El Salvadoran Criticizes Regime in Speech

El Salvador's current regime constantly violates the civil rights of its citizens and does not deserve American financial support, a member of an El Salvadoran human rights group said yesterday at the Law School.

"In El Salvador there is no judicial enforcement, the legal system is corrupt; there is only cruel and degrading treatment of innocent citizens for which the government is responsible," said America Sosa, a member of the Committee of Mothers and Relatives of Political Prisoners, Disappeared and Assassinated of El Salvador (Co-Madres).

In the speech, which was sponsored by the Human Right Program of the Law School, Sosa described examples of government brutality and defended her organization's nonviolent attempts to end the seven-year civil war which has plagued El Salvador.

"I speak of my personal experience so that you can understand how the Salvadoran government is using unjust methods to capture and torture citizens," Sosa told the audience of more than 40.

Speaking through an interpreter, Sosa described the brutal capture of two of her sons by government security forces, and the torturing and assassination of her husband.

Sosa said that the Salvadoran goverment often arrests and tortures innocent civilians and forces them to sign extra-judicial confessions of crimes that they did not commit.

The mother of seven upheld the Co-Madras' advocating nonviolent direct action as a means of bringing peace to El Salvador.

"We mothers don't want war because it's our children who are falling in the fields of battle," Sosa said.

"She spoke with a power that came from her experiences--a sustained anger that serves as an example for positive and constructive peace in central America," said Phillip N. Fucella '90, a member of the undergraduate Committee on Central America.