- remain in prison and the other fifteen to be victed of murdering two of the 143 persons rearrested. In July, Judge Josué Villatoro killed in the 1982 Rio Negro massacre, reduc- ordered the arrest and detention of ten ex- ing their sentences to fifty-year prison terms. military officials accused of the murder of 162 A U.N.-sponsored report released in people in the Dos Erres massacre in 1982. At April found that conditions in half of this writing, the Constitutional Court had yet Guatemala’s detention centers failed to meet to rule whether the Dos Erres massacre con- minimum international standards. stituted an act of genocide, which would In December 1999, Nobel peace prize exempt it from the application of the 1996 laureate Rigoberta Menchú Tum filed suit in amnesty law and clear the way for prosecu- Spain against six military officers and two tions to proceed. civilians for genocide and torture. In March, After a second acquittal in April 1999, the Spanish High Court agreed to hear the case former military commissioner Cándido and in April it began calling witnesses. Judge Noriega—accused of 155 counts of torture, Guillermo Ruiz Polanco allowed additional rape, murder, and kidnapping—was sentenced plaintiffs to join the case, including the family in November 1999 to 220 years in prison for of a Spanish priest who was murdered in eight murders and two homicides. In Septem- Guatemala in February 1981, and Guatemala’s ber, a judge ruled that the case against Gen. human rights ombudsman. In April, lawyer Juan Guillermo Oliva and two former colo- Julio Cintrón Galvez filed suit against Menchú nels for the 1990 murder of anthropologist for treason for filing the case in Spain, a charge Myrna Mack should remain in the civilian that carries a ten to twenty year prison term. courts, rejecting the defense’s call for the case General Ríos Montt, current president to be placed under military jurisdiction. At of the Congress, was among those named in this writing, no date had been set for the trial. Menchú’s suit as being responsible for geno- On May 12, Congress rescinded the law cide and torture during the period when he allowing the president to grant pardons in ruled the country from March 1982 until capital cases, bringing Guatemala into viola- August 1983. In August, his position as tion of both the American Convention on congressional president was threatened when Human Rights and the International Cov- a scandal erupted over his alleged participa- enant on Civil and Political Rights. Earlier in tion in improperly lowering an alcohol tax, the year, President Portillo had reviewed four but the case had not been resolved at this pending cases and, in a welcome decision, writing. commuted the death sentence of Pedro Rax On October 13, 1999, armed men de- Cucul to thirty years’ imprisonment. Rax tained the five-member executive committee Cucul, a member of Guatemala’s indigenous of the Union of Banana Workers of Izabal community who was believed to be mentally (Sindicato de Trabajadores Bananeros de disturbed at the time of the crime, reportedly Izabal, SITRABI) and held them hostage for had lacked an interpreter when making his several hours. SITRABI represented some deposition and been assisted only by a mental 2,500 workers employed by the local subsid- patient. In the other three cases, President iary of Del Monte. The gunmen forced two of Portillo denied clemency to the sentenced the union’s leaders to make a radio announce- men. On June 29, Amilcar Cetino Pérez and ment calling off a work stoppage, planned for Tomás Cerrate Hernández, both convicted of the next day to protest the company’s failure GUATEMALA 129 to reinstate 918 workers who had been fired against human rights organizations and activ- the previous month in violation of a collective ists. In the first half of the year, MINUGUA bargaining agreement. In March 2000, Del registered fifty-six threats to human rights Monte and the International Union of activists, witnesses and judicial authorities in Foodworkers (IUF), representing SITRABI, human rights cases. Rigoberta Menchú and signed an agreement to reinstate the fired several colleagues at her foundation received workers and prosecute those responsible for death threats. the attack on the union leaders. In June, a court Organizations and individuals making ruled that twenty-five people should be tried human rights claims in the courts were par- for coercion, illegal search, and illegal deten- ticularly targeted. In September, gunmen tion, but at this writing, no date had been set entered the offices of the Families of the for the trial, nor had any of the workers been Detained and Disappeared of Guatemala reinstated. (FAMDEGUA), a group that had initiated The Minors’ Code, which the Guatema- proceedings against General Ríos Montt for lan legislature passed in 1996 but postponed the Dos Erres massacre, forcing three staff implementing until the year 2000, was again members to the floor at gunpoint. The gun- postponed indefinitely in February. The leg- men repeatedly threatened to kill the three islation would extend procedural protec- and stole computers, money, and a vehicle. In tions—such as the right to a lawyer—to August, Celso Balan, a representative of the children accused of crimes, and introduce Center for Legal Action in Human Rights other changes to bring domestic law into (Centro para la acción legal en Derechos conformity with the U.N. Convention on the Humanos, CALDH) was detained, beaten, Rights of the Child, which Guatemala ratified and robbed by individuals posing as journal- in 1990. In September, Guatemala signed a ists but thought to have links with active and newly-adopted optional protocol to the retired military officers. MINUGUA noted children’s convention prohibiting the involve- that such threats were not adequately inves- ment of children in armed conflict. In August, tigated by the authorities. the ODHA released a report on the forced “disappearance” of children during the civil The Role of the International war, attributing 92 percent of the eighty-six Community documented abductions to the military. In proceedings before the IACHR in United Nations March, President Portillo accepted state re- Under the 1996 peace accords, the man- sponsibility for the events leading to the 1995 date of MINUGUA was due to expire at murder of Marco Quistinay, a thirteen-year- year’s end. In March, President Portillo old streetchild whom two officers handed a asked MINUGUA to extend its stay, but at bag he believed was food, but which contained this writing the U.N. General Assembly had a grenade that exploded and killed him. In yet to decide on an extension. Significant December 1999, the Inter-American Court of aspects of the accords have yet to be imple- Human Rights ruled that two police officers mented, so indicating a need for continued were responsible for the 1990 deaths of five international verification. street youths and that the Guatemalan gov- MINUGUA’s reports on aspects of the ernment had failed to protect the rights of the peace process contained detailed human rights victims. The decision called for the investi- analyses. In September, MINUGUA issued gation and prosecution of those responsible a human rights report for the period October for the crime. 1999 to June 2000, and at other times it issued communiques on specific human rights Defending Human Rights abuses. In 2000, there was an alarming increase in threats, harassment, and targeted violence 130 GUATEMALA/HAITI

European Union and victims in their efforts to identify and The European Parliament passed a reso- bring to justice those responsible for gross lution in May offering support for abuses during Guatemala’s civil war. Guatemala’s prosecution of crimes against humanity, for witness protection and for other protection measures for judges and lawyers. In March, cooperation between the HAITI PNC and Spain’s Civil Guard (Guardia Civil), who had been providing technical assistance Human Rights Developments to the Guatemalan police since 1998, was Police and government passivity in the suspended. The European Union was to face of intimidation and violence by support- provide funding to the police in the amount of ers of the Fanmi Lavalas party raised serious some 34 million ECUS (approximately U.S. human rights concerns. Fanmi Lavalas, the $40 million) between 1998 and 2003. party of former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, employed fraud to boost its elec- Organization of American States toral gains and win near total control over the The IACHR praised President Portillo’s parliament that was sworn in on August 28. March admission of state responsibility in The year 2000 was dominated by elec- three pending cases as an “example for the tions: local and parliamentary polls on May entire Hemisphere.” In August, President 21, second-round and rescheduled voting Portillo followed up on his March statements through August, and presidential and partial by agreeing to settle ten additional cases senatorial contests planned for November involving two massacres and sixteen execu- and December 2000. Haiti had been without tions and “disappearances,” a step that obliged a functioning parliament since President René his government to provide compensation to Préval dissolved it in January 1999, following the victims or their relatives, and to oversee eighteen months without a prime minister. the investigation and prosecution of each By 2000, this political impasse had led to the case. At the time of this writing, dozens of suspension of some U.S. $500 million in Guatemalan cases remained pending before multilateral assistance, creating enormous the IACHR. international pressure for the Préval govern- ment to hold legislative elections. The United States country’s dire economic circumstances, char- In March, the U.S. Central Intelligence acterized by the lowest average incomes in the Agency (CIA) awarded one of its highest Western Hemisphere, magnified the impact honors, the Distinguished Career Intelligence of the aid suspension. Medal, to former official Terry Ward, who The most glaringly fraudulent aspect of was dismissed from the agency in 1995 for the deeply flawed May elections was the failing to report CIA ties to a Guatemalan method used to calculate the results of the colonel implicated in the murders of Efraín first-round Senate races. Bypassing the Bamaca Velásquez and U.S. citizen Michael country’s constitution and electoral law, Devine. After fierce political debate, Guate- which required first-round winners to have an mala in April approved the deployment of absolute majority of votes cast, the Provi- U.S. military forces to the country to combat sional Electoral Council (Conseil Electorale illicit drug trafficking. In June, the National Provisoire, CEP) dramatically shrunk the Security Archive, a Washington, D.C.-based pool of votes counted, eliminating all but NGO, released a report entitled “The Guate- those accruing to the four or six leading malan Military: What the U.S. Files Reveal.” candidates in each province. As a result, all This named 232 Guatemalan officers and nineteen Senate seats at issue in the elections contained information on their activities and were won in the first round, eighteen of them command responsibilities, so assisting NGOs by Fanmi Lavalas. When Léon Manus, the HAITI 131 seventy-eight-year-old president of the coun- CEP’s dismissal. Charging through the big cil, objected to the calculation method, Préval Croix des Bossales market, they burned hun- and Aristide pressured him to accept it, dreds of storage depots, stores, and nearby making veiled threats that led Manus to flee homes. Five people were reported killed in the country. The government’s refusal to the days of violence, with fighting among reconsider the skewed results led the Elec- criminal gangs nearly indistinguishable from toral Monitoring Mission of the Organiza- political violence. tion of American States (OAS-EOM) to quit The most dramatic pre-election incident Haiti before the second-round balloting, la- of mob violence occurred on April 8, when beling the elections “fundamentally flawed.” some one hundred protesters burned down Fanmi Lavalas then cemented control of local the headquarters of the opposition coalition, and national government, ending up with Space for Dialogue (Espace de Concertation). seventy-two of eighty-three seats in the Earlier in the day, at funeral services for Jean Chamber of Deputies, and two-thirds of Dominique, members of the mob had publicly some 7,500 local posts. announced their plans to burn the building and The runup to the elections was marred kill Space for Dialogue spokesman Evans by political violence, with the OAS recording Paul (whom they were unable to find). Police, at least seventy violent incidents from Janu- who were on the scene, did not interfere, nor ary to May 21, the day of local and first-round did they make any arrests. parliamentary elections. The violence in- The May 21 elections were largely peace- cluded several killings, including that of Haiti’s ful, if disorganized, and well over 50 percent most renowned journalist, Jean Dominique, of registered voters turned out. But as night the sixty-nine-year-old director of Radio fell and polls closed, armed men stole or Haïti-Inter. Gunmen ambushed and shot burned electoral materials in some districts. both him and Jean-Claude Louissant, a sta- In others, because a lack of electricity de- tion security guard, on the morning of April prived polling precincts of light, electoral 3. Dominique was a controversial and out- workers tallied ballots in places such as police spoken figure, and a firm defender of the rule stations, sometimes barring party poll watch- of law. His radio station bore the marks of ers from observing the count. The morning numerous bullet holes from earlier attacks. after the vote, the press photographed Port- Police arrested several men said to have taken au-Prince streets littered with ballots and part in the assassination, but there was no ballot boxes deposited during the night. The official word by October on who was respon- OAS-EOM concluded that serious irregulari- sible for it, fuelling widespread rumor and ties had compromised the elections’ credibil- speculation. ity but that, in local balloting, “since one Members of “popular organizations” political party won most of the elections by supporting Fanmi Lavalas were responsible a substantial margin, it is probably unlikely for violent street demonstrations and other that the majority of the final outcomes in local mob actions that went largely unchallenged elections have been affected.” Opposition by the Haitian National Police (Police parties alleged massive fraud and intimida- Nationale d’Haïti, PNH). At the October 24, tion, although most could not document their 1999 launching of the CEP’s civic education charges. Contrary to the electoral law, most campaign in Port-au-Prince, a score of Aristide complaints of irregularities received no seri- supporters shouted slogans, threw trash and ous investigation. plastic soft drink bottles filled with urine, and Post-election incidents again demon- tried to attack opposition leader Evans Paul. strated the problem of selective enforcement In late March, during a dispute between of the law. On May 22, Fanmi Lavalas Préval and the CEP over the date of elections, supporters attacked the downtown Port-au- mobs set up barricades of burning tires and Prince headquarters of a small party, the lobbed rocks at passing cars, calling for the Rally of Patriotic Citizens (Rassemblement 132 HAITI

des Citoyens Patriotes, RCP), nearly killing independent candidate for mayor killed two one man and badly injuring another. Although Fanmi Lavalas supporters on July 2 on the the attack took place a few blocks from a Ile-à-Vache, claiming that the Fanmi Lavalas police station during a period of supposed mayoral candidate had stolen the election. “zero tolerance” for violence, police did not Police arrested and charged a former mayor intervene or make arrests. with organizing the attacks. In Anse- In the wake of the elections, police d’Hainault, supporters of a mayoral candi- arrested some thirty-five opposition candi- date who narrowly lost to the Fanmi Lavalas dates and activists, many of whom had been candidate set houses on fire and ransacked a involved in protests against electoral fraud. community radio station, reportedly wound- Those held included former senator and can- ing twelve people. didate for re-election Paul Denis of the Orga- While figures for 2000 were unavailable nization of People in Struggle (Organisation as of this writing, 1999 saw a rise in police du Peuple en Lutte, OPL) and four others killings. The U.N./OAS International Civil- arrested in Les Cayes on May 23. Special ian Mission (MICIVIH) reported sixty-six police units searched Denis’ house without a suspicious killings by the police in 1999, valid warrant and arrested him after claiming including several possible extrajudicial execu- to have found several firearms. The five were tions, an increase over the thirty-one reported released after three days in appalling deten- in 1998. Fifty of the 1999 killings occurred tion conditions. Others arrested post-elec- in the second quarter of the year and led to the tion included Limongy Jean, candidate for arrest of some officers. Allegations of police deputy; fifteen Space for Dialogue support- beatings and torture of criminal suspects also ers in Petit Goâve; a mayoral candidate and continued. Carmel Moise, a Florida resident two other members of the Open the Gates and publisher of Caribbean Magazine, said Party (Pati Louvrye Barye, PLB) in that uniformed police entered her suburban Thomazeau; and ten OPL candidates and Port-au-Prince house on July 6, demanding activists in Thiotte. But no Fanmi Lavalas money and drugs, then beat her and burned her supporters were arrested. In July, in Maïssade with a hot iron, leaving wounds that showed in the Central Plateau, police who intervened clearly in subsequent photographs. in a conflict between Fanmi Lavalas and Space According to the police inspector gen- for Dialogue allowed Fanmi Lavalas support- eral, 673 police officers were dismissed from ers to accompany them in house searches and the PNH between its creation in 1995 and to beat Space for Dialogue members who were October 1999, 407 of them on the basis of his arrested. office’s investigations, and the rest by deci- Nor did police respond effectively to the sion of the leadership of the police. Probable dramatic mid-June shut-down of Port-au- human rights violations were committed in at Prince. On June 19, in a show of force least 130 cases, according to the MICIVIH. intended to intimidate the CEP into confirm- Haiti’s prisons continued to be filled far ing erroneous first-round election results, beyond capacity, with an estimated 80 per- several hundred members of pro-Fanmi cent of inmates in pretrial detention, roughly Lavalas popular organizations erected barri- one-third of them for more than a year. A local cades of burning tires, logs, and other debris NGO network continued to monitor condi- on the city’s roads. The roadblocks halted tions in many of the country’s nineteen nearly all traffic, effectively confining most prison facilities. inhabitants to their homes for the day, but the In December 1999, responding to a hun- police took no action against those respon- ger strike, a Port-au-Prince prosecutor freed sible. Similar but smaller protests occurred in on humanitarian grounds twenty-one long- other cities. term pretrial detainees, many of whom had Fanmi Lavalas members also fell victim never been formally charged. The men in- to post-election violence. Supporters of an cluded Evans François, brother of military HAITI 133 government police chief Michel François, Defending Human Rights charged with subversion in April 1996, and The Haitian government did not sys- nine former military officers who had been tematically target human rights monitors, but held for fifteen months on charges of endan- the polarized political environment compli- gering state security after protesting non- cated the task of defending human rights. At payment of their pensions. Former Duvalier- an April 7 demonstration to protest Jean era army general Claude Raymond, detained Dominique’s assassination, for example, some since 1996 on charges of plotting against state 300 women belonging to a coalition of seven security, died in detention in February after leading women’s organizations were harassed several release orders issued by the judge in by male supporters of Fanmi Lavalas, appar- his case were ignored by the authorities. ently because they did not accuse opposition Impunity for past abuses remained a political leaders of responsibility for the serious concern, but there were encouraging journalist’s death. steps toward justice. Two important trials No progress was made in the investiga- took place. The first, that of six police officers tion into the March 1999 shooting of Pierre accused of the 1999 murder of eleven people Espérance, Haiti director of the National in the capitol’s Carrefour Feuilles district, Coalition for Haitian Rights. was held in August. During three weeks of In a welcome development that attested proceedings, the prosecution presented to the maturity of the Haitian human rights physical evidence as well as twenty-seven movement, a number of groups participated witnesses, including PNH General Director in well-organized election monitoring efforts, Pierre Denizé. The defendants, who included producing credible reports documenting fraud former Port-au-Prince police chief Jean Colls and other irregularities. Rameau, were assisted by qualified legal coun- sel. Most defendants received three-year The Role of the International sentences for manslaughter, a penalty criti- Community cized as inappropriately lenient by local By 2000, the three-year political im- human rights groups. passe in Haiti had led to the suspension of The second key trial—that of former some U.S. $500 million in multilateral assis- army officers and paramilitaries implicated in tance, with donor countries pressing the gov- an April 1994 massacre in Raboteau, ernment of René Préval to restore a working Gonaïves—opened on September 29. This parliament ahead of presidential elections long-awaited prosecution was based on sev- scheduled for the end of 2000. But the eral years of preparation by a mixed Haitian initially positive reaction to the May 21 and international prosecutorial team. Of the elections began to shift with news of the fifty-eight defendants in the case, twenty- arrests of opposition candidates and sup- two were in custody, while others such as porters, and turned into a tide of criticism Raoul Cedras and Michelle François, leaders when Haitian officials refused to acknowl- of the 1991 coup, and Emmanuel “Toto” edge that the Senate calculation method was Constant, the leader of the paramilitary orga- incorrect. Focusing on the calculation issue, nization FRAPH, were in exile. the United States, Canada, France, and the A French court in November 1999 dis- U.N. Security Council called on the Haitian missed a lawsuit filed by several Haitians government to revise the election results. The against former dictator Jean -Claude Duvalier, Caribbean Community (CARICOM) sent a resident in France since 1986. The suit high-level mediator to Haiti in early July, but accused him of crimes against humanity, but to no effect. the court ruled that French law does not cover With the fraudulent election results such crimes committed prior to 1994, except firmly entrenched, Haiti’s main bilateral do- those that occurred during World War II. nors began to signal aid cutbacks. France, in its role as president of the European Union, 134 HAITI/MEXICO

initiated a review of provisions of the Lomé August 17-19. Reporting on the mission, Convention, to which Haiti is a party, which Gaviria voiced the international community’s could lead to the suspension of a nearly $200 “skepticism and worries” about democracy million aid package. Canada also announced in Haiti. At this writing, mediation efforts a reevaluation of its aid programs. continued. The Inter-American Commission Relations between Haiti and the interna- on Human Rights visited Haiti in August tional community were further strained in 2000, identifying as the most worrisome July and August by several grenade or Molotov aspect a “deterioration of the political climate cocktail attacks on foreign missions and for- to the point where there seems to be no eigners in Port-au-Prince, which, however, political consensus on how to consolidate the did not result in injuries. country’s nascent democracy.”

United Nations United States The six-year-old human rights monitor- In September, the U.S. announced it ing mission, MICIVIH, and the U.N. peace- would provide no aid to the Haitian govern- keeping mission departed Haiti in early 2000 ment and no support for the presidential and were replaced by the smaller United elections. “We will pursue policies that Nations International Civilian Support Mis- distinguish between helping the people of sion in Haiti (Mission internationale civile Haiti and assisting the government of Haiti,” d’appui en Haïti, MICAH). said the U.S. ambassador to the OAS. Earlier, In January, U.N. Special Rapporteur for the United States had shut down its five-year- Violence against Women Radhika old program of support for Haitian police Coomaraswamy released a report based on training. her June 1999 visit to Haiti. Among the The Clinton Administration continued problems she noted were the country’s “dys- to block efforts toward truth and justice in functional judiciary” and the fact that most Haiti by retaining some 160,000 pages of women prisoners share living quarters with documents seized from the Haitian military male prisoners, exposing them to violence and and FRAPH in September 1994. U.S. offi- sexual abuse. At its April session, the U.N. cials stated they would only hand the mate- Commission on Human Rights passed a reso- rials over to the Haitian government after lution on Haiti expressing its concern over excising the names of U.S. citizens, a condi- delays in the electoral process and calling tion the Préval government continued to re- upon Haiti to hold “free, fair and prompt ject. FRAPH leader Constant, previously an elections.” It also extended the mandate of its informer for the Central Intelligence Agency independent expert on Haiti another year. (CIA), remained in Queens, New York, hav- ing been extended protection from deporta- Organization of American States tion. Fifteen high-ranking Haitian officers, The OAS-EOM, staffed by twenty- including most of the coup-era high com- two international observers and assisted by mand, were also resident in the United States, about eighty delegates provided by national having emigrated from Haiti after Aristide’s governments, arrived in Haiti in late February return. to monitor the elections and provide technical assistance to Haitian election officials. When Haiti went ahead with the second-round elec- tions on July 9, the OAS-EOM declined to MEXICO monitor the balloting, withdrawing its ob- servers from the country. Human Rights Developments The OAS held a special session on Haiti Serious human rights violations, includ- on July 13, followed by a mission to Haiti ing torture and arbitrary detention, continued headed by Secretary General Cesar Gaviria on in Mexico during 2000. Faced with abuses by MEXICO 135 police and soldiers, prosecutors and courts judicial oversight of their work was seriously largely failed to take a stand for human rights. inadequate. Police carried out arbitrary The July electoral victory of opposition arrests and they and prosecutors often falsi- presidential candidate Vicente Fox raised fied evidence. Courts accepted evidence ob- hopes that deep-seated human rights prob- tained through human rights violations, in- lems would be addressed head-on by the new cluding illegal searches, and judges cited legal government, scheduled to assume power on precedents that vitiated human rights guaran- December 1. Little doubt remained after the tees. presidential elections that reforms that in- Teodoro Cabrera García and Rodolfo creased the independence of the federal elec- Montiel Flores were two victims of such tions-monitoring agency had greatly facili- abuse. Environmental activists from Pizotla, tated the exercise of political rights in the Guerrero, they worked with the Organization country. Yet, overcoming the country’s long of Peasant Environmentalists of the Moun- history of human rights abuse, and the legal tains of Petatlán and Coyuca de Catalán and other deficiencies contributing to it, would (Organización de Campesinos Ecologists de not be easy. That history constituted the la Sierra de Petatlán y Coyuca de Catalán). legacy of the Institutional Revolutionary Soldiers detained the two in May 1999, killing Party (Partido Revolucionario Institucional, another man, Salomé Sánchez Ortiz, at the PRI), ousted after more than seventy years in time. Soldiers held them illegally for two power, and posed a formidable challenge to days, and tortured them before turning them the new government. over to prosecutors. On August 28, a district After winning the election, Fox appeared judge sentenced them to ten and seven years much more open to human rights reform than in prison, respectively, for drug- and weap- previous Mexican leaders. Signalling that, in ons-related offenses. Defense lawyers for the August, he met first with local human rights accused argued that the military planted the organizations and then with U.S., Canadian, weapons and drugs that formed the basis of and European human rights and environmen- the charges against the two, an accusation tal groups. His foreign policy advisors sug- confirmed in a report issued by the govern- gested that his government, when it took ment National Human Rights Commission office, would be more responsive to interna- (Comisión Nacional de Derechos Humanos, tional human rights mechanisms than previ- CNDH) in July 2000. Soldiers forced the ous administrations. Fox also promised to activists to sign incriminating confessions, establish a “transparency commission” to which were used against them in court. A examine PRI excesses, including human rights decision on their appeal was pending at this issues. writing. During his election campaign, Fox pro- Deficiencies in the judicial system were posed to abolish the Office of the Federal evident in urban as well as rural areas. In Attorney General (Procuraduría General de la February, the respected Human Rights Com- República, PGR) and submit prosecutors to mission of Mexico City, an agency of the city much stricter control by judges to overcome government, reported that the main suspect deficits in the administration of justice. He in the high-profile murder case of television also suggested creating an investigative police personality Francisco “Paco” Stanley, gunned separate from prosecutors and moving a host down in 1999, had been framed by prosecu- of thematic tribunals, including those dealing tors. Prosecutors refused to accept the with labor issues, from the executive to the commission’s recommendation that charges judicial branch of government. be dropped against the suspect. Instead, they Deficiencies in the administration of began a campaign of intimidation against the justice indeed were of major concern. Pros- commission. This, in turn, led the commis- ecutors frequently ignored abuses by police sion in May to issue a stinging report accusing and also directly fabricated evidence, and the Office of the Attorney General of Mexico 136 MEXICO

City (Procuraduría General de Justicia del state governor. This raised hopes that long- Distrito Federal, PGJDF) of playing politics standing problems, including misuse of power with judicial investigations. The office had by police, prosecutors, and courts for parti- opened four “notoriously unfounded” inves- san gain, might be resolved, and that stalled tigations against a judge who had ruled against peace talks with the EZLN might be reacti- the attorney general in Mexico City, accord- vated. Both Fox and Salazar said that if the ing to the commission. EZLN returned in good faith to the bargaining In Chiapas, there was continued vio- table they would support a peace agreement lence between pro-government civilians and at which the prior federal government had real or alleged opponents of the PRI. On balked, and would also consent to a military August 3, members of the Peace and Justice rollback. group, which local human rights defenders Foreigners continued to face restrictions described as “paramilitary,” attacked the in obtaining visas for human rights work in community of El Paraíso, in Yajalón munici- Mexico. Applicants were required to de- pality, expelling sixty families, burning houses, scribe their plans to consular officers in copi- and beating inhabitants. But, according to ous detail, including all destinations to be press reports, supporters of the leftist visited. In an encouraging development, advi- Zapatista Army of National Liberation sors to President-elect Fox indicated that the (Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional, visa requirements would be relaxed after he EZLN), which had launched an armed rebel- took office. lion in January 1994, also committed forcible Authorities still used expulsion or the expulsions, driving PRI supporters from the threat of removal from the country against community of Nuevo Pavo, Ocosingo mu- foreigners. Ted Lewis, director of the Mexico nicipality, on August 11. The victims were program at Global Exchange, was expelled reported to be supporters of the PRI; EZLN from the country before the presidential elec- supporters denied the accusation. tions, allegedly for entering the country under Police in Chiapas also came under at- false pretexts; the official justification, how- tack. Seven members of the state Public ever, was full of contradictions. Kerry Appel, Security Police (Policía de Seguridad Pública) one of a group of foreigners detained in were killed in a June 12 ambush on the border Chiapas at the beginning of the year, was told between El Bosque and Simojovel munici- to leave the country for having violated the palities. The attack took place on the second terms of his visa; authorities accused him of anniversary of a government raid on a participating in a party celebrating the six- breakaway pro-EZLN municipality formed year anniversary of the EZLN uprising. Appel in El Bosque, but at this writing it was unclear won an appeal of the expulsion order in June, who carried out the attack. In July, authorities with the judge ruling that the immigration detained two men and accused them of pos- authorities had failed to justify the reasons for session of marijuana, participating in the his expulsion, and calling on them to properly ambush, and being EZLN supporters. How- document the order. Instead, according to the ever, according to the Chiapas-based Fray Fray Bartolomé Center, immigration officials Bartolomé de las Casas Human Rights Center simply repeated the same claims against Appel (Centro de Derechos Humanos Fray and, in September, again ordered that he leave Bartolomé de las Casas), the men were ille- the country. In a contrary move, however, gally detained and police planted evidence on immigration authorities permitted Tom them. At this writing, one of the detainees had Hansen, the director of the Mexico Solidarity been released for lack of evidence. Network, who had been expelled in 1998, to Following the opposition victory in return to Mexico. Mexico’s presidential elections, voting in The government maintained legal re- Chiapas in August also resulted in the election strictions on workers’ freedom of association of an opposition candidate, Pablo Salazar, as and the right to strike, and labor tribunals MEXICO 137 responsible for hearing unfair dismissal and the Status of Stateless Persons. It signed the other cases were not impartial. In its year statute of the International Criminal Court in 2000 report by the Committee of Experts on September. The government’s lack of com- the Application of Conventions and Recom- mitment to the obligations it undertook by mendations, the International Labor Organi- ratifying the refugee convention became clear zation (ILO) again criticized legal restrictions in October 2000, however, when authorities on freedom of association and the right to summarily deported Cuban national Pedro strike in Mexico. The report also condemned Riera Escalante, a government official who the ongoing practice of requiring female job had sought political asylum. Riera Escalante applicants to submit to pregnancy tests as a faced grave danger in Cuba, given his opposi- condition of employment, which it described tion to the policies of the Cuban government, as a violation of the ILO’s convention on but Mexico sent him back, in violation of the employment discrimination. (For further in- convention’s prohibition on returning refu- formation on pregnancy testing, see the gees if they would face a threat to life or liberty Women’s Rights section.) The labor side at home. agreement of the North American Free Trade In August, the Mexico City authorities Agreement (NAFTA) continued to generate passed legislation establishing the crime of meager results in the promotion of labor rights “disappearance,” a step that human rights in Mexico. organizations, including Human Rights Watch, Journalists also suffered continued had long urged the central government to take, threats, and at least two reporters were killed but there were no moves to create analogous during the year, according to the New York- federal legislation. based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). At the request of Spanish judge Baltasár José Ramírez Puente, a radio journalist, was Garzón, the authorities arrested former Ar- stabbed to death in April in Ciudad Juárez, gentine military officer Ricardo Miguel Cavallo Chihuahua state, and Pablo Pineda, of the in August. Garzón, who had sought the extra- Matamoros daily La Opinión was also killed dition of Chile’s Gen. Augusto Pinochet from that month. In both cases, the motives and the United Kingdom in 1998, sought to pros- identity of the perpetrators were unclear. On ecute Cavallo on genocide and torture charges June 22, gunmen fired on T.V. Azteca news stemming from his alleged role as a torturer at anchor Lilly Téllez as she travelled by car in Argentina’s infamous Navy School of Me- Mexico City; she escaped unharmed, but the chanics under military rule. Judge Garzón driver and bodyguards accompanying her requested that Carvallo be extradited to Spain, because of threats made in retaliation for her but, at this writing, extradition proceedings reporting on drug trafficking, were wounded. within Mexico were still in process. French Several journalists also faced legal harassment authorities were also investigating Cavallo’s for their reporting. For example, prosecutors possible involvement in the torture and mur- charged Melitón García of the Monterrey der of French citizens in Argentina. daily El Norte with falsifying documents, In August, Mexican officials announced after he published a two-part story in May the arrests of Mexican generals Arturo Acosta describing how easy it was for him to obtain Chaparro and Humberto Quierós Hermosillo, a false voter credential. For a crime to have whom they accused of links to drug traffick- taken place, according to CPJ, the reporter ers. Human rights groups immediately called would have had to have acted with malicious on the government to take steps to broaden intent, something that was clearly lacking in the charges against Acosta Chaparro, who this case. had been linked to “disappearances” and The government took several positive torture in Mexico’s southern state of Guerrero human rights initiatives. In June, it ratified the in the 1970s. 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and the 1954 Convention relating to 138 MEXICO

Defending Human Rights threats, and unidentified individuals kept Human rights defenders continued their Solis’ house under surveillance. Some wit- detailed reporting and energetic advocacy but nesses who supported Solís retracted their faced renewed pressure from politicians who statements after receiving threats. sought to blame them for some of the country’s crime problems, particularly during the presi- The Role of the International dential election campaign. At one campaign Community stop, for instance, the PRI’s presidential candidate courted the get-tough-on-crime vote United Nations and Organization of by announcing: “Let it be known that the law American States was made to protect the human rights of The full scope of Mexico’s human rights citizens, not criminals.” A similar slogan had violations was brought into focus in Novem- worked for a successful PRI gubernatorial ber 1999, when United Nations High Com- candidate in 1999. missioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson The pressure created was more than visited the country. The Mexican govern- simply theoretical; it helped create a hostile ment did not consent to an advance research environment for human rights defenders. In team, limiting the high commissioner to gath- June, authorities appeared to act on this ering information during her visits to Mexico distrust of human rights groups as the All City, Chiapas state, and Baja California state. Rights for All Mexican Human Rights Net- Nonetheless, more than one hundred nongov- work (Red de Organismos Civiles de Derechos ernmental organizations (NGOs) prepared a Humanos Todos Derechos para Todos, human rights report for the high commis- known as the Red) reported that their Mexico sioner, listing their most pressing concerns. In City office was under surveillance. According addition to problems with the administration to the Red, the city prosecutor’s office later of justice, the report strongly criticized the revealed that agents of the federal National involvement of the military in matters of Security System (Sistema Nacional de internal security, inadequate protection of Seguridad, SISEN) had been filming the office, indigenous people’s rights, weaknesses in although the motive of the surveillance was economic and political rights, and attacks on not made known to the group. The same human rights defenders. month, Digna Ochoa of PRODH received The high commissioner spoke out telephoned death threats. She was the lead strongly against human rights violations in defense lawyer representing the detained Mexico. After meeting survivors of the De- environmentalists in Guerrero. cember 1997 massacre in Acteal, Chiapas, for Arturo Solís, director of the Center for example, she pointed to “the failure in too Border Studies and Promotion of Human many cases to punish rights violators.” Rights (Centro de Estudios Fronterizos y de In July, the Office of the High Commis- Promoción de los Derechos Humanos, sioner planned to move forward with a two- CEFPRODAC), also came under attack dur- part technical cooperation program to be ing the year. An immigration official and implemented with Mexico. Its first segment, private citizen in Tamaulipas state, home of scheduled to begin before Fox assumed the the center, accused Solís of defamation in presidency, was to include limited training July, after CEFPRODAC provided federal programs for the judicial police, enhancing the prosecutors with information in June on federal government’s National Human Rights corruption within the National Immigration Commission (Comisión Nacional de Derechos Institute (Instituto Nacional de Migración, Humanos, CNDH), and working to strengthen INM). Authorities failed to investigate Solís’ the ability of indigenous rights groups to claims in depth, but moved the defamation work with the United Nations. The office case forward, according to the center. In hoped to implement a more ambitious pro- August, the center received telephoned death gram under the new administration. At this MEXICO 139 writing, the first segment of the technical rights. Article 39 of the agreement, for ex- cooperation program had yet to begin. ample, noted that cooperation would focus After the high commissioner’s visit, mainly on the development of civil society, Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Sum- the implementation of training and informa- mary or Arbitrary Executions Asma Jahangir tion measures to help institutions function released a report based on her July 1999 better, including in the human rights field, and mission to Mexico. “The Government has the promotion of human rights and demo- taken some initial steps to guarantee the right cratic principles. The agreement did not ex- to life of all persons,” the report found, but it pressly exclude the development of such concluded: “Unfortunately, these positive programs with nongovernmental organiza- undertakings have not been sufficient to cor- tions (NGOs), but neither did it specify that rect the situation, as extrajudicial killings and NGOs would take part in such activities. the impunity enjoyed by the perpetrators continue.” United States The Inter-American Commission on As in the recent past, the U.S. Depart- Human Rights issued two case reports on ment of State issued a strong report on the Mexico and accepted two new cases for situation of human rights in Mexico, noting: review. In its report on the 1986 murder by “Continued serious abuses include extrajudi- non-state actors of Pedro Peredo Valderrama, cial killings; disappearances; torture and other the commission blasted the Mexican govern- abuse; police corruption and alleged involve- ment for precisely the type of irregularities ment in narcotics-related abuses; poor prison that continued to plague the justice system: conditions; arbitrary arrest and detention; arrest warrants for the accused were not lengthy pretrial detention; lack of due pro- carried out until 1996, nine years after they cess; judicial inefficiency and corruption; were issued; one of the accused had escaped illegal searches; attacks and threats against arrest in 1988 with the aid of police; and a journalists; some self-censorship; assaults, judge acquitted two of the accused after harassment, and threats against human rights committing a series of irregularities, including monitors; violence and discrimination against relying on information never entered as evi- women; child prostitution and abuse; dis- dence and wrongly attributing exculpatory crimination against indigenous people; vio- statements to defendants. lence and discrimination against religious Another case handled by the commis- minorities; violence against homosexuals; lim- sion—involving Brig. Gen. Francisco its on worker rights; extensive child labor in Gallardo—remained unresolved. Incarcerated agriculture and in the informal economy; and since 1993 in retaliation for his call for im- trafficking in persons.” proved respect for human rights in the mili- Despite these criticisms, strong bilateral tary, the general faced a prison sentence of action to promote human rights appeared more than fourteen years. In 1996, the com- again to take a back seat to higher priority mission called for his release. issues such as economic relations, immigra- tion control, and narcotics. During a meeting European Union in August, President Bill Clinton told Presi- The Global Agreement between Mexico dent-elect Fox that the United States wished and the European Union entered into force in to see his government make progress on July, replacing an interim accord in place since human rights. 1999. The agreement included a standard democracy clause, which was nevertheless a subject of contention during negotiations. In addition, the Global Agreement included a chapter on political dialogue and cooperation programs—including issues related to human 140 PERU

widely considered to be a close ally of PERU Montesinos. The Fujimori re-election campaign was Human Rights Developments plagued by scandals and irregularities, and Peru experienced its most turbulent year only concerted international pressure ap- since 1992, when President Alberto Fujimori plied at the eleventh hour seems to have dissolved Congress and assumed dictatorial convinced Fujimori to concede a second round, powers. The circumstances in which Fujimori after inexplicable delays in the announcement was sworn in for his third consecutive term on of the first round result. He then had fifty July 28 were symptomatic of the deep crisis days to make reforms detailed by the electoral of legitimacy facing his government after a observation mission of the OAS before the decade in power. Police cordoned off the presidential run-off scheduled for May 28. Congress building and employed water can- As that date approached, opposition candi- non and teargas against thousands of demon- date Alejandro Toledo withdrew his candi- strators. As the president handed over his dacy, considering the conditions still to be sash and received it back again from his loyal unfair. The OAS mission, present in Lima congressional leader, Martha Hildebrandt, all since early March, asked the electoral board but six representatives of the opposition to postpone the date so that its minimum staged a noisy walk-out. Flawed from the conditions could be met, but the electoral outset because the president’s candidacy was board refused. Fujimori was then elected as evidently unconstitutional, the April 9 presi- the sole candidate. dential and congressional elections were among During the inauguration, the Lima police the most widely questioned the region had used excessive force against protesters. They seen in years. fired tear gas cartridges from moving vehicles The National Intelligence Service and roof-tops as well as from positions in the (Servicio de Inteligencia Nacional, SIN), street, sometimes at body height and directly headed by Fujimori’s shadowy advisor at protesters, and also used teargas in en- Vladimiro Montesinos, was widely blamed closed spaces. Several people were seriously for harassing opposition candidates, and injured when struck by cartridges, including manipulating the press, the courts, and the Aldo Gil Crisóstomo, who lost an eye, artist electoral bodies to secure Fujimori’s re-elec- and human rights activist Victor Delfín, and tion. On September 16, to public astonish- U.S. journalist Paul Vanotti. During the morn- ment, Fujimori announced that he would ing, unidentified individuals set fire to several dismantle the SIN and hold new elections in public buildings in the city center, including which he would not be a candidate. The the National Bank, in which six security announcement followed the broadcasting on guards perished. Armed gangs then attacked television of a video apparently showing firemen and destroyed fire-fighting equip- Montesinos bribing an opposition congress- ment, harassed journalists, and threatened man to defect to the government party. A human rights observers, who were prevented week later, Montesinos left for Panama, where from gaining access to the scene. Suspicions he unsuccessfully sought asylum. He re- of government complicity in the violence turned to Peru in October, just after the were aroused by the failure of the police to government proposed to extend a 1995 am- protect the buildings or to arrest any of those nesty law to cover human rights crimes com- responsible. On July 29, a pro-Fujimori mitted since 1995, and to write the law into congresswoman laid charges of “intellectual the constitution. At this writing the amnesty authorship” of the previous day’s violence had not been extended. Although Fujimori against opposition leader Alejandro Toledo, took some measures to distance himself from and Congress members Anel Townsend and Montesinos, he nonetheless replaced the chief Jorge del Castillo. of the armed forces in October with a general Fujimori and Montesinos subjected their PERU 141 actual or potential critics to legal harassment sion produced conclusions that amounted, in and character assassination. Through his in- effect, to a whitewash. The forgery scandal fluence over the courts and the taxation office, reinforced the lack of credibility of both the Fujimori had secured the support of several JNE and the ONPE. television channels and radio stations previ- Peru’s ombudsman, Jorge Santistevan, ously critical of him. Bogus criminal accusa- and the nongovernmental monitoring group tions were launched against independent Transparencia documented other serious ir- media, such as Peru’s most respected daily regularities in the campaign. These included newspaper, El Comercio. The hand of the the refusal of open-access television channels government in these maneuvers was dis- to sell air-time to opposition candidates (until guised by their appearance as boardroom the very end of the campaign, when a slight disputes between shareholders. In the prov- improvement was noted); the meager, biased inces, journalists suffered physical attacks and distorted news coverage of the opposi- for their opposition opinions. Popular tab- tion campaign; physical attacks on, and dis- loids widely believed to be sourced by the SIN ruption of, opposition rallies; and the misuse engaged in a campaign of scandalous allega- of state resources and personnel in support of tions against and lampooning of opposition the campaign conducted by Fujimori’s elec- candidates and the media supporting them. toral alliance, Peru 2000. The use of food-aid Many believed the constant barrage of mali- and other programs of assistance to the poor cious rumors to have destroyed the presiden- to garner support for, and deter votes against, tial chances of former Lima mayor Alberto Fujimori’s election was among the abuses Andrade. Government supporters shrugged documented. off these attacks claiming they were a legiti- A quick assessment carried out by mate exercise of freedom of expression. Transparencia on the evening of the elections, On February 29, El Comercio revealed April 9, indicated that neither candidate had that a pro-Fujimori councilor had arranged the come close to the 51 percent needed for a first forgery of more than one million signatures to round victory. The ONPE, however, delayed ensure the registration of the Peru 2000 Front twelve hours before giving out its first partial (Frente Peru 2000), a member of the pro- results, which then put Fujimori ahead of Fujimori electoral alliance, using names from Toledo and close to victory with 49.88 per- the 1998 municipal election register. The cent. It’s Lima computing centers remained scandal obliged the National Electoral Board closed until the afternoon of April 10, pre- (Jurado Nacional de Elecciones, JNE) to can- venting the OAS observers from monitoring cel the registration of the party. In addition, the vote count. The computing system pro- two candidates implicated in the fraud were duced extraordinary anomalies, such as the forced to resign, and two officials of the apparent registration of more than one million National Office of Electoral Procedures votes in excess of the number of registered (Oficina de Procesos Electorales, ONPE), voters. After firm pressure from the United which is responsible for the vote-tally and the States, the OAS, and some European coun- computation of the results, were dismissed. tries, the JNE finally announced on April 12 However, the electoral authorities failed to that a second round to the election would be carry out a thorough and transparent investi- held. Much longer delays affected the calcu- gation. Instead, the JNE handed responsibil- lation of the results of the congressional ity to special prosecutor Mirtha Trabucco elections. Cerna, whose investigation was inordinately The government employed various delayed, and finally accused only one low- means to harass and intimidate opposition level official, as well as some of those who media. On February 2, 2000, the 30th First participated in the fraud and later denounced Instance Court confiscated the transmitters it. On June 28, four months after the scandal of Radio 1160, owned by Genaro Delgado broke, a parliamentary investigative commis- Parker, implementing an embargo on behalf of 142 PERU

a creditor. The confiscation silenced broad- Operaciones Especiales, DIVOES) detained casts by a popular opposition political com- Alejandro Damián Trujillo Llontop on the mentator, César Hildebrandt. The program evening of March 1, 2000 in Lima while he went back on the air with a replacement was in the company of some friends, and took transmitter, but this too was embargoed and him away in a personnel carrier. On March removed on the orders of a provisional judge 14, his father denounced his “disappearance” without tenure and consequently vulnerable to the district attorney, but DIVOES denied to political pressure. having arrested anyone on March 1. On May Opposition print media that suffered 8, Trujillo’s relatives were informed that the judicial harassment included El Comercio and body of a twenty-five-year-old man had been Liberación, an outspoken opposition paper found on the beach in Callao on March 2. of which Hildebrandt was director. Liberación Fingerprint and other tests confirmed that it narrowly escaped closure when a provisional was Trujillo’s body. An autopsy indicated judge ordered the embargo and seizure of its that his death occurred within four hours of printing press. Almost simultaneously a Lima his arrest on March 1, and that the body bore judge ordered the seizure of bank accounts injuries consistent with torture. and printing presses belonging to the Editora The mandate of the commission set up Correo publishing house, which publishes El by President Fujimori in 1996 to recommend Correo de Piura, following a U.S. $600,000 presidential pardons for hundreds of inno- defamation suit brought by a pro-Fujimori cent prisoners wrongly charged or convicted congressman against the paper. In August, under the draconian anti-terrorist laws was the director of the company that publishes not renewed when it expired at the end of Expreso, a pro-Fujimori tabloid, launched a 1999. Although the commission had secured U.S. $1 million defamation suit against the release of 481 prisoners, more than fifty Hildebrandt and two other Liberación jour- applications approved for release by the nalists. commission awaited decision by the presi- Opposition journalists also received dent, while four or five times that number had anonymous death threats. On June 8, Monica been presented by nongovernmental human Vecco, an investigative reporter for La rights groups. Those released received no República, Peru’s leading opposition tabloid, compensation for the serious abuses they had received a threatening e-mail message from a suffered. At the end of August, the Supreme group calling itself the April 5 Group (a Council of Military Justice accepted an ap- reference to the date that Fujimori assumed peal by U.S. citizen Lori Berenson, convicted dictatorial power in 1992). La República had by a “faceless” military court to life impris- published a report that day by Vecco linking onment for treason. In what was widely officials of Peru 2000 to the SIN. Four interpreted as a gesture to U.S. opinion, journalists from Lima’s Santa Rosa radio Berenson was to be retried in a civilian court station were physically attacked or threat- on a charge of terrorism. ened in separate incidents in May. They had reported on attempts by Peru 2000 to pres- Defending Human Rights sure attendants at soup kitchens in poor Human rights ombudsman Jorge neighborhoods to vote for Fujimori’s re- Santistevan de Noriega was attacked in the election. Physical attacks and death threats pro-Fujimori media in early March when he against radio journalists were also common in transmitted allegations about the forgery of rural areas. signatures to the JNE and the ONPE and Despite a law outlawing torture promul- asked them to investigate. Cabinet ministers gated in 1998, the practice remained wide- and pro-Fujimori congressmen claimed that spread and perpetrators were rarely con- Santistevan had sought to discredit the elec- victed. In one incident, police belonging to the tions by leaking information to El Comercio, Division of Special Operations (División de and hinted that they might press for his PERU 143 impeachment. However, as President Fujimori Organization of American States later acknowledged, the constitution empow- The OAS electoral observation mission ers the ombudsman to monitor the actions of led by former Guatemalan foreign affairs public entities, including those of the electoral minister Eduardo Stein conducted a forth- authorities. Santistevan’s office, together with right, transparent, and proactive observation Transparencia, played a key role in monitor- of the electoral process. Unlike earlier OAS ing irregularities during the election campaign. missions, whose shortcomings had been His comment that the elections had a “factory widely criticized, Stein’s team covered pre- defect”—a reference to Fujimori’s unconsti- electoral conditions for a full month before the tutional candidacy—irritated the government, April 9 vote, met continuously with the but after the firm intervention of the OAS, the electoral bodies in an effort to obtain fairer U.S. State Department and several European conditions, and reported publicly on progress ambassadors, the sniping at Santistevan in periodic bulletins. The mission served as a ceased. model for future regional election observa- On June 12, the wife of Jesús Agreda tion. Paredes, president of the Tacna Association An extraordinary session of the Perma- for the Defense of Human Rights, received a nent Council, held in Washington, D.C. on telephone call from an unidentified man who May 31, rejected a proposal by the United said, “Tell your husband not to meddle in the States and Costa Rica for an ad hoc meeting Pachia case, because if he does we’ll kill him.” of foreign ministers under Resolution 1080— Agreda was acting on behalf of the widow of regarding the OAS’s response to the interrup- Nelson Díaz Marcos, a detainee who had died tion of democracy in member countries—to in custody allegedly as a result of torture. discuss sanctions against Peru. The vote During the second week of August, against the motion showed that most member members of the Legal Defense Institute states opposed taking punitive measures (Instituto de Defensa Legal, IDL), a well- against another member state because of an respected human rights NGO, received anony- unfair election, so revealing the limits of the mous death threats by e-mail. One of the OAS’s effectiveness in responding to inter- messages, also received by political commen- ruptions of the democratic process that fall tator Carlos Ivan Degregori, said, “Die, short of a coup d’etat. bastard!”According to Degregori, friends of The political situation in Peru was dis- his had received a warning that “you are being cussed intensely at the annual General As- watched and we know all your movements. sembly of the OAS. On June 5, the General We know who your friends are and what they Assembly agreed unanimously to send imme- are doing.....you keep away. You are in time.... diately a high-level mission to Peru, consist- First warning.” The message came form a ing of OAS Secretary General César Gaviria group calling itself Colina 2000 (The Colina and Canadian Foreign Minister Lloyd group was a notorious army death squad that Axworthy, to explore options for reforming operated in the 1990s). the electoral process, restoring the indepen- dence of the judiciary, and strengthening The Role of the International freedom of the press. Reflecting the reluc- Community tance of the General Assembly to confront The Organization of American States, the illegitimacy of the election, both delegates the European Community, the European made clear on their arrival in Lima on June 27 Parliament, and individual states, including that they did not intend to propose a time- the United States, Canada, Japan, and several table for new elections. The mission left two European countries, issued statements ex- days later, having agreed with the government pressing concern about irregularities in Peru’s and opposition a list of twenty-nine reforms elections. to be implemented. The OAS established a permanent mission in Lima, headed by 144 PERU

Eduardo Latorre, former foreign minister of cratic society. Without them, our relation- the Dominican Republic, to broker the re- ship with Peru will inevitably be affected,” forms and assist in their implementation. The President Clinton warned, while a State De- September bribery scandal, however, abruptly partment spokeswoman stated, “we do not changed the picture. Following President see the election as being valid. The manner in Fujimori’s surprise announcement of new which the Fujimori regime handled these presidential and congressional elections, OAS- problems is a serious threat to the Inter- sponsored talks between the government and American system and its commitment to the opposition led to an agreement at the end democracy.” In Congress, both Democrats of October to hold the elections by April 8, and Republicans backed firm action if Fujimori 2001. continued to defy international opinion. On The Inter-American Commission on April 7, Congress passed Joint Resolution Human Rights’s Second Report on Human 43, which warned that if the international Rights in Peru, published in June, noted that community judged the elections not to be free “the electoral process in Peru clearly consti- and fair, “the United States will review and tutes an irregular interruption of the demo- modify as appropriate its political, economic, cratic process,” and called for new elections. and military relations with Peru and will work with other democracies in this hemisphere United Nations and elsewhere toward a restoration of democ- In November 1999, the United Nations racy in Peru.”After the unwillingness of other Committee against Torture published its con- OAS members to support the U.S. proposal cluding observations on the report submitted to apply Resolution 1080, however, the by Peru under article 19 of the Convention Clinton Administration did not persist. against Torture. It expressed concern about On March 9, U.S. officials detained Maj. continuing allegations of torture, the authori- Tomás Ricardo Anderson Kohatsu, a Peru- ties’ failure to investigate and prosecute those vian army intelligence agent implicated in responsible, and the lack of independence of gross human rights violations. After a light- members of the judiciary who lacked security ning operation by U.S.-based human rights of tenure. In January 2000, the Committee on groups to gather evidence, immigration offi- the Rights of the Child published its conclu- cials arrested Anderson at Houston airport sions on Peru’s report under the Convention before he could board a flight back to Lima. on the Rights of the Child. It regarded laws Overwhelming evidence implicated Ander- enacted to protect children from domestic and son in the torture in 1997 of Leonor La Rosa sexual violence as positive steps. However, it Bustamante, a former intelligence agent who criticized decree laws passed in 1998 that was left paraplegic as a result of the torture. lower the age of criminal responsibility for The Department of Justice was preparing to children to below the limits permitted in the prosecute Anderson under the Torture Act convention. 18 USC 2340A, that allows for the extrater- ritorial prosecution of individuals implicated United States in torture. However, in a regrettable decision, The Clinton Administration played a the Department of State blocked the arrest, key behind-the-scenes role in the negotia- claiming that Anderson enjoyed immunity tions at the meeting of the OAS General because he had been brought to the U.S. by the Assembly that resulted in the Gaviria- government of Peru to participate in a hearing Axworthy mission. But the decision to send before the OAS Inter-American Commission a mission was a weaker response than ex- on Human Rights. Anderson was released and pected, given the strong nature of the first allowed to leave the U.S. after being held for White House and State Department reactions questioning for twelve hours. to the May 28 election result. “Free, fair, and open elections are the foundations of a demo- PERU/VENEZUELA 145

European Union from abroad were not members of “civil The European Union (E.U.) withdrew society,” thereby depriving them of the right its election observers from Peru after the JNE to participate in the nomination of candidates announced that it would not accept recom- for the Supreme Court, to be ombudsman, and mendations for a postponement. The E.U. for other important government posts. Trade stated that the elections would not be credible union independence was called into question or satisfy international standards, and that in early September, when President Chávez acceptance of democratic principles was a harshly criticized the leadership of the Ven- pre-condition for the development of its ezuelan Workers’ Confederation (Central de political and economic ties with Peru. Trabajadores Venezolanos, CTV) and an- nounced plans to create a parallel workers’ movement dominated by the ruling party. In the aftermath of disastrous flooding VENZUELA and mud slides on the Caribbean coast in December 1999, in which at least 20,000 Human Rights Developments people died, the armed forces went on a The government of former paratrooper murderous rampage against suspected loot- Hugo Chávez Frías, comfortably endorsed ers in the state of Vargas. The respected by 59 percent of the vote in general elections nongovernmental human rights group, Ven- held on July 30, failed to mount an effective ezuelan Program for Education and Action on response to Venezuela’s deep-seated human Human Rights (Programa Venezolano de rights problems, in particular the ingrained Educación-Acción en Derechos Humanos, abusiveness of its police forces and appalling PROVEA), reported that army paratroop- prison conditions. The government intro- ers, the political police known as the Direc- duced ambitious plans for prison reform, but torate of Police Intelligence Services attention to overcrowding in Venezuela’s (Dirección de Servicios de Inteligencia Policial, prisons did not result in a significant decline DISIP), and members of the National Guard in inmate violence. Police killings of criminal were responsible for execution-style killings. suspects increased from 1999, and some The story became the first major human measures authorities proposed to combat rights test of the Chávez government. At first, violent crime raised serious human rights Chávez dismissed the reports as “suspi- concerns. cious” and “superficial,” but the evidence Introduced in December 1999, the con- soon obliged the president and other top stitution included forty-two articles protect- government officials to acknowledge the se- ing human rights, including some of the most riousness of the situation. In January, the advanced in the hemisphere. However, it also ombudsman of Vargas state announced that greatly expanded the power of the presidency more than sixty people had been executed. and enhances the political role of the armed Their bodies were apparently buried along forces. The wholesale dismissal of judges, with those of flood victims. Chávez’s revolutionary rhetoric and his ver- In January, PROVEA lodged habeas bal jousts with press critics raised questions corpus writs on behalf of four victims who about his government’s respect for the rule of had “disappeared” after being detained in law and tolerance of criticism. For the first Vargas state: Roberto Javier Hernández Paz, time in many years, freedom of expression Marco Antonio Monasterio Pérez, José Fran- emerged as a human rights issue in Venezuela. cisco Rivas, and Oscar José Blanco Romero. Human rights groups and trade unions Roberto Hernández “disappeared” on De- also came under pressure during the year. In cember 23, after being arrested in his home by separate decisions in June and August, the DISIP agents, who showed no warrant. Ac- Supreme Court determined that nongovern- cording to testimonies collected by PROVEA mental organizations that received funding and other human rights groups, his uncle 146 VENEZUELA

heard a shot and Hernández’s shouts begging warned that judges who followed the proce- the agents not to kill him. He was taken away dure would be in breach of the law. wounded in a truck. A local judge ruled that In July, the temporary legislature ap- since DISIP’s director had denied his arrest, proved amendments to the Code of Criminal the court had no evidence on which to pro- Procedure that would restore the police’s ceed. The courts did, however, confirm the powers to make arrests on their own author- arrests of Monasterio and Blanco, who were ity if they had reasonable grounds to suspect detained on December 21 by a paratroop a person’s involvement in a crime. Under the battalion and handed over the same day to the code’s existing provisions, police were au- DISIP. The DISIP, however, said it had no thorized to make arrests only on the orders of record of having received them. The body of a judge or if the suspect was caught in the act. another victim, Luis Rafael Bastardo, was The amendments gave judges the power to exhumed in March from a cemetery. He had hold suspects detained on suspicion for six been shot several times. days before deciding whether to charge or Extrajudicial executions of criminal sus- release them. In the past, such provisions pects by police and military forces continued allowed police ample opportunity to force to be a major problem in other parts of suspects to confess. Venezuela. The Ministry of the Interior stated Prison conditions remained inhumane, in July that more than 500 suspected crimi- and prisons continued to be extremely vio- nals had died in armed clashes with the police lent. Between October 1999 and March 2000, during the first six months of the year. How- for instance, the press reported 169 deaths in ever, according to human rights groups, police prison. Earlier prison violence had prompted frequently staged violent crime scenes to the creation of an inter-institutional commis- conceal the execution of a suspect who was sion that included nongovernmental, congres- unarmed or in police custody. Based in part sional, and ministerial representatives. The on press sources, PROVEA said it knew of commission found El Rodeo and Yare prisons seventy-six reports of violations of the right to be completely under the control of the to life during the same period. The number inmates, who even had the keys to their own represented an increase of nearly 50 percent cells. In El Rodeo, in which forty-one prison- over 1999. ers were killed between October 1999 and Pressure from the ombudsman and hu- March 2000, only four officials were guarding man rights defenders averted proposals by 1,800 prisoners. politicians to introduce “fast track” justice The work of the commission and the for criminal offenders. In February, the then- new Code of Criminal Procedure led to the governor of the Federal District, Hernán release of thousands of prisoners. In October Grüber Odreman, proposed to reactivate the 1999, a Ministry of Justice official said that infamous “loitering statute,” known as the 2,526 prisoners had benefited. According to Law on Vagrants and Delinquents, which had figures compiled by PROVEA, by the end of been declared unconstitutional in 1997. That 1999 the total prison population had fallen to law gave the police the power to detain people 15,227, compared to 24,833 in September in the street caught committing crimes or 1998, while the percentage of prisoners await- merely suspected of vagrancy, and send them ing trial fell from sixty-four to fifty-two. to prison without trial for up to five years. In However, according to PROVEA, the mea- early March, Dávila said he planned to set up sures lacked clear selection criteria and insti- control points in four sectors of Caracas tutional coordination. Justice officials admit- where a team of judges, prosecutors, defense ted that many errors had been made in granting lawyers, and representatives of the ombuds- releases. As a result, politicians blamed the man would be on duty around the clock to rising violent crime rate on the country’s dispatch justice to offenders in ten minute progressive new code of criminal procedure. trials. Chief Court Inspector René Molina Leading criminologists, however, asserted VENEZUELA 147 that the fault lay not in the code itself, but in to appear in court in August. The publishing its implementation. ban remained in force at this writing. In March, President Chávez announced In April, the Inter-American Commis- a national public security plan that earmarked sion on Human Rights issued precautionary the equivalent approximately U.S. $9 million measures in favor of Ben Amí Fihman and for prison reconstruction and re-equipment. Faitha Marina Nahmens, director and re- The European Union signed a cooperation porter, respectively, of the magazine Exceso. agreement for prison improvements with the A defamation suit against them for the pub- Ministry of Justice. lication of an article about the murder of a Freedom of expression became a pre- businessman had been in the courts since carious right during the year. The Inter-Ameri- 1997. In February, a judge ordered their arrest can Press Association (IAPA) complained in to make them appear in court despite the March to President Chávez about a “climate expiry of the statute of limitations under the of hostility toward the press,” after the presi- new Code of Criminal Procedure. dent persistently engaged in belligerent at- tacks on his press critics. “If they attack me, Defending Human Rights let them watch out, they’ll get as good as they Venezuela’s Defender of the People, or give” and “what there is behind the supposed Ombudsman, which position was created freedom of expression is a freedom of ma- under the new constitution as an official nipulation,” were typical remarks made by human rights watchdog body, was estab- the president. The IAPA expressed concern lished in December under the leadership of about article 58 of the 1999 constitution, Dilia Parra Guillén, an attorney and former which establishes the right to “timely, truth- member of the human rights department of ful, and impartial information.” It could allow the Attorney General’s Office. Some of its the courts or the government to judge what senior officials, including its director general, information should be disseminated and serve Juan Navarrete Monasterio, had been mem- as the basis for prior censorship, according to bers of the nongovernmental human rights the group. community. Other officials were appointed Under current laws, journalists con- to ombudsman posts in each of Venezuela’s victed of defamation could be sent to prison states. The ombudsman expressed forthright and prevented from exercising their profes- critical opinions on several government-backed sion forever. Tobías Carrero, a prominent crime-fighting initiatives that would have businessman with close ties to the Chávez violated due process principles, and was government, used criminal defamation suits influential in pressing for a full investigation in an effort to silence press criticism. In of atrocities in Vargas state. August, a judge ordered Pablo López Ulacio In April, Hoover Quintero and Suilvida placed under house arrest for refusing to Rausseo, members of the human rights office attend a court hearing in a defamation suit filed of the dioceses of Ciudad Guyana, received in October 1999 by Carrero, owner of the repeated threatening phone calls. They had Multinacional de Seguros insurance com- denounced abuses by members of the Tech- pany. Articles published in September 1999 nical Judicial Police in Ciudad Guyana. in La Razón, of which López is editor-in- chief, accused Carrero of benefiting from The Role of the International favoritism in the award of government con- Community tracts and the auctioning of state-owned ratio stations. In June 2000, the judge prohibited United Nations López from publishing any further informa- In November 1999, the United Nations tion on Multinacional de Seguros, and placed Committee on the Rights of the Child pub- him under house arrest. Another judge lifted lished its concluding observation on the order then reimposed it when López failed Venezuela’s report on implementation of the 148 VENEZUELA

Convention on the Rights of the Child. The committee expressed its concern about “al- leged cases of killings of children during anti- crime operations.” It also expressed concern about “the persistent allegations about chil- dren being detained in conditions which amount to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, and about children being physically ill-treated by members of the police or the armed forces.”

Organization of American States The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights brokered a friendly settlement between relatives of the victims of a 1992 massacre in the prison of Catia and the Ven- ezuelan government. It included a promise by the government to carry out several impor- tant prison reforms.

United States The Clinton administration continued to treat Chávez and his “peaceful revolution” with caution, and did not comment on human rights, except in the annual State Department Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 1999. The report concluded that “al- though there were improvements in some areas, serious problems remain.” In a letter to U.S. Ambassador John Maisto, Venezuelan Foreign Minister José Vicente Rangel criti- cized the report for being out-of-date and unilateral, and said that it did not fairly reflect the political changes occurring in the country. The United States objected to President Chávez’s visit with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in August. Chávez was the first head of state to visit Baghdad since the Gulf War. Chávez claimed that the visit was related only to Venezuela’s role as a member of the Orga- nization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). VENEZUELA 149 150 VENEZUELA