IBEROAMERICA: Amnesty Int’l Urges Human Rights Agenda at Summit

By Estrella Gutiérrez Reprint | | Print |

Estrella Gutierrez

CARACAS, Oct 24 1997 (IPS) - Amnesty International urged Iberian American leaders to assume – at their Nov. 8-9 summit here in Venezuela – commitments designed to improve their countries’ human rights records.

The agenda of commitments recommended by the international human rights watchdog includes the elimination of the death penalty in the 21 Iberian American countries – Latin America plus Portugal and Spain – the release of prisoners of conscience, guarantees of asylum and an end to impunity enjoyed by human rights violators.

It also called for legislation stipulating punishment for torture, forced disappearances and extrajudicial executions, as well as reparations for victims, and recognition of the legitimacy of the work of human rights activists and support for their activities.

The recommendations issued this week by Amnesty were accompanied by a report that cites denunciations of serious human rights abuses in Iberian America.

The seventh Iberian American summit will take place on the island of Margarita. Its overlying theme will be the ethical values of democracy, with defence and promotion of human rights figuring as one of six specific points to be discussed.

The gathering will conclude with the ‘Margarita Declaration’, in which the heads of state and government will assume commitments aiming at fostering a new model of value-based democracy.

The other sections of the Declaration will refer to social justice, the administration of justice, ethics and public administration, political parties, transparency and electoral processes and the right to information.

Amnesty says that since the first summit, held in 1991 in Guadalajara, Mexico, not only have the Iberian American leaders reiterated their commitment to human rights, but there have also been significant advances with the end of dictatorships and pacification in several countries.

But the group adds that according to its records, “an abyss” remains between good intentions and the inhumane reality suffered by many citizens of Latin American countries, Portugal and Spain.

Of Amnesty’s list of 11 human rights violated by governments, 10 are violated in Peru, which is followed by Colombia (nine), Brazil and Mexico (eight), Argentina (six), Ecuador, Venezuela and Chile (five) and Guatemala (four).

Extrajudicial executions, torture, disappearances, mistreatment, political assassinations, the death penalty, kidnappings and police brutality are listed along with new violations linked to the social gaps accentuated by ‘neoliberal’ policies and structural adjustment programmes.

Amnesty cites the summary executions of people seen as “disposable”, including homeless children, in a sort of “social cleansing” as the phenomenon has been described by human rights groups in Guatemala. The report mentions Venezuela as one of the countries where the practice exists, but without providing precise data.

It also states that sectors treated by authorities as social outcasts – homosexuals, prostitutes and drug addicts among others – are targeted by groups that say they are taking “justice” into their own hands when they kill.

The report maintains that extrajudicial executions and “disappearances” continue to be common in Brazil, Colombia, Guatemala and Mexico. In Colombia, some 30,000 politically motivated murders were committed since 1986, it says, while Peru’s armed conflict has claimed 27,000 lives, with 5,000 “disappeared” victims.

Civil Self-Defence Patrols continue laying waste to rural areas in Guatemala, in spite of the peace accords signed in December 1996; in Brazil “death squads” – comprised in part by police officers – “disappear” an “alarming” number of children, teenagers and adults every year; and dozens of young people in Argentina are killed annually, allegedly at the hands of the police.

Four Latin American countries – Chile, Guatemala, Mexico and Peru – still have the death penalty. Amnesty points out that in Peru the application of capital punishment was extended. It also cites a September 1996 execution of two Guatemalans which it describes as more similar to a public lynching than a legal execution.

Cuba, the only country not governed by a democratic regime, is criticised by the report for holding around 600 prisoners of conscience, who are serving sentences of up to 15 years for crimes related to freedom of expression and association.

Amnesty says torture and mistreatment are common practices in Spain and Portugal, as well as Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru and Venezuela. Particularly in Portugal, mistreatment of people under police custody is “relatively common,” it stresses.

The report criticises arrests and legal action against members of the Landless Movement in Brazil which it says run contrary to international human rights standards, and takes Colombia and Peru to task for special courts in which supposed “subversives” are tried.

Abusive use of force to crack down on civic expressions of growing social and labour discontent is increasingly resorted to in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Mexico and Paraguay, according to Amnesty.