From: harelb@math.cornell.edu (misc.activism.progressive co-moderator)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc
Subject: Human Rights In Central America: "Blind Test" Comparison
Date: 4 Oct 92 17:00:09 GMT
Organization: misc.activism.progressive on UseNet ; ACTIV-L@UMCVMB

Human Rights In Central America: "Blind Test" Comparison

From:
                  =================================
                  Amnesty International 1990 Report
                  =================================

Quoted below verbatim is the compelte (boldface) summary at the top of
the report for each of the countries in question, whose identities are
then revealed below.

[Four countries listed; later their identities revealed]

=========
Country A:
=========

At least 60 government critics, many of them prisoners of conscience,
were arrested and at least 33 of them remained in prison at the end of
the year. The majority were sentenced to prison terms after trials
which fell short of international standards of fairness. Some
detainees were held for prolonged periods without access to defense
lawyers before they were charged and brought to trial. Several
political prisoners, including at least two prisoners of conscience
who had been detained in earlier years, were released. Four senior
military officials convicted of drug-trafficking and corruption were
executed in July. It was not  known whether any other executions took
place.

==========
Country X:
==========

Trade union leaders and prominent academics were among scores of
civilians who allegedly "disappeared" or were killed by military
personnel often acting in the guise of "death squads." Many were
killed in bomb attacks and raids by the security forces on trade union
and university premises. The authorities said they would investigate
these abuses, but in most cases little action was taken to bring those
responsible to justice. Throughout the year there were large-scale
arrests of suspected government opponents, including church workers,
students and trade unionists. Torture and ill-treatment were
*routinely* used to extract "confessions" from political detainees.
[Emphasis added]

==========
Country B:
==========

Army troops reportedly killed at least 12 peasants suspected of
collaborating with armed opposition groups in some of the zones
affected by armed conflict. In March the government initiated
investigations into some of these cases and others dating from
earlier years. Some soldiers and security personnel found responsible
for abuses were convicted and sentenced to prison by military courts.
The government failed to clarify the whereabouts of several prisoners
alleged to have "disappeared" in 1987 and 1988. Six prisoners of
conscience or possible prisoners of conscience were released after
appeal hearings by civilian courts or government pardons.

In March the government pardoned and released 1,649 alleged former
members of the National Guard of the previous government of Anastasio
Somoza Debayle; they had been convicted by special courts, many of
them for gross human rights abuses. The procedures of these courts had
been subject to serious irregularities. Thirty-nine alleged former
guardsmen were excluded from the pardon and continued to serve their
sentences. The government continued to hold 1,268 other prisoners
alleged to be members or supporters of the contras. Most had also been
convicted by special courts whose procedures failed to guarantee a
fair trial. These were *isolated* but serious reports of
ill-treatments of prisoners.

==========
Country Y:
==========

The security forces and the "death squads" linked to them were
reportedly implicated in *hundreds* of extrajudicial executions and
"disappearances". When bodies were found they *often*  bore marks of
torture. People detained for short periods and the few survivors of
unacknowledged kidnap-style arrests also reported having been
tortured. Scores of real or suspected government opponents faced
harassment and assault by the security forces, acting clandestinely
or in uniform.


[A=Cuba; X=El Salvador B=Nicaragua; deleted: "armed opposition groups
KNOWN AS THE CONTRAS in some of the zones..." Y=Guatemala]
Emphasis added.

[1990 report covers thru end of 1989, so Nicaragua under Sandinistas]

******************************************************************

Another entry for comparison:

"Many hundreds of people, including judicial officials investigating
human rights violations, were extrajudicially executed. Scores of
other people ``disappeared'' after detention. Multiple killing of
unarmed civilians, attributed to army personnel, police and
paramilitary groups under army or police command, continued. The
government failed to disband paramilitary organizations, despite its
introduction of decree laws outlawing such forces. Independent
investigations uncovered further evidence of links between the regular
armed forces and paramilitary groups. At least four prisoners of
conscience were detained and charged under special decree laws
ostensibly introduced to combat common criminals. Torture of political
detainees, some of whom were prisoners of conscience, continued to be
reported.

 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Colombia is the country in question.

******************************************************************

                 GUATEMALA: REPORT ON ABUSE OF STREET
                     CHILDREN BY SECURITY FORCES

On Feb. 18, Deputy Mario Taracena Diaz-Sol, head of a congressional
commission on the protection of minors, told reporters that street
children are routinely arrested, tortured and murdered in clandestine
prisons in Guatemala City by Mobile Military Police (PMA) and National
Police agents.  According to Taracena, an average of two children are
tortured and killed every week.  He added that Amnesty International
and other human rights organizations are aware of the situation, but
not Guatemalans.

According to official statistics, there are 40,000 street children in
Guatemala City alone.  Most are the children of parents killed in the
political violence of recent years.

Taracena said that the disappearance of street children is a common
occurrence.  Corpses bearing signs of torture are discovered days
later in isolated areas.  Those who escape death are beaten and
tortured.  One torture technique is to pour flammable glue (the poor
person's narcotic) on the victim's hands, and setting the mixture on
fire.  The result is severe burns.

President Jorge Serrano recently signed the "international declaration
on survival, protection and development of children," promoted by the
UN Children's Fund.  (UNICEF).  (Basic data from EFE, 02/18/91)

[Cited in: Latin America Data Base's _Central America Update_
PeaceNet address: "ladb" [ladb@igc.org or cdp!ladb@labrea.stanford.edu]
[University of New Mexico, 801 Yale NE, Albuquerque NM USA 87131]

******************************************************************

As a last comparison -- comparing with Cuba, for example -- the
following is from Amnesty International's September/October 1990 issue
of Amnesty Action (can be found in most libraries, I think) Be sure to
read beyond the first two paragraphs. There most certainly are real,
and significant differences between Cuba (under U.S. embargo and
attack) and this country (a "decent" "good-guys" country) -- and hence
radically different foreign policies by Washington towards them;
evidently human rights is not the real reason, so there must be other
reasons. A study of corporate/investor dealings in "our backyard" and
Latin America in general, versus a revolutionary government
(demoractic, repressive, or somewhere in between; no matter) which
concentrates on using the country's resources for the population, not
for foreign profits, sheds light on this [Use GET command with OXFAM
HONDURAS for the report _Honduras: Why Farmers Go Hungry_]

******************************************************************

            C h i l d r e n   o f   t h e   S t r e e t s

             LIFE AND DEATH AMONG ___'S DISPOSABLE YOUTH

Even by contemporary standards of outrage, anesthetized as we have
become by years of stepping over or around the growing legions of
homeless people that populate most of our cities, ___ can be
unsettling.

Children: sleeping, living, and dying in the streets, piled like cord
wood in doorways, digging through refuse for food, half dressed in a
grab bag assortment of rags. They eke out a Dickensian existence on
the fringes of ___ society: working, begging, pickpocketing, acting as
couriers for the ubiquitous drug trade.

But an even more disturbing trend is causing deep concern among ___
civil libertarians and has Attracted the attention of Amnesty
International. More and more frequently these dispossesed children
are becoming the targets of death squad violence.

Research conducted recently by the ___, in cooperation with the
National Street Children's Movement, has concluded that increasing
numbers of street children are dying violently at the hand of
___ law enforcement officials engaged in a macabre ``street
cleaning'' campaign.

The study analyzed press reports of 624 violent killing of children in
___ during the 18 months leading up to July 1989. In 21 percent of the
cases surveyed -- some 130 children -- the killings had been
attributed to death squads. ___ human rights organizations believe
that at least one child a day is killed by death squads.

"The [government is] in effect, condoning this violence and
encouraging the police to act as if they are above the law by not
clamping down on the torturers and killers," Amnesty Internation said
in releasing its own repot, _Torture and Extrajudicial Execution in
--- --- _

[...]

Police in __, ___, and ___ have admitted that many of the death squads
are run by or made up of off-duty policemen (*) In fact, in April 1989
the ___ police department admitted that half the city's identified
death squad members are policemen.

[ (*) Send the 1-line message GET AI_REPT ELSALV ACTIV-L to
LISTSERV@MIZZOU1.BITNET for Amnesty's findings that the so-called
"death squads" in the more heavily backed country of El Salvador, are
in fact run by the army, among other revelations --HB]

"As more children are forced onto the streets to help support their
families or to fend for themselves, they become increasingly
vulnerable to abuse by law enforcement officials," says Amnesty
International

 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

[Blanks: BRAZIL'S ; Rio de Janeiro ; Brazilian ; Brazilian ;
Brazilian Institute for Social and Economic Research ; Brazilian ;
15 Brazilian states ; Brazilian ; [Brazilian state governments are]
_Torture and Extrajudicial Execution in Urban Brazil_
"Police in Rio de Janeiro, Recife, and Manaus"
"In fact, in 11989 the Rio de Janeiro police department admitted..."

 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

An estimated seven million children currently live and work on
Brazilian streets. Gilberto Girao "Beto" was one of them. He was 16
years old when he was killed. Beto worked as a shoeshine boy in Duque
de Caxias and has lived on the streets since he was four. He was well
known in the community to both church and social workers and the
police.

In April 1988 police picked up the youth for an undetermined offense
and took him to the 59th police precinct where he was detained among
the adult prison population in direct contravention of Brazilian
juvenile offenders law. When social workers intervened on the
teenager's behalf a local police chief reportedly told them: "I
don't have time to waste on defenders of downs and outs."

But the social workers were able to gain the intervention of a local
judge who ordered the boy transferred to the State Foundation for the
Welfare of Minors. When they returned to the police station to pick
the boy up, the police chief issued an ominous warning.

"You may have got him out of jail," he said. "But you can't save his
life."

[Photo: "A five-year-old girl gets  a ``mug shot'' "]

The boy escaped from the welfare institution weeks later and on
September 4, 1988 his bullet-riddled body was found under a bridge at
Duque de Caxias.

In July 1989 14-year-old Marcelo Moreira Pacheco was abducted and
tortured when he tried to report the kidnapping of his 13-year-old
friend to the military police. Andre Leota had disappeared the previous
day when two boys were assaulted by three unidentified men. Andre
tried to escape the assault on a skateboard, but never returned home.

The next day, as Marcelo awaited news of his friend's disappearance
with Andre's family, a military police patrol arrived.

[Photo: [Children]: "Searching for food in a Sao Paulo garbage dump"]]

They asked Marcelo to accompany them on a tour of the area where he
said the assault had taken place. But as the group drove around the
police began to question the boy   in a threatening manner. Finally
they arrived at a remote hut on the fringe of the shantytown. They
dragged the boy inside and began torturing him. Marcelo would later
testify that the police took out an electric generator, applied wires
to his fingers and anus, and turned on the power. They bundled him
back into the car and rove him around again, handcuffed with his legs
and feet bound together. The ordeal continued for 12 hours, the police
requently returning to the hut. At time another police car joined in
the strange convoy with the policemen in the second car also taking
part in the intermittent torture sessions. The boy was released in the
morning.

His friend was found shot dead the next day, his body severely bruised
from an apparent beating.

In fact, street children are regularly picked up by the police.
Beatings are routine. On September 1989 municipal social workers
condemned the existence of a house in a wealthy neighborhood of Rio
where street children were allegedly regularly taken and tortured.

"Most of the police take us there when they pick us up," a 12-year-old
boy told the social workers.

In June 1990 the Brazilian press reported that more than 20 minors
were being held in the Campo Grande maximum security prison in Mato
Grosso do Sul "for the pleasure" of the guards.

Amnesty International has compiled the testimonies of several street
children who have alleged torture at the hands o the Brazilian police
... "I am 10 years old," one child testified. "I sleep in a shopping
center. Every day and night around midnight, the military police come
and take us inside. They hit us, make us eat cockroaches and feces.
They throw hot water on us, beat us with truncheons."

Another child, 14: "I have been detained many times...they burn us
with cigarettes, beat us with truncheons, on the head and hands."

 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Amnesty International charged that, while may individual state
officials, judges, and police officials deplore such abuses, the
authorities, overall, have generally failed to take action to prevent
them


            =============================================
            T h e   " N i c a r a g u a   L i b r a r y "
            =============================================

*
* =========
* Nicaragua
* =========
*
  WHO-WERE CONTRAS    Contras' origins; make-up; practices - documented
  FSLN     H-RIGHTS  Documented HRs comparison w/Somoza,Guat,ES,others
  FSLN     MISKITOS  Sandinista treatment of Miskitos;Charges & Realit
  FSLN     NICAJEWS  Debunks charges of Sandinista 'Anti-Semitism'
*
  OXFAM84  NICARAG   Oxfam America's 1984 report on Nicaragua, in full
  FSLN     ACHIEVE   Documented: achievements of the Nica. revolution
*
  NICA-84  ELECTION  Documented: Fair under Sandinistas; US subversion
  FAIRNESS NICA-USA  Flwup:`Is Nicaragua More Democratic than the US?'
  NICRAGUA ELECTION  Study in US subversion of '90 Nicaraguan election

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