PARAGUAY: Torture Victim Still Fears Colorado Party ‘Mafia’

[struggle4progress]

By Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, May 5 (IPS) - ...

Martí rejoiced at the victory of opposition candidate Fernando Lugo, a progressive Catholic bishop who was elected president in Paraguay on Apr. 20. But he still has mixed feelings of hope and fear. The election result was "an important step forward for democracy," but "not the beginning of a real process of change," he told IPS ...

On Jan. 17, 2002, Martí and Arrom were kidnapped in downtown Asunción, taken to a clandestine location, and brutally tortured for nearly two weeks by a group of 15 police and military personnel and criminal investigation agents belonging to the official Centre for Judicial Investigations (CIJ) ...

"After the military dictatorship, we didn’t think that the torture centres would continue to exist. We learned the hard way, by experience, and we were lucky to survive, when so many lost their lives," he said.

Martí and Arrom were rescued by relatives and human rights activists who mobilised during those two weeks, and managed to find the house on the outskirts of Asunción where they were being held, on Jan. 31. Finding the house surrounded by relatives and journalists who had been called to the scene, the kidnappers fled, leaving the two detainees behind ...

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=42239

[Judi Lynn]

1. And we ordinarily NEVER hear a WORD on Paraguay. It's a miracle we even found out about Lugo, yet it

surely looks as if Paraguay has been under the magnifying glass of _Bush's administration, along with the entire REST of the whole world. God, I'll bet so many people are so sick at living with the threat _Bush will have them killed for one reason or another.

From what we learn once we start looking for some answers is that this continual threat of grave harm coming through provocation of an American chickenhawk President has been going on in Latin America, Caribbean for so very long.

From the article:

Both required hospitalisation for their torture-related injuries. Two years later, in exile in Brazil, Arrom had to undergo corrective surgery to his hip as a consequence of the abuse. In Martí’s case, the gashes on his wrists are the most visible scars.

The torture the men were subjected to mainly involved "direct blows with iron bars, fists and firearms, as well as near-suffocation with plastic bags and near-drowning in water," said Martí. The plan was to make them both "disappear," but they escaped with their lives because their captors "did not agree" on how to kill them, he said.

There is no doubt that the death squad was acting on orders from the government of former President Luis González Macchi (1999-2003), Martí said.

On the third day of their illegal detention, the Interior Ministry publicly accused Martí and Arrom of kidnapping a wealthy Paraguayan woman, and said they were both "fugitives." A mock police operation was deployed, ostensibly to search for them along the Brazilian border.

Arrom, the head of the MPL, reported that two government ministers tried to persuade him to sign a declaration that his movement and other opposition groups were planning a coup d’état, in return for giving him his freedom outside Paraguayan territory.

"They wanted to make us scapegoats, an excuse for a crusade against supposed ‘terrorists’ in Paraguay, and for clamping down on the people’s mass movements," said Martí, pointing out that these events followed the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks in the United States, which he said served as a pretext to crack down on social activists in many countries.

Washington maintains that the area where the borders of Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina meet, known as the Triple Frontier, is a hotbed of international terrorism, he said.

Here's what happened to the President who ordered their torture:

Tuesday, 6 June 2006, 10:46 GMT 11:46 UK
Former Paraguay president jailed
Paraguay's former President Luis Gonzalez Macchi has been sentenced to six years in prison for involvement in illegal bank transfers.
Judges told the former leader - in a nationally televised hearing - that his actions had led to thousands of account holders losing their savings.

He was convicted of involvement in the illegal transfer of $16m (£8.5m).

Mr Gonzalez Macchi, who was president from 1999 to 2003, denied the charges and said he would appeal.

"I was in no way involved in the crime they have accused me of," he said after he was convicted on Monday.

However, the sentencing panel ordered that he be incarcerated in the country's biggest prison, Tacumbu, and he was led away by police.

Prosecutors had asked the courts to sentence the former president to 10 years in prison.

Officials jailed

The case centred on funds sent from Paraguay's central bank to the United States in 2000.

The money originally came from two private commercial banks that collapsed between 1994 and 1998, prosecutors said, and was transferred to the US by a foreign bank.

Four former central bank officials were jailed in 2004 for up to eight years for their roles.

Prosecutors said that while transfer was done properly, the funds were sent abroad in violation of a local law.

Mr Gonzalez Macchi said the four bank officials were the "true guilty ones" in the case.

The former president was installed by Congress in 1999 after rioting that followed the assassination of Vice-President Luis Argana.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/low/americas/5051704.stm

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
From the same time period:

FALLEN: A girl is injured in
antigovernment protests Tuesday
in Asuncion. At least 60 people
were hurt and 50 were arrested.
REUTERS

from the September 18, 2002 edition

In Paraguay, corruption still king
Paraguay is ranked the most corrupt in Latin America by a recent survey.

By Andrew Downie | Special to The Christian Science Monitor

ASUNCION, PARAGUAY –
Every time he goes to a wedding reception, Enrique Biedermann collects a dollar from each of the others at his table and gives them to the waiter at the beginning of the night.

The money doesn't get them more food or drink. It is simply the Paraguayan way of ensuring that service is fast and efficient. In some small way, Mr. Biedermann sheepishly admits, it is encouraging corruption. But he says there is no other way.

"The logical thing would be to pay the waiter afterwards, if he serves us well," says the head of Biedermann Publicity, one of Paraguay's big publicity firms. "But it is the only way to get good service. It is our custom. Here in Paraguay we are all corrupt to one degree or another."

Biedermann's assessment was confirmed last month with the annual report from Transparency International ( www.transparency.org), a Berlin-based watchdog that ranks more than 100 countries "on the degree to which corruption is perceived to exist among public officials and politicians." Paraguay was named the most corrupt country in Latin America and tied for third most corrupt country in the world.

"In Paraguay, corruption remains systematic," the annual report said in giving Paraguay a score of 1.7 out of 10, worse than all but Nigeria and Bangladesh. (Finland received the highest score, with 9.5. The United States was 16th with 7.7.)

A nation of 6 million people stuck in the heart of South America, Paraguay established its culture of corruption during the dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner, the military strongman who seized power in 1954. Back then, power was consolidated in few hands. To win government contracts, those hands often had to be greased.

But even though Mr. Stroessner was toppled by a coup in 1989, "the long tradition of corrupt administration is still alive and well," says Transparency International's Jose Antonio Bergues. Mr. Bergues says that with the spread of democracy in recent years, corruption has become even more widespread as more people have access to power and, therefore, bribes.

Democratic stability has been hard coming since the fall of the Stroessner regime. Yesterday, at least 60 people were injured when some 5,000 supporters of exiled former Army chief Lino Oviedo took to the streets, calling for the resignation of President Luis Gonzalez Macchi. Mr. Oviedo, who is in exile for allegedly masterminding several failed coups, blames the president for Paraguay's economic woes.

More:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0918/p08s01-woam.html