Violence in Latin America and the Alien Tort Claims Act

"One must not love oneself so much, as to avoid getting involved in the risks of life that history demands of us, and those that fend off danger will lose their lives." These words were pronouced by the Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero in his last homily before he was assassinated in the church by a sharpshooter, on March 24, 1980. Romero was one of the few clergy actively campainging against the right-wing governmental and paramilitary violence and pleaded with President Jimmy Carter to cease US financial and military aid used directly to repress the people of El Salvador: the U.S. sent $1.5 million in aid every day for 12 years and many military officers were trained in Fort Benning in Georgia, USA. ('School of the Americas').
The year Romero was assasinated, 1980, the violence claimed the lives of 3,000 per month, with cadavers clogging the streams, and tortured bodies thrown in garbage dumps and the streets of the capitol weekly. Over 75,00 Salvadorans would be killed during the civil war, one million would flee the country, another million left homeless, constantly on the run from the army—and this in a country of only 5.5 million.
In 1993, the UN Truth Commission found Roberto d'Aubuisson, Death Squad Leader and founder of the right wing ARENA Party and his associate Alvaro Saraiva responsible for Romero's murder. Saraiva ontained the assassin's gun, arranged for his transportation to the chapel, and paid him afterward. The then government of El Salvador passed, in response, an amnesty law that rendered this and any other ruling void. d'Aubuisson died in 1992, but Saraiva is alive and living in California. Declassified State Department and CIA documents reveal the government was aware of Romero's involvement on Romero's murder as early as May 1980. And yet, this murderer was living peacefully in the USA.
In an odd twist, he was recently convicted of liability in Romero's murder by a Federal judge in Californian, who ruled he must pay USD$10 million to Romero's family. The ruling was possible because of the 1789 Alien Tort Claims Act, which allows foreign citizens to to sue in civil cases people living in American courts.
The case was brought to court by the human rights group Center for Justice and Accountability, on behalf of a relative of Romero's. Saraiva went into hiding and was tried in absentia.
The Alien Tort Claims Act, an ancient law passed to protect victims of piracy and ensure that the US would not become a haven for pirates. In 1979 torture was a violation of the “law of nations.” So, the father and sister of Joel Filartiga, a seventeen-year-old who had been tortured to death in Paraguay, used the act against Joel’s torturer, who was living in Brooklyn at the time. Since then the law has been used only 25 times, largely to human rights abusers pay for their actions. Among the accused under the ATCA are Robert Mugabe and Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic. ATCA has also been used against corporation, such as the energy company UNOCAL accused by Burmese workers. The Bush Admnistration has struggled to limit the use of ATCA. In late June, the Supreme Court, unanimously ruled in the against the Justice Department and affirmed the aplicability of the law in the case of Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain against the Justice Department and affirmed the aplicability of the law in human rights cases. (Humberto Alvarez-Machain, a Mexican doctor, was kidnapped from Mexico to stand court in the US. He was acquitted.)
On Sept 6th, the Colombian attorney general's office said that Colombian soldiers assassinated three union leaders last month. This contrasts with the army's earlier contention that the three men were Marxist rebels killed in a firefight.

"Colombia is by far the world's most dangerous country for union members,
with 94 killed last year and 47 slain by Aug. 25 this year, according to the
National Union School, a research and educational center in Medellín. Most of
those killings were by right-wing paramilitary leaders linked to rogue army
units. Worldwide, 123 union members were slain last year, according to the
International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, a Brussels-based group. "
Juan Forero, NYTimes (Sept/8/04)

United Steel workers union have filed a lawsuit on behalf of the Colombian union Sinaltrainal. The suit alleges that Coca-Cola and Panamerican Beverages, its principal bottler in Latin America, waged a campaign of terror, using paramilitaries to kill, torture and kidnap union leaders in Colombia. Sinaltrainal alleges that Coca-Cola bears indirect responsibility for the killing of Isidro Segundo Gil, a union leader shot dead, on 5 December 1996, at his workplace. For more on the cumplicity of Coke in union leader muders, see killercoke.org.

Arab link to Beslan School tragedy

323 hostages, including 156 children, were killed in the Beslan school take-over, in North Ossetia, Russia. More than 500 people remain hospitalized, and many are unaccounted for. The official story is that Russian forces decided to break the siege at the last minute in reaction to the militants’ actions in response to an escape attempt by a few school children.
Military analyst Pavel Felgenhauer claims this is a fabrication meant to cover up the disastrous outcome of what he believes was a planned assault. Just as in the hostage-taking drama at the Dubrovka Theater in Moscow in October 2002, he accuses the authorities of hiding the truth from the Russian public. He notes, the authorities misled everyone about how many hostages there were, intentionally diminishing their number several times over. They lied, saying that the hostage takers had refused to conduct negotiations when, in fact, it was the Russian authorities who refused to hold talks from the very start, just as in the Dubrovka case, when they also refused to conduct negotiations. They lied, saying that the hostage takers had no demands when, in fact, they had demanded that President [Vladimir] Putin sign a decree withdrawing Russian forces from Chechnya."
There is also question of who perpetrated the siege. One of the survivors captors pointed the finger at Aslan Maskhadov, a leader of Chechen separatism. Maskhadov has denied responsibility. Local officials have pointed to an Ingush component, raising fears of ethnic tensions in the region. Ingush and North Osetia, neighboring republics, have long had acrimonious relations and fought a short war in 1992 that resulted in 600 deaths.
Then there is the implication that this event was an al-qaeda connection. Similarly to President Bush remarks after Sept 11th, 2001, Russian President Vladimir Putin denounced the massacre as "an attack on our country." (CNN.com 9/4/04), implying indirectly that these are acts conducted by forces outside Russia. Putin has long contended that Arab terrorist groups, including al Qaeda, have played a role in the violence in Chechnya, where a majority of people are Muslim. Russia's Security Service reported that 10 of the hostage-takers at the school were Arabs, a claim that if substantiated would boost Putin's assertions. Russian authorities said Friday that they believed the siege was masterminded by Chechnya's most notorious warlord, Shamil Basayev, an Islamic militant whose funding channels are believed linked with al Qaeda's. (sfgate.com 9/4/04).
This link is credible, yet one should recall that the origins of al-qaeda trace back to the mujahideen fighters in Afghanistan against USSR in the 80s. The mujahideen gathered muslim combatants from all over the muslim world, and provided an embryo of organization and financing for al-qaeda as fighters dispersed in the early 90s. Many made their way to Yemen and Sudan, others journeyed to a new "front" of Islamic resistance: Albania, Bosnia, Dagestan and Chechnya.
The Islamist lawyer Montasser al-Zayyat points out that Putin "wants to gain the sympathy of the international community, in saying he is not crushing a people but is fighting international terrorism which strikes the United States and Europe. However, in Chechnya it is national liberation movements which are aspiring to independence. The Islamic credentials of these movements have brought them the support of Islamist groups whose fighters have joined them. But at heart the movements remain nationalist." (Turkish Press.com 9/7/04) Their national libertation nature does not in any degree justify the siege of Beslan school. However, if Putin and Russia is to find a solution to the tensions in the southern caucus region, the source and causes of instability must be understood. This is analogous to the claims that the resistance to US occupation in Iraq is the responsability of Saddam loyalists (unlikely, as his regime crumbled with US invasion) or foreign fighters (if nothing else, the guerrilla tactics reflect a deep knowledge of the terrain and popular ties), rather than a deep rejection on the part of Iraqi nationals. Afterall, the persecuted forces led by the Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr are deeply Iraqi.