NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #27/NN_1992_27.iso/spool/misc/activism/progress/8466

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From: [e-mail] (Rich Winkel)
Subject: Proceso 538: Armed Forces Will be Cleansed
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/** reg.elsalvador: 126.0 **/
** Topic: Proceso 538: Editorial **
** Written 10:41 am  Nov 14, 1992 by [e-mail] in cdp:reg.elsalvador **
From: [e-mail] (Centro de Informacion Documentacion y Apoyo a la Invest. - UCAJSC)
Subject: Proceso 538: Editorial

Center for Information, Documentation and Research Support (CIDAI)
Central American University (UCA)
San Salvador, El Salvador

PROCESO 538
November 11, 1992

EDITORIAL:
The Armed Forces will be cleansed

     In a terse communique, ONUSAL reported that the crisis sparked
by President Cristiani's response to the U.N. proposal of October
23 has been surmounted. Good faith on both sides made it possible
to reach an accord around the Secretary General's proposal to
reschedule the final stage of the peace process. In other words,
this means that the Armed Forces will be cleansed.
     According to an article in the Washington Post of November 9,
some 80 officers included in the Ad Hoc Commission report will be
discharged in the Armed Forces' "general order" of November 30. The
most senior and important officers, including the Minister and
Vice-Minister of Defense, who are also on the list, will be
discharged in the order of December 31. Another 40 officers will be
removed from their current posts and transferred elsewhere.
     In order to prevent the national and international public from
finding out formally which officers are to be discharged or
transferred, it is quite probable that President Cristiani will
tack on another series of names to these two general orders,
officers whose names are not on the Ad Hoc Commission's list and
whose services the Armed Forces no longer needs, as it must be
reduced in size. The president has thereby found a way to carry out
this cleansing despite strong pressures opposed to the move.
     The officers to be purged must feel pleased with their
commander-in-chief, since he defended them much more fervently than
necessary, risking even his personal prestige and paying a high
political cost in clashing with the U.N. and the international
community. Initially, the president had requested an indefinite
deadline, in order to begin gradually discharging the officers or
wait until they retire of their own free will. Then he proposed
August 1993, them May, and finally, as the Washington Post
reported, December 1992. Furthermore, the president tried to save
the 14 officers who had been most loyal to him, who had done the
most to help him bring about the peace accords and who had
undoubtedly tried hardest to contain or neutralize attempts at a
coup d'etat.
     In effect, Cristiani tried to leave out these officers,
including the Minister of Defense, citing their deep commitment to
the peace process and their usefulness in the Armed Forces in
overseeing the cleansing process and preventing a revolt among the
ranks. But no one -not the FMLN, the U.N. or the United States-
would accept his proposal, and he was forced to give in to the
Chapultepec accords. Accepting Cristiani's proposal would have
meant nullifying the effects of the housecleaning, ratifying
impunity, maintaining official silence about human rights
violations and suppressing the public scope of the truth.
     The Minister and the Vice-Minister of Defense have tried to
discredit the objectivity of the Ad Hoc Commission's list; they
have questioned the integrity of one of its members by accusing him
of being a leftist, something which is certainly no crime nor
grounds for lack of objectivity. Nevertheless, the military elite
have never denied any of the incidents for which the names of over
one hundred officers -including those two- are currently on the
list to be purged.
     The military chiefs seem to forget that all the officers on
the list were interviewed by the Commission's members. Not only did
they have a chance to defend themselves and give explanations, but
they also probably had an opportunity to comment on the behavior of
their colleagues and thus implicate each other. The military chiefs
seem to forget that there were two [retired] generals quite close
to the Commission during the selection process, and probably did
whatever they could to defend those officers who began to look like
human rights violators or incapable of living under a democratic
regime. Finally, we must remind both top officers that the peace
accords stipulate that the Commission's members do not have to
justify their decisions to anyone, but rather only to their own
consciences.
     Therefore, the officers have no other choice but to obey, as
they recently asserted, and the only thing the president can do is
try to shield them from public shame by lengthening the list of
officers in the November and December "general orders." But this
protection will only be temporary, because the upcoming report by
the Truth Commission, which will be made public, will probably
contain many of the names of the generals, colonels and lieutenant
colonels who appear in the Ad Hoc Commission list.
     The FMLN, for its part, will demobilize its two remaining
contingents of combatants between November 20 and December 15, and
its weapons will be destroyed during the first two weeks of
December, according to the inventory which will be reviewed and
verified by the U.N. Therefore, the government is the one which has
had to ask for extensions in order to meet its commitments. It does
indeed appear as if the peace process will officially conclude on
December 15, but the execution of the Armed Forces general order on
December 31 will remain pending. If the FMLN has accepted this new
schedule, it means that some mechanism exists to guarantee that the
final general order will be carried out.
     So the Armed Forces will be cleansed, but there will also be
concealment. It will be difficult to bring the truth to light on
this one. However, the mere fact that the officers will be purged
represents explicit recognition that the Armed Forces as an
institution is responsible for massive and systematic human rights
violations, and is unprepared to coexist with democracy.
Ironically, the military's refusal to acknowledge individual
responsibility means that the institution as a whole is
responsible, counter to what military propaganda tends to proclaim
in such cases.
     As we approach the final cleansing of the Armed Forces, we
also find ourselves on the eve of the third anniversary of the UCA
massacre, a harbinger of the transformations which are about to
occur.


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