Case of Six Murdered Jesuit Priests Re-examined!

I have been reading multiple reports on this story from all over the Internet. Sources focused on human rights, international law and justice, faith based groups, groups with a focus on Latin American history and just plain folks who report, blog and post about world news generally have all been writing about this piece of news!

Charges have been filed by two Human Rights Organizations in Spain against former Salvadoran president Alfredo Cristiani and 14 members of the army in connection with the 1989 slaughter of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her teenage daughter.

According to an article at the Global News Blog:

The Spanish Association for Human Rights (APDHE) and the San Francisco-based Centre for Justice and Accountability (CJA) filed a criminal case in the Spanish high court against former president Cristiani (1989-1994), accusing him of protecting the murderers and obstructing the subsequent investigation, and against 14 officers and soldiers of the Salvadoran army for their direct involvement in the massacre and in covering up the crime.

Read the whole story here. More information can be found on blogs and news sources all over the web if you do a quick search.

I find this to be amazing news because when we visited the sight of the murders at University of Central America last August, our tour guide was hesitant to identify those responsible even to us, a group of church folk from the US. The answer we received to the question of "who was responsible for this atrocity, the Government or some rogue members of the Army?" was a rather short and vague, "the person responsible was the only one who could have given such an order". We were all immediately struck by the fear in this answer. She obviously felt unable to tell us, even after 19 years, her thoughts on the perpetrator(s).

May the hearing of this case bring justice in this case and more importantly, may it help eliminate more fear from this country.

More links about this story:
New York Times
Irish Times
LA Times

Riding for Immigrant Rights

I found this article on a web site called Workers World. It is a great story about one man's journey over many thousands of miles in support of immigrant rights for El Salvadorans. One man's journey could seem insignifigant to some, but could inspire, educate and inform many others. Click here to read the story!

Audio Interview Regarding the Upcoming Elections

You can listen to an interesting audio interview with Lara Pullin of the Canberra Committee of the FMLN and her opinions on the upcoming elections and the current state of Human Rights in El Salvador. I originally found this audio source on a far left wing blog called Left Click, so please keep in mind that is coming from a specific point of view. I can tell you that we were able to verify some of these same issues regarding the upcoming elections including the split elections, which will make it difficult for the most poor and rural communities to vote in both the local and the presidential elections, and propaganda campaigns regarding the potential shutting off of remittance if the FMLN were to win a majority in the elections when we met with the Supreme Electoral Tribunal during our visit. This interview is worth a listen.