The long way to restorative justice in El Salvador

Fabian Salvioli, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the promotion of truth, justice, reparation and guarantees recently visited El Salvador and asked to remove the name of Col. Jose Domingo Monterrosa from the Infantry Brigade in the department of San Miguel.

According to the UN Truth Commision, Monterrosa was the commander of the Atlacatl Batallion that massacred many innocents in the department of Morazan. 552 children among them, according to a government census published in 2017:

In 2018, witnesses were finally able to testify in court, and their accounts of what happened in El Mozote and the surrounding areas in December 1981 confirm the scale of the massacre, the forensic evidence, the involvement of the Atlacatl Battalion, and the content of a speech given by Lt. Col. Domingo Monterrosa in the town where the massacre began. In his speech he declared that he had come to “cleanse the towns in that area.” The prosecutors are focused on individualizing responsibility, to prove that there were clearly delineated Government and military authorities who planned, carried out, and covered up the massacre.

(SOURCE)

The Salvadoran Army has only given superficial responses even when Judge Jorge Alberto Guzman explicitly asked them to comply.

For that reason, Salvioli makes the following observations:
  1. It is not believable that the Salvadoran Army has no information about their operatives. “The military files must be open”, he asked after finding out that the army has not given any response about their whereabouts in several occasions.
  2. 27 years after signing the Peace Accords, it is still noticeable that El Salvador is in debt with its victims.
  3. The State has the obligation to sanction those responsibles and the Legislative Assambly can not hinder this process. He asked the members of the legislative assembly to discard the proposal of a new National Reconciliation Law, seeking for a new “amnesty” for those involved in the assessination of monsignor Romero, the massacre of El Mozote and others, including those attributed to the guerrilla.

 

Even though former president Mauricio Funes acknowledged and apologized for the State’s responsibility in the massacre, the man he elected as ministry of National Defense, David Munguia Payes, decided to share the following words:
“These events from the past have been distorted with time and some of them have turned into myths”.
“Just like when an order is given to a person and then to another, it’s no longer the same”.

 

He also said that he respects the ad-hoc commission of the Legislative Assembly studying the aforementioned reconciliation law because congresspeople are representing the people and he does not see a conflict of interests.
“If a member (of the commission) is mentioned by the Truth Commission that could give them even more experience to recommend how to create this law”, he concluded.

 

On the other hand, Chalatenango is getting ready to commemorate one of the biggest massacres that took place in the Sumpul River.
Only by honoring those who were murdered, our history of violence, the inequality we live in, the validity of the survivor’s pain and responding to their needs we’ll be able to see a difference in a country like El Salvador, used to see its people going elsewhere in order to find a better life.

 

 

GET NOTIFICATIONS OF NEW POSTS
RSS
Follow by Email

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *