Human Rights Scorned in Central America
by Nefer Munoz
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by Nefer Munoz |
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(IPS) SAN JOSE --
Central
America earned low marks this year in the area of human rights, as impunity for perpetrators of abuses remained the norm in most of the region, poverty grew and social violence continued to plague the area's 35 million people.
Experts consulted by IPS said that over the past year, the countries that caused the greatest concern were Guatemala, due to the growing social and economic insecurity, and Nicaragua, because of the fragile nature of its institutions. Corruption scandals in which no one was punished, studies that revealed that one in two Central Americans were living in poverty, Dengue fever's growing death toll and pressure from the United States for Panama to cooperate with the Plan Colombia military and anti-drug strategy were the outstanding issues this year in the region. "In the year 2000, there was no real political will among leaders in the region to enforce respect for human rights," Celia Medrano, general coordinator of the Commission for the Defence of Human Rights in Central America (CODEHUCA), told IPS. Medrano said no progress was made in the human rights situation in the region this year. In fact, she added, the current trends have given rise to fears of setbacks. The extent of the social instability in the region was highlighted by a study by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), which reported that 58 percent of murders in the hemisphere were committed in Central America, mainly Guatemala (a country of 11 million) and El Salvador (population 7 million). Laura Chinchilla, an adviser to the United Nations Development Program's (UNDP) regional justice system project, told IPS that Central America was the most violent subregion in the Americas. UNDP and IDB figures demonstrate that in the face of the critical level of public security, increasing numbers of Central Americans have decided to take justice into their own hands, as seen by the more than 2 million guns estimated to be in the hands of civilians, and the growing number of lynchings in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. "This year, the human rights situation worsened at all levels in Guatemala, especially in the areas of civil and political rights," Mario Polanco, director of a local human rights organization, the Mutual Support Group (GAM), told IPS. Polanco has survived two attempts on his life in the past two months, while other members of GAM were the targets of assassination attempts as well. GAM documented 28 extrajudicial executions, 300 death threats and three forced disappearances in Guatemala this year. One of the "disappeared" victims was university professor Mayra GutiŽrrez Hern‡ndez. With respect to Nicaragua, the experts consulted said the absence of solid state institutions and the steady diet of corruption scandals were the biggest concerns of human rights advocates. The highest-profile scandal this year was the case of Byron Jerez, a senior official in the government of Arnoldo Aleman and the leading figure in the so-called "checazo" or "check scandal" involving the alleged diversion of public funds to personal accounts. No one was brought to justice in connection with the case. "Impunity is not something of the past. It is present throughout Central America, and in El Salvador forms an integral part of the three powers of the state," human rights activist Alma Benitez, the author of several studies on human rights, told IPS. As an illustration of that, Benitez cited the case of Francisco Merino, a former vice-president of El Salvador and a current legislator who, in a state of drunkenness, shot and injured a police woman this year but was not stripped of his legislative immunity to be tried in court. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reported this year that 20 percent of El Salvador's children were malnourished. The World Bank's World Development Report 2000/2001 released in September reported that half of Central America's people scraped by on less than two dollars a day. Manuel Jimenez, a member of Panama's Human Rights Commission, told IPS that one of the biggest causes of worry in Central America was the Plan Colombia, billed as an anti-drug and peace program by Colombian President AndrŽs Pastrana and heavily funded by mainly military aid from the United States. "We believe the United States has undertaken a campaign to draw the Panamanian government, which has remained neutral with respect to the Plan Colombia, into the strategy," said Jimenez, who asserted that his country should maintain its policy of neutrality towards its neighbor's internal armed conflict. Panamanian towns and villages on the border with Colombia have suffered attacks by armed groups in the past few months, which Jimenez said has served as Washington's pretext to ask the government of Mireya Moscoso to take part in the Plan Colombia. Nevertheless, the human rights situation in the region has improved since the civil war years, the 1980s and early 1990s, when much of the region was marked by internal conflict. "It is an advantage that the countries of Central America are in democracy now," Costa Rican Foreign Minister Roberto Rojas told IPS. According to the minister, the region has made progress in cleaning up its human rights record over the past year.
Albion Monitor
December 31, 2000 (http://www.monitor.net/monitor) All Rights Reserved. Contact rights@monitor.net for permission to use in any format. |
