El Mozote has challenged impunity in El Salvador

In the framework of the 37th anniversary to commemorate the victims of the “Massacre of El Mozote and nearby sites,” the perpetrators are still protected by people in power, but the victims’ struggle for justice is advancing firmly for the first time.

This crime against them is part of a chain of massacres in the form of scorched earth, a systematic practice of killing civilians as a mechanism of State terrorism that the Armed Forces and their leadership incorporated as a strategy against insurgents: generating State terrorism and human exterminations in rural areas.

Since the perpetration of the extermination and after the unconstitutionality of the amnesty law, the competent court admitted the accusation brought by the victims, formalized the accusation against 18 former military chiefs, and processed the various investigation procedures requested.

For the first time, the victims have been heard before a court that respected the guarantees of due process for all parties and affirmed their truth when the defenders of the accused were questioned.

Several years of effort, characterized by the courage of the victims and the serious forensic work of the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team and Salvadoran forensics, have fully demonstrated the dimensions of the massacre: a thousand victims were murdered with more than half of them being children and adolescents, numerous rapes, absolute destruction of property and affected communities, among other atrocities. It was an extermination committed against the non-combatant civilian population, constituting the perpetration of a war crime and a crime against humanity.

37 years after the massacre, Cristosal commemorates the hundreds of victims from Arambala, El Pinalito, El Mozote, La Joya, Cerro Ortiz, Ranchería, Los Toriles, Jocote Amarillo, and Cerro Pando, cruelly murdered on December 8 to 13, 1981 in the north of the Department of Morazán.

Cristosal recognizes the historical struggle of survivors and family members, of the organizations of the north of Morazán, and of the Office of Legal Guardianship of the Archdiocese, known today as the “María Julia Hernández” Legal Guardianship Association (Asociación Tutela Legal), in their search of truth, justice, and restitution for the victims. We pay tribute to the legacy of Dr. María Julia Hernández, Director of Asociación Tutela Legal until the her death, and to Rufina Amaya, who as a survivor of El Mozote fought for the truth even in the face of threats from the powerful people who denied the massacre.

Guillermo García, Minister of Defense, and Rafael Flores Lima, Chief of the General Staff and officers of the Atlacatl Battalion in 1981, are tried as officers who allegedly directed the massacre of El Mozote and nearby sites and many other atrocities during the Salvadoran armed conflict, as part of an organized apparatus of power that exercised state terrorism.

Cristosal, as a companion to the private prosecution in this case, demands investigation and justice. The organization urges the Legislative Assembly to refrain from promoting new laws on impunity and the new Constitutional Chamber to defend jurisprudential advances in the area of ​​human rights. We reject the refusal of the Armed Forces of El Salvador to deliver the military documents related to “Operation Rescue (Operación Rescate)”, during which the massacre took place.

El Mozote is a challenge to justice today. A State that conceals and justifies the murder of a thousand civilians, most of them children, or remains silent in the face of the atrocious violence against women cannot be democratic or fair.

El Mozote, Never Again!

San Salvador, December 11, 2018.