Sao Paulo
The Court of El Salvador ordered this Friday (22) the arrest of former President Alfredo Cristiani, accused of covering up the El Mozote massacre, one of the darkest episodes of the civil war that devastated the country of Central America for twelve years, in 1981.
The decision was announced this Saturday (23) and issued by a local court in the city of San Francisco Gotera. Former leader Cristiani, 76, along with nine other people, is described as responsible for promoting a general amnesty law passed in 1993 that exempts people accused of war crimes from charges.
The document describes the El Mozote massacre as a crime against humanity that does not mandate or order the arrest of the former president and four other people who served as lawmakers.
However, the decision was interpreted by human rights organizations and opponents not as a push towards reparations and defense of human rights, but rather as an attempt by President Nayib Bukele, who has led an authoritarian turn in the country, to stifle opposition just months before elections in Country.
This is because one of the four politicians against whom an arrest warrant has been issued is veteran Rubén Zamora, a historic opposition leader who served as Salvadoran ambassador to the United States, the United Nations and India. He was one of the loudest voices against Bukele.
When the current leader announced that he would run for reelection in early 2024, contrary to the provisions of the Salvadoran constitution, Zamora criticized him, saying there was widespread fear among the country's politicians. “Nobody wants to be a candidate, there is a lot of political fear at the moment,” he said during an interview with Canal 21.
Opposition members argue that Bukele has already managed to coopt the judiciary and that at the time the amnesty was approved, Zamora was against this law, as was his Convergência Democrática party. They therefore claim that the president is promoting political persecution in order to suppress voices that are against him and his administration.
In the El Mozote massacre, which became the subject of several books of Latin American literature, about a thousand peasants were murdered during a military operation that was supposedly “counterinsurgency.” After killing more than a thousand people in the community, soldiers set fire to the bodies and houses.
Officially, the USbacked security forces at the time stated that their goal was to track down leftwing guerrillas from the Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional (FMLN).
When Cristiani was president, he signed peace accords in Mexico City in 1992 that ended the civil war that claimed about 75,000 lives in El Salvador.
The document issued by the local court said that a year later, the amnesty law made it impossible for judicial authorities “to provide justice to the victims through a verdict that condemns the guilty to statutory compensation for the harm caused to the victims.”
The then President Alfredo Cristiani was responsible for sanctioning the law proposed by the then MPs, some of whom are now also the subject of arrest warrants. The passage of the socalled “General Amnesty and Peacebuilding Law” prevented several torturers, murderers and those responsible for the disappearances of civilians during the 12year civil war from being put on trial.