Trials of war criminals and torturers from Latin America’s cold-war days are causing a backlash
elderly and frail. Others are merely greying. Some thought they were untraceable, having invented new identities in other countries. Some were generals, others subalterns. Over the past few years executioners and torturers from Latin America’s dictatorships of the 1970s and 1980s have at last been brought to account, despite amnesty laws that were the price of democracy. And that is producing a backlash.
Any civilised society must try to punish such horrors. But in ending internal conflicts, peace, reconciliation and truth are as important as justice. There is often a trade-off. Rebels and dictators often refuse to give up unless they are promised amnesty. Moral imperative is thus tempered by political feasibility. And the politics is not getting much easier.
To go back 30 years or so requires judges to strike down amnesty laws and a change in political conditions, notes José Miguel Vivanco of Human Rights Watch, a pressure group. “If these guys are still alive they should face justice and tell the truth,” he says.
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