Coming
in October
From Common Courage Press
Today's
Stories
September 4, 2003
Joanne Mariner
Truth,
Justice and Reconciliation in Latin America
September 3, 2003
Virginia Tilley
Hyperpower
in a Sinkhole
Davey D
A Hip
Hop Perspective on the Cali Recall
Emrah Göker
Conscripting Turkey: Imperial Mercenaries Wanted
John Stanton
The US is a Power, But Not Super
Brian Cloughley
The
Pentagon's Bungled PsyOps Plan
Dan Bacher
Another Big Salmon Kill
Elaine Cassel
Prosecutors Weep' Ninth Circuit Overturns 127 Death Sentences
Uri Avnery
First
of All This Wall Must Fall
Website of the Day
Art Attack!
September 2, 2003
Robert Fisk
Bush's
Occupational Fantasies Lead Iraq Toward Civil War
Kurt Nimmo
Rouind Up the Usual Suspects: the Iman Ali Mosque Bombing
Robert Jensen / Rahul Mahajan
Iraqi Liberation, Bush Style
Elaine Cassel
Innocent But Guilty: When Prosecutors are Dead Wrong
Jason Leopold
Ghosts
in the Machines: the Business of Counting Votes
Dave Lindorff
Dems in 2004: Perfect Storm or Same Old Doldrums?
Paul de Rooij
Predictable
Propaganda: Four Monts of US Occupation
Website of the Day
Laughing Squid
Recent
Stories
August 30 / Sept. 1,
2003
Alexander Cockburn
Handmaiden
in Babylon: Annan, Vieiera de Mello and the Decline and Fall
of the UN
Saul Landau
Schwarzenegger
and Cuban Migration
Standard Schaefer
Who
Benefited from the Tech Bubble: an Interview with Michael Hudson
Gary Leupp
Mel Gibson's Christ on Trial
William S. Lind
Send the Neocons to Baghdad
Augustin Velloso
Aznar: Spain's Super Lackey
Jorge Mariscal
The Smearing of Cruz Bustamante
John Ross
A NAFTA for Energy? The US Looks to Suck Up Mexico's Power
Mickey Z.
War is a Racket: The Wisdom of Gen. Smedley Butler
Elaine Cassel
Ashcroft's Traveling Patriot Show Isn't Winning Many Converts
Stan Cox
Pirates of the Caribbean: the WTO Comes to Cancun
Tom and Judy Turnipseed
Take Back Your Time Day
Adam Engel
The Red Badge of Knowledge: a Review of TDY
Adam Engel
An Eye on Intelligence: an Interview with Douglas Valentine
Susan Davis
Northfork,
an Accidental Review
Nicholas Rowe
Dance
and the Occupation
Mark Zepezauer
Operation
Candor
Poets' Basement
Albert, Guthrie and Hamod
Website of the Weekend
Downhill
Battle
August 29, 2003
Lenni Brenner
God
and the Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party
Brian Cloughley
When in Doubt, Lie Your Head Off
Alice Slater
Bush Nuclear Policy is a Recipe for National Insecurity
David Krieger
What Victory?
Marjorie Cohn
The Thin Blue Line: How the US Occupation of Iraq Imperils International
Law
Richard Glen Boire
Saying Yes to Drugs!
Bister, Estrin and Jacobs
Howard Dean, the Progressive Anti-War Candidate? Some Vermonters
Give Their Views
Website of the Day
DirtyBush
August 28, 2003
Gilad Atzmon
The
Most Common Mistakes of Israelis
David Vest
Moore's
Monument: Cement Shoes for the Constitution
David Lindorff
Shooting Ali in the Back: Why the Pacification is Doomed
Chris Floyd
Cheap Thrills: Bush Lies to Push His War
Wayne Madsen
Restoring the Good, Old Term "Bum"
Elaine Cassel
Not Clueless in Chicago
Stan Goff
Nukes in the Dark
Tariq Ali
Occupied
Iraq Will Never Know Peace
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Behold, My Package
Website of the Day
Palestinian
Artists
August 27, 2003
Bruce Jackson
Little
Deaths: Hiding the Body Count in Iraq
John Feffer
Nuances and North Korea: Six Countries in Search of a Solution
Dave Riley
an Interview with Tariq Ali on the Iraq War
Lacey Phillabaum
Bush's Holy War in the Forests
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Website of the Day
The Dean Deception
August 26, 2003
Robert Fisk
Smearing the Dead
David Lindorff
The
Great Oil Gouge: Burning Up that Tax Rebate
Sarmad S. Ali
Baghdad is Deadlier Than Ever: the View of an Iraqi Coroner
Christopher Brauchli
Bush Administration Equates Medical Pot Smokers with Segregationists
Juliana Fredman
Collective Punishment on the West Bank: Dialysis, Checkpoints
and a Palestinian Madonna
Larry Siems
Ghosts of Regime Changes Past in Guatemala
Elaine Cassel
Onward, Ashcroft Soldiers!
Saul Landau
Bush:
a Modern Ahab or a Toy Action Figure?
Congratulations
to CounterPuncher Gilad Atzmon! BBC Names EXILE Top Jazz CD
August 25, 2003
Kurt Nimmo
Israeli Outlaws in America
David Bacon
In Iraq, Labor Protest is a Crime
Thomas P. Healy
The Govs Come to Indy: Corps Welcome; Citizens Locked Out
Norman Madarasz
In an Elephant's Whirl: the US/Canada Relationship After the
Iraq Invasion
Salvador Peralta
The Politics of Focus Groups
Jack McCarthy
Who Killed Jancita Eagle Deer?
Uri Avnery
A Drug
for the Addict
August 23/24, 2003
Forrest Hylton
Rumsfeld
Does Bogota
Robert Fisk
The Cemetery at Basra
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for
Sanity
Insults to Intelligence
Andrew C. Long
Exile on Bliss Street: The Terrorist Threat and the English Professor
Jeremy Bigwood
The Toxic War on Drugs: Monsanto Weedkiller Linked to Powerful
Fungus
Jeffrey St. Clair
Forest
or Against Us: the Bush Doctor Calls on Oregon
Cynthia McKinney
Bring the Troops Home, Now!
David Krieger
So Many Deaths, So Few Answers: Approaching the Second Anniversary
of 9/11
Julie Hilden
A Constitutional Right to be a Human Shield
Dave Lindorff
Marketplace
Medicine
Standard Schaefer
Unholy Trinity: Falwell's Anti-Abortion Attack on Health and
Free Speech
Catherine Dong
Kucinich and FirstEnergy
José Tirado
History Hurts: Why Let the Dems Repeat It?
Ron Jacobs
Springsteen's America
Gavin Keeney
The Infernal Machine
Adam Engel
A Fan's Notations
William Mandel
Five Great Indie Films
Walt Brasch
An American Frog Fable
Poets' Basement
Reiss, Kearney, Guthrie, Albert and Alam
Website of the Weekend
The Hutton Inquiry
August 22, 2003
Carole Harper
Post-Sandinista
Nicaragua
John Chuckman
George Will: the Marquis of Mendacity
Richard Thieme
Operation Paperclip Revisited
Chris Floyd
Dubya Indemnity: Bush Barons Beyond the Reach of Law?
Issam Nashashibi
Palestinians
and the Right of Return: a Rigged Survey
Mary Walworth
Other People's Kids
Ron Jacobs
The
Darkening Tunnel
Website of the Day
Current Energy
August 21, 2003
Robert Fisk
The US
Needs to Blame Anyone But Locals for UN Bombing
Virginia Tilley
The Quisling Policies of the UN in Iraq: Toward a Permanent War?
Rep. Henry Waxman
Bush Owes the Public Some Serious Answers on Iraq
Ben Terrall
War Crimes and Punishment in Indonesia: Rapes, Murders and Slaps
on the Wrists
Elaine Cassel
Brother John Ashcroft's Traveling Patriot Salvation Show
Christopher Brauchli
Getting Gouged by Banks
Marjorie Cohn
Sergio Vieira de Mello: Victim of Terrorism or US Policy in Iraq?
Vicente Navarro
Media
Double Standards: The Case of Mr. Aznar, Friend of Bush
Website of the Day
The Intelligence Squad
Hot Stories
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
William Blum
Myth
and Denial in the War on Terrorism
Standard Schaefer
Experimental Casinos: DARPA and the War Economy
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
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September
4, 2003
"Only the Bones
Were Left"
Truth,
Justice and Reconciliation in Latin America
By JOANNE MARINER
In Latin America, reconciliation can mean different
things to different people. When, in 1990, Chile's newly-inaugurated
president established an official body to investigate the atrocities
committed during Gen. Augusto Pinochet's seventeen-year rule,
he called it a "truth and reconciliation commission."
By including the concept of societal
reconciliation in the commission's name, Chile's civilian authorities
sent an unmistakable public message. Seeking to neutralize right-wing
opposition to the government's effort to document the military's
record of torture, killings, and "disappearances,"
they were implicitly promising that when the commission's work
was done, the country would move on.
Reconciliation, from this perspective,
meant sidelining justice. It meant that the country's amnesty
decree--issued by Pinochet in 1978, at the close of the military
junta's worst period of political repression--would be respected.
It meant that instead of allowing prosecutors to prove the military's
responsibility for horrendous crimes, the country would settle
for a public report on the violence. There would be truth, at
last, but no consequences.
Thirty years have now passed since the
military coup that brought Pinochet to power, and more than a
decade has gone by since the release of the Chilean truth commission's
findings. Yet in Chile, as in several other countries that have
experimented with large-scale amnesties, the formula of truth
not justice has failed.
True reconciliation, these countries
are now recognizing, cannot be based on impunity. It requires
justice, not amnesties. And it means seeing truth commission
reports as a starting point, not a point of closure.
"Only the Bones Were Left"
Ask Angélica Mendoza de Ascarza
how to achieve reconciliation, and she will tell you to find
her son's body and put his killer behind bars. Mendoza, an indigenous
woman from Ayacucho, Peru, heads up a group of relatives of the
thousands who "disappeared" during the country's violent
civil conflict.
Last week, Peru's truth and reconciliation
commission released a nine-volume report documenting two decades
of guerrilla insurgency and military repression. The report concludes
that more than 69,000 people were killed or "disappeared"
between 1980 to 2000, mostly residents of impoverished rural
areas. Over half of the deaths were caused by Shining Path, a
barbaric guerrilla group, while nearly 30 percent were caused
by the military, and most of the rest by government-backed militias.
Mendoza's son, a student, was arrested
by the military on July 3, 1983. When Mendoza testified before
the truth commission in April 2001, a hearing which I attended,
she brought with her a yellowing scrap of paper that is her last
remembrance of him.
Dressed in a traditional shawl and speaking
in Quechua, Mendoza described how thirty hooded men came to her
house and took her son away. "I asked them why they were
taking my son," she related, "and they said that he
had to go testify, and that they would return him to me at the
gate of the jail. At that point, I grabbed my son I got to the
door and clung onto my son, and they dragged us both. They pushed
me, they hit me, they stamped on me. They were going to shoot
me, and they took my son, put him in the army car and carried
him off. I screamed like a madwoman."
The men brought Mendoza's son to the
local army base, from which he managed to smuggle out a scribbled
note. Holding the note in her hands, Mendoza read it to the commission:
"'Mom, I'm inside the base. Find a lawyer, some money, and
please get me out of here, I'm desperate.'"
But like thousands of others taken away
in such circumstances, Mendoza's son was never seen again. Litigation,
public denunciations, and even bribery proved fruitless. Nor
did Mendoza find her son's body at any of the sites where corpses
were dumped. "We found corpses with their eyes hanging out,
with no ears, women whose breasts had been cut off," she
told the truth commission. "The soldiers guarded the bodies
until the animals devoured them and only the bones were left."
Justice in Argentina
and Chile and, Perhaps, Peru
The tenacity that Mendoza showed in trying
to fight off her son's abductors is still apparent. But now Mendoza's
efforts have a different goal: justice. She sees the truth commission's
meticulously-researched report not simply as an historical accounting,
but as ammunition for government prosecutors.
The obstacles to justice are daunting.
In Peru, as in other Latin American countries in which official
violence was widespread, a sweeping amnesty law is still on the
books. That law, passed in 1995 during the authoritarian government
of Alberto Fujimori, was intended to shield military and police
officials from prosecution.
On the political side, too, the prospect
of criminal trials has already raised hackles. Former president
Alan Garcia, who governed the country from 1985 to 1990, is now
Peru's most powerful political figure. Given that he presided
over some of the worst abuses and did little to prevent or punish
them, he has no reason to want the justice system to revisit
these crimes. His political party was overtly hostile to the
work of the truth commission, and will likely try to hinder future
court investigations.
The struggle for justice in Peru will
undoubtedly be difficult, and it may take many years. Still,
reviewing recent events in neighboring countries, Peruvians may
be heartened to find that that the desire for justice does not
lose force over time.
In Chile, where prospects for criminal
accountability once seemed nil, hundreds of former members of
the armed forces have been charged and now face trial. In the
past year, the Chilean courts have convicted several former military
officers of heinous crimes committed during the period covered
by the country's amnesty decree. Ruling that enforced disappearance
is an ongoing crime, the courts have ruled the amnesty to be
inapplicable. While Pinochet himself escaped trial, he did so
only on the humiliating grounds of mental incompetence.
Events in Argentina have been even more
dramatic. Prosecutions of top-level military officials, including
members of the junta, have been ongoing for the past several
years. Now, with the election of President Nestor Kirchner, the
country has taken unprecedented steps to ensure that "dirty
war" crimes are brought to justice. Within days of taking
office on May 23, President Kirchner fired senior military officers
who had opposed human rights prosecutions, and repealed a government
decree preventing the extradition of such defendants to third
countries. Soon after, he successfully pushed Congress to annul
the country's amnesty laws.
Reconciliation not
Impunity
In Chile and elsewhere, those opposed
to the prosecution of past abuses warn of disunity and political
polarization. Reconciliation, by their definition, means amnesty,
if not amnesia. But this view seems far less persuasive now,
with trials ongoing, then it did a decade ago.
Societal reconciliation is a commendable
ideal. It should not be misused as a cynical slogan, or a euphemism
for impunity.
Joanne Mariner
is a human rights attorney who has worked in Latin America for
nearly a decade. A different version of this article originally
ran on Findlaw's Writ. She can be reached at: mariner@counterpunch.org
Weekend
Edition Features for August 30 / Sept. 1, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
Handmaiden
in Babylon: Annan, Vieiera de Mello and the Decline and Fall
of the UN
Saul Landau
Schwarzenegger
and Cuban Migration
Standard Schaefer
Who
Benefited from the Tech Bubble: an Interview with Michael Hudson
Gary Leupp
Mel Gibson's Christ on Trial
William S. Lind
Send the Neocons to Baghdad
Augustin Velloso
Aznar: Spain's Super Lackey
Jorge Mariscal
The Smearing of Cruz Bustamante
John Ross
A NAFTA for Energy? The US Looks to Suck Up Mexico's Power
Mickey Z.
War is a Racket: The Wisdom of Gen. Smedley Butler
Elaine Cassel
Ashcroft's Traveling Patriot Show Isn't Winning Many Converts
Stan Cox
Pirates of the Caribbean: the WTO Comes to Cancun
Tom and Judy Turnipseed
Take Back Your Time Day
Adam Engel
The Red Badge of Knowledge: a Review of TDY
Adam Engel
An Eye on Intelligence: an Interview with Douglas Valentine
Susan Davis
Northfork,
an Accidental Review
Nicholas Rowe
Dance
and the Occupation
Mark Zepezauer
Operation
Candor
Poets' Basement
Albert, Guthrie and Hamod
Website of the Weekend
Downhill
Battle
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