By Heba Girgis
Impunity Watch Reporter, South America

CARACAS, Venezuela—Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez recently announced that Venezuela will be withdrawing from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, also known as the IACrtHR. The IACrtHR makes up the human rights protection system of the Organization of American States, which works to uphold and protect basic human rights and freedoms in the Americas.

Chavez also noted that the country will now begin its one-year waiting period. Once the waiting period has passed, Venezuela will no longer be a party of the American Convention on Human Rights. The country is also removing itself from the Costa Rica Inter-American Court of Human Rights as well as the Washington Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

Chavez made this decision after the Inter-American Court of Human Rights gave a ruling that he found to be “a travesty of justice.” The Costa Rica-based court held that Venezuela violated the rights of a prisoner, Raul Dias, who was convicted of bombing a diplomatic government office in Venezuela’s capital city of Caracas in 2003. The court found that Diaz was being held in inhumane jail conditions.

“Venezuela is pulling out of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights out of dignity,” said Chavez during a military ceremony in the Venezuelan town of Puerto Cabello. Chavez said that the court was ruling on the side of terrorism by ruling in favor of Diaz.

“We are an independent country,” he said, as Chavez also explained that this decision would allow Venezuela to assert and construct a fuller sense of national liberty and independence.

On the other side, Venezuelan human rights activists are concerned that if the Venezuelan government goes through with this decision and withdraws from the Organization of American States, victims of future human rights abuses will have fewer venues in which to seek protection and raise their cases.

U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland spoke to reporters last week and said that if Venezuela withdraws from the human rights court the country “would be sending a deeply regrettable message about its commitment to human rights and democracy.”

In early May, 2012, Rupert Colville, the spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, urged Venezuela to cooperate with regional and international human rights mechanisms and organizations and to stay away from any decisions that would weaken individual protections against human rights violations. The country will go through its one-year waiting period before fully pulling out of the Organization of American States.

 

For further information, please see:

ABC News – Venezuela to Pull Out of OAS Human Rights Bodies – 27 July 2012

BBC News – Venezuela to Withdraw From Regional Human Rights Court – 25 July 2012

UN News Centre – UN Concerned Over Venezuela’s Possible Withdrawal From Human Rights Body – 4 May 2012

Venezuela Analysis – Venezuela to Withdraw From OAS’s Human Rights Court – 30 April 2012

By Margaret Janelle Hutchinson
Impunity Watch Reporter, South America

 LIMA, Peru – President Ollanta Humala has announced that the State Prosecutor will appeal a 3-2 ruling handed down by the Supreme Court last Friday which reduced prison sentences for the country’s former spy chief, Vladimiro Montesinos, and members of a paramilitary death squad known as the Grupo Colina.

The Colina group, wearing masks, machine-gunned 15 people, including an 8-year-old boy, in the courtyard of a tenement building in Lima’s Barrios Altos district in 1991 and kidnapped, tortured and murdered nine students and one professor at La Cantuta University in 1992.

Other crimes of which they were accused included the murder in May 1992 of 10 small farmers in the Santa Valley, north of Lima, allegedly at the personal request of General Hermoza, and the assassination in December 1992 of Pedro Huillca, the influential leader of the national workers’ union, CGTP, who had called for a national strike against then President Fujimori’s privatization efforts.  The death and dismemberment of intelligence agent Mariella Barreto also was attributed to members of the squad.

In 2004, investigative journalist Ricard Uceda published Muerte en el Pentagonito, a well-documented report on the human rights violations by the military intelligence service in their fight against terrorism between 1982 and 1993, with key details of the death squads kidnappings, torture and incineration of victims in the basement of the military headquarters in the San Borja district of Lima.

Released in 2011, a meticulously detailed documentary, La Cantuta en la Boca del Diablo, traces the work of investigative journalist Edmundo Cruz into the death of the university students and professor, who were pulled out of their dorm rooms at the Chosica campus before dawn and never seen again.  Some of their scattered remains were found near the water treatment plant in east Lima and more remains were found between the hillsides on the road to Cieneguilla.  In some cases, confirmation of their whereabouts was only made by matching keys to their dorm lockers, found buried among the pieces of lime-bleached bones in the desert.

The Supreme Court’s argument to annul the qualification of crime against humanity was that the squad was acting as part of a chain of command within the army and that they were fighting terrorists.

At the time, Peru was locked in a bloody conflict with the Shining Path, a Maoist-inspired insurgency that sought to topple the government system.

The president of the Supreme Court, Javier Villa Stein, said that while the killings were human rights crimes, they are not necessarily crimes against humanity.

Peruvians have reacted with widespread anger and are voicing their opposition in the streets of Lima. In a video victims’ family members spoke out against impunity. One woman interviewed said: “[The judge] says that it is not crime against humanity. But what about my son? He was eight years old and they shot him with seven bullets in his body and one in his face.”

The President’s wife, Nadine Heredia tweeted: “Crimes of the Colina group and their leaders should not be forgotten. This ruling stains the honor of our country!”

“To kill a child is a terrible crime but that doesn’t convert it into a crime against humanity,” Stein said.

Human rights attorney Gloria Cano, who represents 14 victims of the Colina group, said the ruling contradicts a 2001 decision by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights that deemed the killings crimes against humanity.

“In our country, the military are in prison while the terrorists are already out,” Stein said.

Writing for the court, Judge Javier Villa Stein said the men could not be made to serve sentences for crimes against humanity because the prosecutor in the case had not specifically sought to convict them on that charge. The prosecutor refutes that, however, as do court documents filed in 2005.

In 2009, ex-President Alberto Fujimori, who took office in 1990, was found guilty on charges for sanctioning the death squad.

The Supreme Court’s decision trimmed the prison sentences of 15 former military men as well as Mr Montesinos, who as national security adviser to Mr. Fujimori helped him maintain power through violence, bribery and intimidation.

The court also overturned the aggravated murder conviction and 15-year sentence of Montesino’s army intelligence chief, Alberto Pinto, for providing financial and logistical support to the Colina group.

Pinto was released from prison on Tuesday.

Defendants convicted of crimes against humanity in Peru are not eligible for parole. Those convicted of murder are eligible after serving two-thirds of their sentence.

Mr. Montesinos himself will not be eligible for parole any time soon. He has been convicted of a series of other crimes including running guns to Colombian rebels.

Peruvian courts have found that the Colina group committed 53 murders of supposed left-wing rebel sympathizers and other civilians from 1991 to 1996 with the knowledge and aid of high-ranking officials who gave the group state funds, medical insurance, cars, weapons and training.

For further information, please see:

Al Jazeera – Peru: Outrage over death squad decision – 26 July 2012

Fox News Latino – Peruvians Outraged Over Possible Release of Death Squad – 25 July 2012

Morning Star – Court Ruling Court Free Peruvian Death Squad Members – 25 July 2012

Peruvian Times – Humala Says State Attorney to Appeal Supreme Court Ruling that Lightens Sentence of Death Squad and Montesinos – 24 July 2012

By Margaret Janelle Hutchinson
Impunity Watch Reporter, South America

BOGOTA, Colombia – Four Nasa Indians who had taken up arms with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC appeared before a group of roughly 1,000 elders and residents of Nasa reserves in the embattled southwestern province of Cauca over the weekend.  The defendants, one minor and three adults, were convicted of attacking civilians and disrupting the “harmony” of the community. The minor was sentenced to 10 lashes and each adult received 30 lashes.

Watch: FARC rebels flogged by Colombian tribe. (Video Courtesy of Al Jazeera)

The trial, part of a push by the indigenous tribe to get both FARC rebels and government forces off their land, is lawful under Colombia’s 1991 constitution, which promises autonomy to the nation’s 102 indigenous ethnic groups.

The Nasa, also known as the Paez, do not consider the sentence to be a “punishment”, but rather see the flogging as a “solution” that allows the defendants to restore balance to their relationship with the community and with their spirit.

Marcos Yule, the governor of the Toribio reservation, explained that the solutions that are normally imposed under the indigenous law are the “cepo,” a wooden structure that presses on the legs or hands, temporary burial where only the head is above ground, the “whip to beat the illness, counseling and even … exile.”

The four FARC fighters were whipped on the lower half of their bodies, causing serious wounds on the backs of their legs that were treated by community medics.

“The adults received the 30 (lashes) but the minor could not take the 10 and it was lowered to half that, because … he is 16,” Yule said.

The four had been held since last Wednesday, when members of the Nasa Indigenous Guard apprehended them in the mountains near Toribio with rifles and explosives.

The trial is the latest chapter in Colombia’s half-century old internal struggle.

Many Colombians have felt far removed from the armed conflict between the government and the FARC.  In truth, much of the violence plays out in remote regions, having the greatest impact on the most marginalized members of society.

At least 33 indigenous people have been murdered this year in Colombia, compared with 118 in all of 2011 with Nasa Indians of the southwestern province of Cauca accounting for the largest number of fatalities.

When Nasa Indians stormed a military communications base in the southwest province of Cauca late last week, the reality of the fighting was again brought to the forefront.

President Juan Manuel Santos, feeling the political ramifications of the Nasa’s actions, alleges that some of the 115,000 Nasa are allied with rebels of the leftist FARC, which authorities say purchases the high-quality marijuana that many indigenous grow.  On July 18, President Santos released an intercepted email supposedly written in May by a local FARC commander, which called for the “spread of propaganda in the municipalities of northern Cauca so that locals demand the withdrawal of security forces.”

Contradicting the government’s characterization of the protestors is the fact that they seem to be staying true to their stated desire to rid Toribio of all armed actors, legal or not. In addition to the recent trial and sentencing of the four FARC rebels, demonstrators claim to have dismantled a FARC campsite in the area.

For further information, please see:

Fox News Latino – Indigenous Leader Slain in Colombia – 24 July 2012

In Sight – Questioning Ties Between Colombia Indigenous and FARC Rebels – 23 July 2012

Al Jazeera – ‘FARC rebels’ flogged by Colombian tribe – 22 July 2012

Fox News Latino – Colombian Indigenous Court Sentences Rebels to Flogging – 22 July 2012

The Miami Herald – Indian upheaval bares Colombia’s nagging conflict – 21 July 2012

By Heba Girgis
Impunity Watch Reporter, South America

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina—A video was released last week revealing six police officers torturing two young men in the northern city of Salta. The video, which was posted on YouTube, shows two men, wearing only their underwear, as water is poured over them. The men were surrounded by several others wearing civilian clothing and who were—apparently—the officers implicated in this case. One of the young men had a bag placed over his head until he began suffocating.

The victims were being held on a patio where a high concrete wall is seen in the background. At one point during the video, an interrogator asked one of the suspects a question. The victim answered fearfully, “I swear to you that I don’t know anything about it.” He repeated this several times. The interrogator then covered the young man’s head with a plastic bag and tied it around his neck. The suspect began violently shaking and yelling until he fell to the floor. The interrogator then took the bag off of his head and the victim continued laying on the floor gasping for air.

The video outraged many people in this South American country. Activists noted that the real tragedy here is that Argentina’s police routinely use torture against crime suspects. Maria del Carmen Verdu, director of CORREPI, a watchdog organization against institutional and police repression said, “This is news because someone put the video on the Internet. If these images didn’t exist, these two kids would be part of the army of police station torture victims that nobody worries about and has no social impact.”

Authorities responded to the video’s release on Thursday by detaining five of the officers seen in the video. The sixth officer was arrested a day later. The latest officer who was arrested is suspected of having taped the video on his cellular phone. However, it is not clear whether he was also the one to upload the video on the Internet.

In the 1970s and 1980s stories of police torture and abuse were resonant in Argentina when security forces used torture under the country’s military rule. Daniel Segura, the head of the police station where the tortures allegedly occurred stated that it will be “lamentable that we’ll be known for this.” He said also, that simply wearing a police uniform does not mean that a person has a true calling for the profession.

 

For further information, please see:

CNN – Argentine Police Officers Accused of Torture That Appears on Video – 21 July 2012

Ventura County Star – Argentines Outraged Over Police Interrogation – 21 July 2012

BBC – Argentine Police Arrested Over Salta ‘Torture Video’ – 20 July 2012

United Press International – Torture Video Posted, 6 Police Arrested – 20 July 2012