Death squads step up activity in El Salvador

Press, 7 December 1987, Page 40

Death squads step up activity in El Salvador

By ANGUS MACSWAN NZPA-ReuterSan Salvador

Corpses scarred by torture are being dumped by roadsides in growing numbers as El Salvador’s Rightist death squads reemerge from the shadows, Church officials and human rights groups say.

The sources said the murders were a clear warning from Right-wing elements as well as a response to growing antigovernment unrest fuelled by Leftist rebels. At the same time, geurrillas of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (F.M.L.N.) are carrying out street assassinations. The violence comes as El Salvador and the other Central American nations try to carry forward a regional peace pact. “The danger is that the wave of terror can drown all possibilities of a nonviolent solution to our conflict,” the Archbishop of San Salvador, Arturo Rivera Damas, said in his homily on a recent Sunday.

The death squads — the term is usually applied to military or Right-wing para-military groups — emerged in 1979 when the social and economic inequalities led to civil war. Squads such as the White Hand and the Maximlliano Hernandez Martinez Brigade, named after a former dictator,

killed at least 30,000 Salvadoreans, human rights groups say. Many were peasants, workers, teachers, students and churchmen murdered on the mere suspicion they were Leftists. The corpses were left by roadsides or at dumping grounds. By the time the carnage subsided in 1984, the back of the insurgency was broken. But the war grinds on and activity in the capital by the FMLN and sympathisers rose this year.

“I don’t talk about a return of the death squads because they have never gone away,” said Ms Maria Julia Hernandez, the lawyer who heads the diocese ' human rights office, Tutela Legal. The weekly toll, in the dozens a few years ago, is now usually in single figures. “They have continued to operate on a small scale to remind people to take care. But in August, September, and especially since October, it has got worse,” she said in her small office as poor families queued outside for help. Archbishop Rivera Damas said he suspected the Hacienda (Treasury) Police of slaying a church worker outside a convent in the capital’s Soyapango suburb. The Hacienda Police were often accused

of filling the ranks of death squads in their heyday.

The archbishop — whose predecessor, Oscar Amulfo Romero, was slain by a Rightist gunman in 1980 — said the church worker was one of five death squad victims in one recent week. Newspapers said five more corpses with signs of a death squad were found near Santa Ana, a western city. On October 26, Mr Berber Ernesto Anaya, the president of the nongovernmental Commission on Human Rights, was gunned down. His death provoked days of street protest and caused the F.M.L.N. to break off ceasefire talks with the Government On November 8, two workers’ tortured bodies were found by a road to a beach resort with “F.D.R.” scrawled on their chests.

Western diplomats termed it a clear message to leaders of the Revolutionary Democratic Front (F.D.R.) who plan to return from exile to test government assertions that Leftist politicians can operate safely in a more democratic system.

Mr Ruben Zamora and Mr Guillermo Ungo have announced plans to come home. Both left El Salvador in 1981 one step ahead of the death squads

which liquidated most of the F.D.R. leadership, including Zamora’s brother. Diplomats and human rights officials say both men face a genuine risk of being killed after they return. Mr Hector Silva, a Leftist politician who returned quietly about 18 months ago to test the water, reported being threatened in recent months.

Also at risk are the several hundred political prisoners freed under a general amnesty declared by the Government in line with the Central American peace accord. “They are suspected Leftists and so face great danger,” said Tutela Legal’s Ms Hernandez. The amnesty also absolves death squads of past crimes. Ms Hernandez said she was sure of the military’s links with the death squads. Asked how high up it went, she said: “It goes a long way up in that if they really wanted to stop it, they have the information and the power.” The military denies involvement. Defence Minister General, Carlos Eugenio Vides Casanova said the Government and military had been hurt the most by the recent rash of killings. "The army will fight against any groups or death squads from the

Left or the Right because we realise our existence as an institution is based on building democracy,” he said.

President Jose Napoleon Duarte is generally credited with curbing the squads but except for two cases involving U.S. citizens, there have been few successful prosecutions.

Mr Duarte told reporters after the killing of human rights leader Anaya that death squads had been dismantled. He repeated suggestions that the F.M.L.N. performed some killings to provide martyrs. While condemning the murders, the Government has published newspaper advertisements with the names and photographs of participants in antiGovernment demonstrations.

. Accusing them of being guerrillas, the advertisements say: “The Salvadorean people demand a clear response.” Said Ms Hernandez: “That is pointing out people to the death squads.”

The F.M.L.N. is also guilty of killings, though not on the same scale. Most victims, like two villagers that, Ms Hernandez said, rebels killed in Chalatenango province early in November, are rural people accused of being army informers.