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 Hector Antonio Ventura
According to
preliminary reports, Ventura was stabbed to
death. Another victim, who was with Ventura, was attacked but
survived. Reports say that the assailants were at least two men, who entered
the back room of the house where Ventura and his friend
slept and attacked them.
According to a 1994
report by the Joint Group for the Investigation of Illegally Armed Groups with
Political Motivations in El Salvador, a Peace Accords
initiative in response to the reappearance of armed groups after 1992, there are three
key elements that qualify a political murder. These elements are that the
victim is seen as a member of the political opposition, that the murder is
planned with the goal of killing the specific victim, and that the assailants
are granted impunity by the State. Because Ventura was a recently
freed political prisoner and because the attack was not a random incident but
demonstrated prior planning, the murder suggests political motives.
Ventura was killed
days after having agreed to speak at the Day Against Impunity, an event planned
to take place this coming July 2nd in Suchitoto, on the anniversary of last
years capture of the Suchitoto 14 by police.
Yesterday in a
press conference, Salvadoran legal and community organizations demanded that
the Attorney General and National Civilian Police begin an extensive
investigation of the case, one that investigates not only the assailants but
also the intellectual authors of the assassination. They also request that the
Ombudsperson for Human Rights act to protect the lives of the witnesses and
verify that the case is investigated thoroughly.
Ventura´s murder is
one of a number of assassinations of political opposition leaders and activists
in El Salvador in the last few
years, and one in a recent series of murders of young people in historically
government opposition communities in the Suchitoto area during the last two
weeks.
Lorena Araujo
Martinez, president of CRIPDES said yesterday: ¨These atrocious crimes
demonstrate why we must demand a complete investigation of this and the other
murders with possible political motivations. We ask the national and
international community, as they have stood with the Suchitoto 14 throughout
the last 10 months, to keep working in solidarity to achieve justice for the
victims of these crimes.¨
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