[News] Rigoberta Menchu: Justice Comes for the Archbishop

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August 31, 2004
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Justice Comes for the Archbishop
By RIGOBERTA MENCHÚ TUM

Guatemala City - Nearly 25 years after Archbishop Óscar Romero was
assassinated while celebrating Mass in San Salvador, a chance for justice
has finally appeared. A judge is expected to rule on Friday in a landmark
lawsuit brought against a man accused of being an accomplice in the murder.
The venue, however, is not a Salvadoran tribunal but a federal court in
Fresno, Calif., where a longtime United States resident, Álvaro Saravia,
faces civil charges for helping carry out orders to have Archbishop Romero
killed.

Mr. Saravia, a former Salvadoran air force captain and close associate of
Roberto d'Aubuisson, the founder of El Salvador's ruling right-wing party,
is accused of obtaining the assassin's gun, arranging for his transportation
to the chapel, and paying him afterwards. The suit, filed on behalf of a
relative of the archbishop by the Center for Justice and Accountability, a
human rights group, seeks damages for extrajudicial killing and crimes
against humanity. Evidence was presented last week, and although Mr. Saravia
has gone into hiding and is being tried in absentia, if the judge finds him
liable he will face monetary damages.

This case is being watched closely throughout Central America, where fragile
new democracies suffer the lingering effects of unpunished wartime crimes.
The failure to bring human rights violators to justice encourages more
violence, as the killing of Archbishop Romero and the 1998 assassination of
Bishop Juan Gerardi in Guatemala sadly illustrated. The lack of arrests in
the Romero murder was a signal that Salvadoran armed forces and paramilitary
groups enjoyed impunity for their crimes, quickening the country's descent
into a brutal 12-year civil war that left more than 75,000 civilians dead.

Countries emerging from civil conflict must reconcile the dual needs of
consolidating stability and pursuing justice, a difficulty easily exploited
by those intent on protecting their own interests. In El Salvador, a
sweeping amnesty law rendered the 1993 findings of a United Nations truth
commission legally irrelevant. That commission found Mr. d'Aubuisson (who
died in 1992) and Mr. Saravia responsible for Archbishop Romero's murder,
but neither man could be prosecuted in his homeland.

Thus the best chance for justice stems from the coincidence of Mr. Saravia's
residency - he has been in America since at least 1987. Through the Alien
Tort Claims Act of 1789, the United States allows foreign citizens to sue
people living within American borders. Fortunately, this summer in a case
involving the kidnapping of a Mexican doctor, the Supreme Court decided
against the Bush administration and affirmed the applicability of the act in
human rights cases.

The Saravia trial, while an inspiring exercise in American law, does raise
disturbing questions about United States policy. How did Mr. Saravia come to
live in California in the first place? Declassified State Department and
Central Intelligence Agency documents reveal that the government was aware
of Mr. Saravia's alleged involvement in the Romero assassination as early as
May 1980. The trial also represents an opportunity to examine, albeit
obliquely, the responsibility of the Salvadoran government and its closest
ally, the United States, in the events that led to the deaths of tens of
thousands of Salvadoran civilians.

It is a sort of redemption, then, that the first trial in this murder is
taking place in an American court. Let us hope that justice will be served
at last in the case of Óscar Romero, and that it will inspire the
governments of the United States, El Salvador and other nations to prosecute
the many human rights abusers who live openly among us.


Rigoberta Menchú Tum was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992.



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