Guest commentary: How Cambridge helped human rights triumph in El Savador

Cambridge - Who couldn’t use a human rights success story these days? Well, Cambridge has one in its role in a human rights crisis in El Salvador over the last two months, culminating in a judge on Feb. 19 throwing out a case brought by the Salvadoran government against social movement organizers as “terrorists.” Our story starts with the sister city relationship Cambridge established in 1987 with the village of San José las Flores in El Salvador during the middle of the civil war there. Although the war ended in 1992, a struggle for economic justice and human rights is still essential.

Fast forward to July 2, 2007, and the little town of Suchitoto in the department of Cuscatlán. The government had planned a public ceremony to announce a government project to “decentralize” water in the country, which most people in the social movement in El Salvador interpreted as a step toward privatizing the supply of water, with the possibility that even fewer people would have affordable access to a clean water supply. The Salvadoran social movement planned a forum in Suchitoto on the same day to raise these questions. But the government saw an opportunity to discredit the social movement and make another of several recent, ominous moves to close the democratic space in the country. The day before the government ceremony and the public forum, the security forces, including elements of the Salvadoran military (in violation of the 1992 peace accords), militarized all the roads around the town, and laid plans to trap and arrest the organizers.

On July 2 in the early morning, security forces blocked the road and prevented buses arranged by the forum organizers from picking up people along the road. People standing alongside the road waiting for buses were attacked without warning by police with tear gas and rubber bullets. People fled, but also protested and did their own road-blocking with stones and tree branches. It was a mess. Then when the police had cleared the road and started to let vehicles through, police cars isolated the vehicle carrying two members of one of the organizing groups (CRIPDES), their media person and the driver. The people in the vehicle were forced out of the car, handcuffed, and the driver asked by a conveniently available TV reporter, “Why did you block the road?” These four and nine others were charged as “terrorists” under a November 2006 Special Anti-Terrorism Law in El Salvador, taken before a special tribunal judge, Ana Lucila Fuentes de Paz, and put in jail for a 90-day “preventive detention,” pending potential prison sentences of up to 60 years, if convicted.

At the request of Cambridge Sister City and other U.S. solidarity organizations, Cambridge’s Congressman, Michael Capuano, authored a letter to Salvadoran President Elias Antonio Saca, signed by 41 other members of Congress, raising questions about repression of political expression and raising doubts about the notion the Suchitoto 13 were “terrorists.” The 13 were given conditional freedom July 27, pending a Feb. 8 status hearing before the judge.

U.S. El Salvador Sister Cities formed a 10-member special human rights investigation team, of which I was a member, which went to El Salvador Jan. 19 to 27. With four congressional offices requesting meetings for the human rights team with high officials, the team was able to meet with the president of the Supreme Court of Justice, Dr. Agustín Calderon, the vice minister of Foreign Relations, Eduardo Calix (designated by Saca to meet with us), the Human Rights ombudsman, Oscar Luna, and John Speaks, the Human Rights person at the U.S. Embassy in San Salvador. The team also went to Suchitoto for a half-day to have direct interviews with eyewitnesses. The team gave a press conference Friday, Jan. 25. Present were two TV stations, two radio stations and the newspaper Diario Co-Latino. They not only listened intently but very strongly carried our message — as the first item in the TV news that afternoon and the headline in the afternoon Co-Latino newspaper. The message: No way does it make any sense to charge these people as terrorists, and if the government is going to suppress political expression in this way, it could jeopardize $461 million in development funds from the U.S. that are conditioned on respect for human rights and responsiveness to the population. That money threat is what caught the headlines. The archbishop of San Salvador, Monse-or Fernando Sáenz Lacalle, expressed his concern over this possibility in an interview Sunday, Jan. 27, as most of us were flying home.

At the Feb. 8 hearing, the Salvadoran prosecutors came back, not with charges of “terrorism” but of public disorder and aggravated damages of state property. Judge Fuentes de Paz decided that, absent charges of terrorism, her special tribunal was no longer the appropriate venue for the case and remanded it to the district criminal court in Cuscatlán for a Feb. 19 hearing. On that date, the judge, having waited for an hour for the Salvadoran government prosecutors to show up, ruled that the case was to be dismissed in its entirety and all charges dismissed. So the Suchitoto 13 went from the prospect of 60 years in prison to unconditional freedom. This is a major milestone along the way to assuring an open, democratic society in El Salvador, and Cambridge can be proud of its part.

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