Feature

Salvador: repression and opposition

: Continued from page 1
nine-year-old war that has seen 75,000 civ-
ilians killed.

And if its proposed anti-terrorist law is
Passed as expected in the weeks to come,
there will be nothing to stop the notorious
Party from locking away its opponents for
years. 3

Under the legislation, even someone who
works in a printing shop that produces a
Political leaflet can be sent to jail. The lead-
ets of trade unions, popular organizations
and church groups can be put behind bars
for decades for holding a rally, And some-
One caught painting the political graffiti that
Covers the drab buildings of this city can be
Imprisoned for up to 35 years.

Ungo believes ARENA President Alfredo
Cristiani wants the anti-terrorist law to jus-
tify any form of repression his military uses
against the people.

“That’s the mentality of terrorist peo-
Ple,” Ungo says, as several armed guards
Patrol his heavily-guarded office a few
blocks from the United States Embassy.

“They want to have a law. It will make

them sleep happy at night ... even working
for the maintenance of human rights
becomes a crime.”

While the legislation is still not law, the
crackdown on human rights groups, the
Mothers of the disappeared, trade unionists
and students is well underway.

On July 18, the army stormed the offices

€re of the national association of earth-
quake victims, UNADES, stealing almost
p2 million in medicine, clothing and supp-
lies for the peasants who lost everything in
the devastating 1986 earthquake.

Transito del Carmen Rivera Lopez, a 39-
year-old mother of four, was one of three
UNADES workers tortured for three days
by the “hacienda police” before getting
thrown in llopango Womens’ Prison.

“They “pounded on my ears and hit me"

here with the butt of the rifle,” she says,
Sitting under a tree in the prison yard and
8¢sturing to bruises on her chest.

Tears Stream down her face as she tells of
ne disappearance of her husband July 3,

88. Her oldest son has already been
arrested twice.

“All we were doing is taking aid to the
communities, but they accused us of being
8uerrillas,”

A day before the UNADES raid, camou-
flaged soldiers in full combat gear and with
faces painted khaki, opened fire with Amer-
1can M-16s at the University of El Salvador,
Seriously injuring 15 students.

€ Friday before that, several students

and a university worker were grabbed off

the street, tortured for three days and were

Orced to say on video that they were “ter-

yollsts” of the Farabundo Marti National
iberation Front.

Also in the crowded compound of Ilo-
Pango prison, the students join the other
Political prisoners and speculate when they
might be released,
ee €y put a plastic bag over my head and

aid they would kill me. They blindfolded
5° Stripped me and touched me all over,”

“year-old education student Rosa Mer-
Cedes Carcamo says, describing “‘kapucha”
~~ the mask of asphyxiation. “For 72

Ours, they made me stand there, with no
00d or water or sleep.”
eee heavy-locked metal doors protect

© office of the National Unity of Salvado-
Tan Workers — known by its Spanish
uutials UNTS -from the Jeeps and Broncos
With black-tinted windows that drive suspi-
“Ously up and down the street outside.
he of these vehicles, which are linked to
o Squads all over the capital, stopped in
le Nt of the house of a relative of UNTS

ace Humberto Centeno’s just last month.
but} Ome men got out and asked for me,
ey I hadn’t arrived there yet,” Cen-
th Says, casually reciting the numerous

Feats he’s received lately.

© heard from a contact that the army

PHOTOS — KIM BOLAN

had given the treasury police an order to kill
him. Two months earlier, one of the coun-
try’s most notorious death squads with links
to ARENA, took out full page ads in local
newspapers saying Centeno had only a
short time to live. Last February another
death squad issued a press release condemn-
ing him to death.

“This is just a campaign against one
union leader and it shows the problems that
the people have here in El Salvador to con-
tinue working in this supposed democracy,”
says Centeno, growing more angry as he
speaks.

“Never have we committed a crime, yet I
can’t live with my family in this country.

ARENA and the increased repression it has
brought. Helicopters buzzed the parade
while tanks and several hundred riot police,
with tear-gas and M-16s surrounded the
marchers, eventually ripping down all the
political banners hung from the metal gates
of the central cathedral.

Says Centeno: “The military doesn’t
have the capacity to discuss with the people.

. They only have the capacity to kill. The only’

response they have to the Salvadoran peo-
ple is to assassinate. They want to hide the
flow of blood.”

With the constant dogging repression has
come increased support for the FMLN.
While the guerrillas have always enjoyed

Dora Milagro Chavez del Carranza (top),
with a photo of her son Erick, murdered
by the Salvadoran military; demonstra-
tors outside the cathedral in San Salva-
dor where Archbishop Oscar Romero
was assassinated in 1980; a supporter of
the National Unity of Salvadoran Workers
(UNTS) spray-paints slogans on a wall
during a UNTS demonstration.

They follow meas if I was a person breaking
the law and they condemn me to death
under the cover of military bodies.”

The UNTS office, with its walls gouged
from recent bomb attacks, is like a centre
where reports come hourly of people being
arrested, murdered or disappeared. Pho-
tocopies of the faces of victims adorn pin-
boards. A chart on the wall keeps track of
the more than 100 political prisoners spread
out across the country.

As the country’s largest popular organi-
zation, made up of trade unions, human
rights groups, the mothers of the disap-
peared, campesinos, students and indigen-
ous people, the UNTS takes responsibility
for organizing marches and rallies that
often bring tens of thousands onto the
streets. NS,
At one last month, protesters disguised
their faces with masking tape, sunglasses
and paper hats as they chanted against

most of their support in the countryside, the
territory here in San Salvador is becoming
more friendly all the time.

At military headquarters here, which the
FMLN bombed last November, the walls of
the press office are no longer covered with
posters showing the “innocent victims of
the FMLN,” and the “UNTS=FMLN.”

Asked if they were painting the building,
the press officer replies: “Since the bomb
attack, we decided it’s safer not to have
anything on the walls.”

In fact, the Christian Democrats have
formed a coalition with the UNTS, which
only a few months earlier was battling the
former government.

Celia Medrano, of the Non-Government

‘PAQUETAZO
REPRESION

Me

Human Rights Commission, says that
ARENA’s repression is building a block of
support for the FMLN that has never been
so large.

“Repression creates the radicalization of
the people and they feel they have to form
insurrectionary positions and basically that
is what’s happening,” she says.

“Right now an entire block is forming
that may accelerate the insurrectionary for-
ces in El Salvador. It may also speed a
negotiated settlement here, but I don’t think
‘ARENA will be in power for long.”

Kim Bolan, a shop steward with the Van-
couver-New Westminster Newspaper Guild,
Spent two weeks in Nicaragua and El Salva-
dor in July.

Pacific Tribune, August 21, 1989 « 3