O.A.S. to Reopen Inquiry Into Massacre in El Salvador in 1981

[Say_What]

<clips>

O.A.S. to Reopen Inquiry Into Massacre in El Salvador in 1981

Published: March 8, 2005

The Organization of American States will reopen an investigation this week into the massacre of hundreds of peasants in 1981 at El Mozote, El Salvador, based on new forensic evidence found by anthropologists at the site, according to lawyers involved in the case.

More than 800 unarmed peasants were killed in December 1981 by soldiers from the Salvadoran Armed Forces at El Mozote, a village in the mountains of the Morazán region, near the country's southern border. The soldiers, from a battalion trained and equipped by the United States, accused the peasants of sympathizing with guerrillas. The O.A.S. is looking into whether the Salvadoran government approved the killings.

The decision to revisit one of the most gruesome events of the country's 12-year conflict will come as unwelcome news to the Salvadoran government, which has never conducted an independent and impartial investigation of its own.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, a division of the O.A.S., is conducting the investigation. Recent efforts by lawyers in El Salvador to reopen the case, which was shelved in 2000, had repeatedly failed, even after a court ruling that year stripped protection under the national amnesty law from suspects in the most egregious human rights violations. "They say that we should put this behind us," said Rufina Amaya, the only resident of El Mazote known to have survived. "But we cannot forget what happened."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/08/international/americas/08salvador.html

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Background on El Mozote--RayGun and the Boys

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Reagan's Bloody Legacy

...When two reporters—Raymond Bonner of The New York Times and Alma Guillermoprieto of The Washington Post —reported the massacre in January 1982, the Reagan administration denied it had occurred. Reagan’s point-man on Latin America, Elliott Abrams, told Congress that these reports were no more than commie propaganda. That is, he lied. (Today, Abrams, that lover of truth and human rights, is a staff member on Bush’s National Security Council responsible for Middle East matters.) A forensic investigation conducted in the early 1990s proved that the massacre had happened. And the truth commission’s report noted that "two hundred forty-five cartridge cases recovered from the El Mozote site were studied. Of these, 184 had discernable headstamps, identifying the ammunition as having been manufactured for the United States Government at Lake City, Missouri. ...All of the projectiles except one appear to have been fired from United States-manufactured M-16 rifles."

Thanks to Ronald Reagan, American tax dollars supported the murder of hundreds of El Salvadoran villagers. And the UN-backed commission, after examining 22,000 atrocities that occurred during the 12-year civil war in El Salvador, attributed 85 percent of the abuses to the Reagan-assisted right-wing military and its death-squad allies. Similar patterns transpired in Guatemala and Honduras in the 1980s.

The El Mozote massacre, though perhaps the largest massacre in modern Latin American history, is a minor footnote in the history of the Cold War, but it is, as writer Mark Danner, author of The Massacre at El Mozote , observed, "a central parable of the Cold War." It is also a telling tale of Reaganism. The lives of the people butchered in this small village by U.S.-trained troops were worth as much of that of the man whose body now lays in a casket draped with the Stars and Stripes. Media commentators have been hailing Reagan as heroic, iconic, patriotic and optimistic figure who led an "American life." It was indeed an American life, but one with lethal consequences for others. That is as important a piece of the Reagan story—if not more so—as his oh-so-sunny and cheery outlook.

I doubt the villagers of El Mozote were thinking about Reagan’s wonderful disposition when made-in-the-USA bullets supplied to their killers by the U.S. government, in accordance with Reagan’s foreign policy, were piercing their bodies and ending their non-American lives.

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/reagans_bloody_legacy.php

[Barrett808]

1. They're going to have a lot more to investigate after Iraq

Negroponte has probably already brought El Mozote to Iraq.

[Say_What]

2. No question about that--it was called Fallujah!! eom

[central scrutinizer]

3. paging Mr. Negroponte

does our new intelligence czar know anything about this?

[indepat]

11. Paging Mr. Negroponte, paging Mr. Negroponte

[Jose Diablo]

20. I hope they bust negroponte, he really deserves to take a long time out n/

[bemildred]

4. Good, never let the weasels forget.

Let them know that they too, like Pinochet, can enjoy a war-crimes
trial in their old age.

[Say_What]

5. Kissinger's world gets smaller and smaller--with a little luck him and

Pinochet will be on trial together in the Hague, but I won't hold my breath. After them then it's the Bushistas and all those recycled war criminals aka *the crazies*.

:argh: :argh: :argh:

[bemildred]

6. Perhaps they will sell seats to the public.

:-)

[Say_What]

17. I'd pay good money to Henry, Pinochet, and the rest of the Bushistas

on trial for war crimes.

:argh:

[bemildred]

18. Yes. One of the few things that could get me glued to the TV. nt

[Cocoa]

7. they'll know where to find everyone

they're all in the Bush administration. Abrams, Negroponte, Otto Reich.

[gratuitous]

8. Feeling nervous, boys?

You should be. It will be a very good day for humanity when atrocities like El Mozote are fully investigated and the war criminals who did these dastardly deeds and their supporters and apologists are brought to justice at last.

Abrams, Negroponte, Kissinger, and the rest. Hope they lose a little sleep tonight and for years to come.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

9. Perfect timing since it's been rumored that similar death squads

will be employed in Iraq

[Say_What]

16. Will be?? Think they already are...

:mad:

[Judi Lynn]

10. So glad to have been here, if this will finally opened and cleansed!

It's desperately needed during a time _{George Bush} has plunged us headlong into a bloody world we ARE old enough, and alert enough to understand this time.

Hope it's going to get harder for him to slide by, with no roadblocks.

This kind of hell on earth shouldn't keep getting repeated in our names.


Boys stand in ruins of church sacristy
where bodies of 118 children and one
woman were recovered.



In 1981, the US-trained Atlacatl Battalion of the Salvadoran army

massacred hundreds of civilians in the village of El Mozote. They were
uninvolved in the war, and had taken refuge there to escape
an offensive against the FMLN. Men and boys were herded into the
church, which was burned. Women and girls were first raped, then
shot. Although US State and Defense Dept. investigated and were
aware of the massacre, the US government and specifically President
Reagan labelled reports of it as "communist propaganda".

http://mikeoso.homestead.com/mozote.html



Between 1980 and 1992, The
United States pumped an
average of $1million a day
into the war in El Salvador,
supporting the El Salvadoran
military.

http://www.inwhoseinterest.org/content_el_salvador1.html




http://www.ezbrad.com/g1/elsalvador_dec01/elmozote/PC080150.htm


http://www.ezbrad.com/g1/elsalvador_dec01/elmozote/idx.htm

[bahrbearian]

12. I keep telling you its just a ....."few bad apples".

[Judi Lynn]

13. A very strange quote you may have never heard.

Ran across it looking for more on El Mozote. This quote concerns a different part of the world, but it's definitely something you might want to hear, if you've not already seen it:

Recent obituaries of Reagan have gone as far as to suggest that he played a substantial role in ending Apartheid in South Africa, despite his actual record of trying to sustain it. As one US official said of Reagan, “All he knows about South Africa is that he is on the side of the whites.”
In his public pronouncements on the matter, the Great Communicator informed the US public that South Africa’s regime had “stood beside us in every war we’ve ever fought” despite the fact that it had supported Hitler during World War II, and that the Botha regime “had eliminated the segregation we once had in our own country”, a statement which was merely false.....
(snip/...)

http://www.bringontherevolution.blogspot.com/



Memorial to victims of massacre in El Salvador,
a leading recipient of US military assistance in the 1980s

[acmavm]

14. Why I know in my heart hell exists and it's for people like Reagan, bush,

Negroponte, Abrahms, and the rest of the bloody bastards.

<snip>
The troops that did the killing were supported by his administration because they were fighting leftist rebels. A 1992 report produced by a UN-sanctioned truth commission described the awful event:

"On 10 December 1981, in the village of El Mozote in the Department of Morazan, units of the Atlacatl Battalion detained, without resistance, all the men, women and children who were in the place…. Early next morning, 11 December, the soldiers reassembled the entire population in the square. They separated the men from the women and children and locked everyone up in different groups in the church, the convent and various houses."


"During the morning, they proceeded to interrogate, torture and execute the men in various locations. Around noon, they began taking the women in groups, separating them from their children and machine-gunning them. Finally, they killed the children. A group of children who had been locked in the convent were machine-gunned through the windows. After exterminating the entire population, the soldiers set fire to the buildings."

<snip

[Rex]

15. The worm is turning.

nt

[struggle4progress]

19. Elliott. Elliott. Elliott. You lying little P.O.S. eom