here the six Jesuit priests, murdered by the army in 1989 are interred and paid silent witness to the proceedings. The witnesses included Francisco Ramírez, a journalist detained and tortured for being a critic of the government, and Julián Terezón, a father who saw his son murdered and his daughter forcibly disappeared during the conflict. The panel also heard from Miriam Ayala and Julio Rivera, child survivors of the 1980 massacre at the Rio Sumpul, who described the army's actions massacring hundreds of women, children and the elderly fleeing into the river and towards Honduras. Descriptions of some of the other testimony can be found at the blog of the IDHUCA here and here.
- Don José María Tomás, Spanish Magistrate Judge and president of the Justice Foundation, Valencia, Spain. (background)
- Doña Gloria Giralt de García Prieto, Salvadoran woman who has struggled for justice in her country (background)
- Don Paulo Abrão Pires Jr., lawyer and law professor, president of the Brazilian Amnesty Commission.
- Don Belisario dos Santos, former secretary of justice and defense of the citizenry from the state of Sao Paulo Brazil and member of the International Commission of Jurists.
- Don Ricardo Iglesias, lawyer, consultan on human rights, and member of the American Association of Jurists (El Salvador)
- Don José Ramón Juániz, lawyer, president of Lawyers of the World of Valencia, Spain.
As the Voices on the Border blog noted:
The testimonies heard by the Tribunal were powerful and disturbing. They narrated stories of incredible human suffering -death threats, tortures, disappearances, assassinations, scorched earth campaigns, massacres- all committed directly by or with the complicity of the Salvadoran Armed Forces.The power of these testimonies, and the absence of any action by the Salvadoran state to address these wrongs, led for a renewed call to repeal the general amnesty law which was passed in 1993, soon after the close of the armed conflict:
It is not a little thing that a group of international jurists, a Salvadoran human rights specialist and a valiant woman who struggles for justice, demanded the repeal of the Amnesty Law imposed on the country 16 years ago. It is not, because their call was made after listening to the testimonies of various victims of the past political and armed conflict. The atrocities committed then can not remain in obscurity. The population tortured, massacred, assassinated or disappeared does not deserve to have its victimizers hidden behind official impunity. (From an IDHUCA blog entry).Yesterday,on April 24, 2009, the Tribunal released its written decision. The 55 page document is well worth reading. The decision summarizes the testimony heard by the tribunal and the considerations of human rights law involved in resolution of such matters. It rejects the justifications of the Salvadoran state concerning its action or inaction in addressing these events (although no government representative participated to present its case). Among other things, the Tribunal's decision calls for compensation for the victims and for El Salvador to move forward to create mechanisms to learn the truth of these events and others and to make the information known throughout Salvadoran society.
Along with the release of the Tribunal's decision, the following video was released on the theme of restorative justice: