From: nyt%nyxfer%igc.apc.org@MIZZOU1.missouri.edu (NY Transfer News)
Subject: El Salvador Newsbriefs/ED-LP
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: daemon@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: The NY Transfer News Service
Resent-From: "Rich Winkel" <MATHRICH@MIZZOU1.missouri.edu>
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1992 22:18:44 GMT


Via The NY Transfer News Service * All the News that Doesn't Fit

EL SALVADOR NEWSBRIEFS/ED-LP

from El Diario La Prensa


EL MOZOTE WITNESSES TELL THEIR STORIES

The only survivor of the massacre of over one thousand
peasants at El Mozote in El Salvador still hears, eleven yers
later, the screams of her four children as they were being
murdered by elite soldiers with machetes on the morning of
December 11, 1981.  Rufina Amaya told EFE she still hears her
children screaming "Mama, they're killing us, they're attacking
us with machetes, mama."  The children were 9, 5, 3 and an infant
of 8 months.  The soldiers accused the residents of the village
of being members of the FMLN.  Amaya recalls the soldiers
separated the men from the women and the women from the children
before taking them away to torture, rape and kill them.  She was
the last on her line, and amid the screams of her neighbors she
knelt down to pray, and hid in the bushes.  Another witness,
Andrea Marquez, who lived in a nearby village and fled when the
army began to surround El Mozote testified that some soldiers
would throw small childrenin the air and catch them on the ends
of their machetes.  She discovered that her own daughter had been
shot.  After eight days the daughter died in Andreas arms.  Both
women are still frightened, despite the peace process, the
commissions and the study of the remains.  They are the only two
living witnesses of what occurred in El Mozote.

Four Argentine and one Spanish archeaologist have been
excavating the area around El Mozote searching for the remains of
those massacred by the elite, United States trained, Atlacatl
battallion.  The army alsways denied having committd the massacre
and accused the FMLN.  Members of the elite battallion also
killed five Jesuit priests in San Salvador in 1989.

The report of the Truth Commission, created as part of the
peace process, will include information on the El Mozote
massacre.  (EFE 11/4)


SALVADORAN GOVERNMENT CONTINUES TO VIOLATE PEACE ACCORDS

In a letter to El Salvador's Ministerof the Presidency,
Oscar Santamaria, the head of the Unite Nations Observer Mission
in El Salvador, Iqbal Riza, warned that the government would be
violating the peace accords if it integrates former members of
the army or other special military units into the new national
civilian police force which is to be organized in accordance with
the peace agreements.  The letter named 19 candidates for the
Police Academy who were former members of the army.  Riza's
comments were in response to denunciations made by leaders of the
FMLN that the government was allowing the Police Academy to train
potential candidates who did not fill all the qualifications
agreed to last January during the peace talks.  In his letter
Riza reminded the Salvadoran government that it had agreed to
turn over to the UN observers a list of the members of the
dissolved infantry battallions and that to date not such lists
have been received.  He asked for an urgent meeting with
Santamaria to discuss the problems. (AFP 11/7)

DIRTY POLITICS IN ELECTORAL PROCESS

The Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) accused
the Supreme Electoral Tribunal in El Salvador of putting
obstacles in the way of the FMLN becoming a legitimate political
party.  According to Marcos Jimenez, an FMLN commander, said that
on the last day of the period allowed for the FMLN to register as
a legal political party, the Tribunal alleged "errors" in two
words that would result in not allowing the FMLN to register.
Jimenez said the Tribunal's "dilatory attitude" was in accordance
with the petition of the [right-wing ruling] Nationalist
Republican Alliance (ARENA) party to prevent the FMLN's
registration. (AFP 11/7)

translated by Toby Mailman, NY Transfer News


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