The International Center for Justice (CEJIL) responded to the president’s statements in December at a ceremony in El Mozote. But it also urges the judiciary and the prosecutor’s office to initiate lawsuits and investigations into war crimes that go unpunished.
The International Center of Justice (CEJIL for its acronym in English) recalled today the importance of signing the peace accords that ended the war in El Salvador, describing it as a process leading the way to a more just, more inclusive and cohesive country, but at the same time he regretted that President Nayib Bukele does not appreciate them and uses “pejorative language” when referring to a historical fact of interest to thousands of Salvadorans.
In an issued statement, the organization is urging various state institutions to follow the pacification process initialed in Mexico 29 years ago, including the one represented by Bukele, who is asked to contribute to the clarification of rape cases. human rights during the war, thus gaining access to military archives and abandoning the “unfavorable language” of that historical fact.
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“(We also ask the President of the Republic) to refrain from using pejorative language about this historic commemoration that is of enormous significance to thousands of people,” she urges Bukele in part.
But the organization also shows him that questioning the importance of the peace accords “has seen those who for thirty years or more have seen their expectations of truth, justice and redress in frustration diminish.”
On December 18, at an event in El Mozote, where one of the most brutal and extensive massacres of the war took place, Bukele not only declared that “ the war was a farce, ” he also revealed that the more than 75,000 deaths that were and attributed to the two sides and the peace accords were also a farce, as he said they represent only a negotiation between two leaders.
Bukele also affirmed that it tarnished the peace treaty because it had brought “no benefit” to the country and listed the 25 killings that took place on average after the end of the war.
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Various sectors, from the left and right, as well as from organizations for human rights and survivors of war victims, have asked the president about such claims. In fact, a campaign was launched on social networks using the hashtag #ProhibidoOlvidarSV in which many citizens told a story about pain occurring in the family or in their neighborhood, all to show that the war was not a farce, as Bukele said. But something real that caused the country a lot of pain.
And on January 16, thousands gathered in Gerardo Barrios Square in the center of the capital to demonstrate that for them the signing of the agreement at Chapultepec Castle, Mexico, between the then government and the guerrilla fighters by the United Nations (UN).
Precisely from the UN, through the house coordinator for El Salvador and Belize, Birgit Gerstenberg, also came a response. “The El Salvador peace accords created an example to prevent the return of violence through specific interventions: restoring respect and protection of human rights, the transformation of the role of the military, the purge of the police and the concept of public. violence, disarmament, demobilization and reintegration of ex-combatants on the one hand. On the other hand, negotiate and promote more social justice and introduce guarantees of democracy, ”the official told Deutshe Welle, the German public broadcaster.
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For CEJIL, the agreements signed 29 years ago were “the full guarantee of human rights, institution building and of course democracy. However, society hoped that the peace agreements would lead to a break with an authoritarian and repressive past that characterized El Salvador for decades ”.
Pending issues
While for this human rights organization all the new institutional framework generated by the signing of the peace agreement are democratic achievements, it cannot be denied that pending issues were excluded from the agenda, nor can it ignore the “ massive debts and compliance ”with that pact.
In its statement, the organization calls on all bodies of the Salvadoran state to responsibly and seriously record their obligations to comply with the substance of the agreements, in spirit and letter, but also asks them to comply with their obligations set out in the judgment. of unconstitutionality of the 2016 amnesty law.
In this ruling, the Constitutional Chamber establishes, among other things, that both the legislative body and the executive branch must take measures to restore the victims of the conflict.
He urges the judicial department to activate the lawsuits over the “serious crimes that took place during the armed conflict, in accordance with the highest human rights standards and in accordance with its international obligations”
While the Attorney General is being asked to “promote diligent investigations into the serious crimes of the armed conflict that continue to go unpunished”.