A group of SFU students put together this great documentary about Jose's case. The film features interviews with Jose, and also with Prof. Max Cameron from UBC. This film nicely explains the history of the El Salvadorian civil conflict that saw about 70,000 people killed, and how the FMLN came to be equated by with terrorism by CBSA officers using Canada's Anti-Terrorism Legislation.
UN Truth Commission on El Salvadoran Civil War
"The Commission on the Truth registered more than 22,000 complaints of serious acts of violence that occurred in El Salvador between January 1980 and July 1991. Over 7,000 were received directly at the Commissions offices in various locations. The remainder were received through governmental and non-governmental institutions.
Over 60 per cent of all complaints concerned extrajudicial executions, over 25 per cent concerned enforced disappearances, and over 20 per cent included complaints of torture.
Those giving testimony attributed almost 85 per cent of cases to agents of the State, paramilitary groups allied to them, and the death squads.
Armed forces personnel were accused in almost 60 per cent of complaints, members of the security forces in approximately 25 per cent, members of military escorts and civil defence units in approximately 20 per cent, and members of the death squads in more than 10 per cent of cases. The complaints registered accused FMLN in approximately 5 per cent of cases.
F. Phenomenology of Violence
It is a universally accepted premise that the individual is the subject of any criminal situation, since humans alone possess will and can therefore take decisions based on will: it is individuals that commit crimes, not the institutions they have created. As a result, it is to individuals and not their institutions that the corresponding penalties established by law must be applied... the Commission believes that responsibility for anything that happened during the period of the conflict could not and should not be laid at the door of the institution, but rather of those who ordered the procedures for operating in the way that members of the institution did and also of those who, having been in a position to prevent such procedures, were compromised by the degree of tolerance and permissiveness with which they acted from their positions of authority or leadership or by the fact that they covered up incidents which came to their knowledge or themselves gave the order which led to the action in question. This approach protects institutions and punishes criminals
Conclusions:
None of the three branches of Government - judicial, legislative or executive - was capable of restraining the militarys overwhelming control of society. The judiciary was weakened as it fell victim to intimidation and the foundations were laid for its corruption; since it had never enjoyed genuine institutional independence from the legislative and executive branches, its ineffectiveness steadily increased until it became, through its inaction or its appalling submissiveness, a factor which contributed to the tragedy suffered by the country. The various, frequently opportunistic, alliances which political leaders (legislators as well as members of the executive branch) forged with the military establishment and with members of the judiciary had the effect of further weakening civilian control over the military, police and security forces, all of which formed part of the military establishment.
The wide network of illegal armed groups, known as "death squads", which operated both within and outside the institutional framework with complete impunity, spread terror throughout Salvadorian society. They originated basically as a civilian operation, designed, financed and controlled by civilians. The core of serving officers, whose role was originally limited to that of mere executants and executioners, gradually seized control of the death squads for personal gain or to promote certain ideological or political objectives. Thus, within the military establishment and in contradiction with its real purpose and mandate, impunity vis-á-vis the civilian authorities became the rule. The institution as a whole was a hostage to specific groups of officers, which were sometimes formed even as their members graduated from officer training school, abused their power and their relations with certain civilian circles and intimidated fellow officers who were reluctant to join in or to collaborate with their corrupt and illegal practices.
The internal armed conflict between opposing forces grew in intensity and magnitude. The inevitable outcome was acts of violence, some of which were brought before the Commission with anxiety and anticipation. The more bloody the conflict became, and the more widespread, the greater the power of the military hierarchy and of those who commanded armed insurgent groups. The outcome of that vicious circle was a situation in which certain elements of society found themselves immune from any governmental or political restraints and thus forged for themselves the most abject impunity. It was they who wielded the real power of the State, expressed in the most primitive terms, while the executive, legislative and judicial branches were unable to play any real role as branches of government. The sad fact is that they were transformed, in practice, into mere façades with marginal governmental authority.
Jose in the News
