(Reuters) – The foreign ministers of Britain and France urged Sri Lanka on Wednesday to implement a humanitarian cease-fire with Tamil Tiger rebels in order to allow tens of thousands of trapped civilians to escape the battle zone.
Sri Lanka earlier in the week promised to stop using heavy weapons in its fight to finish off the rebels and to concentrate its military efforts on freeing the civilians, but both sides report continued fighting and casualties.
Following are some key events in the 25-year conflict between Tamil separatist rebels and the Sri Lankan government.
1983 – Tiger attack in north kills 13 soldiers, triggering anti-Tamil riots in capital, Colombo. Hundreds die, thousands flee. Start of what Tigers call “First Eelam War.”
1987 – Having earlier armed Tigers, India sends troops to enforce truce it brokered. Tigers renege, refuse to disarm and begin three years of fighting that kills 1,000 Indian soldiers.
1990 – India withdraws. Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) control northern city of Jaffna. “Second Eelam War” begins.
1991 – Suspected Tiger suicide bomber kills former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in southern India. Two years later, Sri Lankan President Ranasinghe Premadasa assassinated in separate suicide attack. LTTE blamed in both.
1995 – President Chandrika Kumaratunga agrees to truce with rebels. “Eelam War 3” begins when rebels sink naval craft. Tigers lose Jaffna to government forces.
1995-2001 – War rages across north and east. Suicide attack on central bank in Colombo kills around 100. Kumaratunga wounded in another attack.
2002 – Landmark cease-fire signed after Norwegian mediation.
2003 – Tigers pull out of peace talks, cease-fire holds.
2004-2005 – Tamil Tiger eastern commander Colonel Karuna Amman breaks away from LTTE and takes 6,000 fighters with him Suspected Tiger assassin kills foreign minister. Anti-Tiger hardliner Mahinda Rajapaksa wins presidency.
2006 – Fighting flares in April-July, raising fears of start of “Eelam War 4.” New talks fail in Geneva in October.
2007 – Government captures Tiger’s eastern strongholds.
2008 – Government annuls cease-fire in early January and launches massive offensive.
January 2, 2009 – Troops seize Tiger’s de facto capital, Kilinochchi.
April 5 – Military says it has confined the rebels to a no-fire zone measuring just 17 square km (6.5 sq miles).
April 17 – Rebels call for a truce after two-day government fighting pause expires. Government rejects the call as a ruse.
April 20 – Sri Lanka gives the rebels 24 hours to surrender as tens of thousands of civilians flee battle zone.
April 26 – Tigers declare a unilateral cease-fire. Sri Lankan government dismisses cease-fire and says they must surrender.
April 27 – Sri Lankan government says it ceases combat operations with heavy weapons and operations will be confined to using only small arms and rescuing civilians trapped in the war zone.
April 29 – British and French foreign ministers urge government to implement a humanitarian cease-fire, as both sides in the war report continued fighting and casualties.
(Writing by Ranga Sirilal; Editing by Jerry Norton)
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By Koththa-Malli

My dear Mahinda Aiya,

Ayubowan, vanakkam and assalamu alaikkum as we enter May with the once vibrant May Day being downgraded or degraded while ‘May day, May day’ alerts are ringing loud on several fronts. The ruling UPFA, this year, did not hold the May Day rally but instead there was a meeting of political and trade union leaders at Temple Trees. Analysts say the rally was called off apparently because of physical exhaustion after the long campaign for the Western Provincial Council elections or perhaps because the government feels there is no need to rally the people any more with millions already whipped up by the war mentality if not hysteria.

The main opposition UNP also did not hold a May Day procession or rally. Instead we saw a front page picture of party leader Ranil Wickremesinghe with Ranil the worker acting as a May Day painter at a Children’s Home in Kotte. The JVP was the only major party that conducted a rally at Campbell Place but there was no procession. JVP leaders, charged at the rally,that the UNP was now so bankrupt or broken down that it would never be able to draw a large crowd for a May Day rally. But party politics like all factors in life is transient and impermanent. Within months the balance of power or public support could swing dramatically.

With May Day going to the back pages like an obituary notice, the news headlines were again dominated by what is happening or not happening on the northern battle front. Though battles in the five-kilometre conflict zone appeared to be less intense than in the weeks before, Sri Lanka last week came under its heaviest political bombardment from the international community. Sri Lanka’s giant neighbour or big brother India harbouring dreams or aims of becoming the super power of the continent, continued to play a double or treble game on the Sri Lankan crisis while Tamil Nadu blew hot and cold with a fast on one side and a farce on the other. The Congress government’s position was also muddled in a political mystery.

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One is unsure whether to laugh or cry at this week’s literally ‘flying visit’ of the Foreign Ministers of Britain and France carrying the White man’s burden as it were to ensure that all was well in these uncivilized parts of the world. They suddenly descended, and left even faster, like bats fleeing out of hell. So much so that one is reminded of the wisecrack of yesteryear about the ‘foreign experts’ who came to Sri Lanka to find out – and left before being found out.

No doubt there is an orchestrated ganging-up of the Western powers — the so-called ‘International Community’. They say they are concerned about the humanitarian problem in the Wanni, the plight of thousands trapped due to the fighting between Sri Lankan Security Forces and what is left of the LTTE’s fighting cadres.

Consider not only the fire-bombings of civilians in Dresden and the atom-bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to bring a speedy end to World War II and thereby Fascism in Europe, but also what’s happening right now in Eastern Afghanistan and Pakistan’s Waziristan tribal area? In the circumstances, do these Western powers have the moral right to talk of combating terrorism without collateral damage to civilians?

By all accounts, it would seem that the British Foreign Minister was particularly offensive. India too has found him so. He had disregard to protocol, been obtrusive quite unlike his French counterpart so much so that one wondered whether he thought himself to be the Secretary of State for the Colonies of Great Britain rather than the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs of plain Britain.

One might concede some portion of this coordinated effort by the Western world is prompted by genuine humanitarian concerns. No-one can deny the humanitarian crisis that has arisen due to the advances made by the Security Forces and LTTE guerrillas holding these civilians as a ‘human shield’ for their own protection. But the overwhelming fact of the matter is that there is an element of domestic pressure as well for these Western politicians. But genuine concern and electoral compulsions aside, the Government’s own handling of this sensitive issue leaves much to be desired. The misunderstanding with the Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt – a one-time Prime Minister – flippantly asked to come another day without joining his British and French colleagues was totally unnecessary.

Nuisance value apart, as these visits may be, Sri Lanka must avoid looking in the eyes of the impartial world like a blinkered Taliban-style regime, suspicious of every foreigner. We really can’t afford to do this if our economy and the well-being of our people is so tied to the world economy, begging as we are for loans from the International Monetary Fund and pleading for duty-free concessions from the EU etc.,

There is a well-known quip about what the fine art of diplomacy is all about; it is how to tell someone to “go to hell” in such a way that the person actually looks forward to the trip. We seem to be telling the world to ‘go to hell’ in the bluntest possible way. While some argue that this is the only language the West understands, it is not without its repercussions. A snubbed British Foreign Minister is now suggesting that Sri Lanka be elevated to the UN Security Council agenda, where noises are being made against this country. By this approach what has happened is that the Rajapaksa administration has inadvertently internationalised Sri Lanka’s internal issue, the very thing they accuse their political rivals of having done. Only worse, that this time, the so-called IC is ganged up against Sri Lanka.

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By Nick Paton Walsh

Channel 4 News reports from a camp in the northern Sri Lankan city of Vavuniya, where Tamil refugees have been taken.

Shocking claims have emerged of shortages of food and water, dead bodies left where they have fallen, women separated from their families, and even sexual abuse.

This programme obtained the first independently filmed pictures from the internment camps set up by the Sri Lankan government to house Tamils who have fled the country’s civil war.

Channel 4
Watch
(Submitted by SANSAD)

By Mumia Abu-Jamal

As these words are being written, the G20 meeting is taking place in the world’s second major banking city (London), and US president Barack Obama has arrived with a retinue not seen since an imperial king visited his dominions in the hinterlands, to impress upon the rabble the power and splendor of Empire.

But, as always, looks can be deceiving, for the true princes wear no diadems, and sport no trains. They are the princes of Capital, and as Marx has aptly observed, they occupy the ‘commanding heights’ of economic power, and thus, the political leaders meet to kiss their rings, in private and in silence.

But, for the last 5 months or so, those ‘commanding heights’ don’t seem so commanding any more.

As banks crumble overnight, and as long-term businesses and firms dissolve; as foreclosures gather speed, and unemployment rises like a thermometer in hell, capital’s place hasn’t seemed this insecure in several lifetimes.

If we lived in a world ruled by logic and reason, it would appear that this should be the time of left ascendancy, when socialist ideas stormed the barricades of capital, sending their stone idols crashing to the earth.

Yet, this is hardly our reality.

Why, we wonder?

It seems to me that some fundamentals need recounting here, as they’ve been no doubt through days of your panel and workshop meetings.

Capital is like a vampire; it has many faces and many lives.

In the last several decades, we’ve seen the erection of so-called think tanks, the well-capitalized repositories of court scholars, whose jobs it is to defend capitalist ideas and promote all manner of retrograde, anti-social and indeed, repressive ideas. Because of their wealth and influence, they have ready access to the mikes of media, and are thus able to amplify their volume and influence, and achieve the status of ubiquitous expert — on all matters, big and small. Such figures such as these proved pivotal in the 2001 and 2002 selling of the Iraq War, and their voices peppered the aural universe like wallpaper, with claims that now seem quite ridiculous: “Americans will be greeted like liberators”: “They’ll toss flowers at our feet”: “A garden of democracy will spring from our efforts”, and the like.

Now, of course, this was bull-manure, but the point is, it doesn’t matter. They’re back. Many are out of government, yet thanks to billions socked into the think tanks, they are a kind of shadow government, who still are able to bum rush the mike, now as think-tankers, immune from failure, for they have lifetime sinecures from capital.

Not surprisingly, there is no left counterpoint (as far as I know).

In part, I think, because the left doesn’t possess the right’s resources, or alternatively, such resources aren’t utilized in this fashion.

Thus, at a time when capital has come under serious question, few are the voices primed to offer any mass alternative, or if present, (as in this conference) how does it reach a mass audience? Or does it?

We just saw a general election several months ago in which one party repeatedly tried to accuse the other of being “socialist.” Of course, to a forum such as this, that’s hardly a slur; but didn’t you wish that the candidate really was a socialist?

Of course, if he were, he could hardly have enjoyed the corporate largesse that made his candidacy possible (not to mention the support of the party apparatus).

But, ultimately, it matters little what’s at top, as long as folks at the bottom are mobilized and organized and militant in defense of their class and social interests.

In a nutshell, there is no alternative to social movements.

People should be crowding the streets in protest of the present economic situation, when bankers get hundreds of billions in public monies, and people get foreclosure notices, as well as lay-off slips, amid the terror of homelessness.

But, as [Freidrich] Engels opined in the introduction to Marx’s The Civil War in France (1871), “[T]he state is nothing else than a machine for the oppression of one class by another, and indeed no less so in the democratic republic than in the monarchy” (26).

In the Communist Manifesto,(150 anniversary edition (1998:Kerr Publ.) Marx reminds us that “The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing…the whole bourgeoisie” (14-15). That is, a democratic state is but an instrument of the bourgeoisie – nothing more, nothing less.

Seen from this light, why should they not squander public wealth for private ends? Are they not tools of private wealth and influence?

Social movements, movements of the masses of the people, break those links by forcing them to serve public needs with public resources – and to at least give a better show of serving their interests.

We live in an era where wars are waged in the name of democracy, yet few institutions are as profoundly undemocratic as financial ones.

The wealthy, in fact, the architects of economic ruin and failure, are [seen as] inherently worthy of multi-billion dollar bailouts – while the poor and unemployed deserve, at best, our sympathy; and at worst; our contempt.

Those ways of thinking taint and poison our consciousness, and influence not only our thinking, but foreclose avenues of alternative resolutions.

All around us, in the failing businesses, the joblessness, and the foreclosures which gave rise to homelessness, are proofs of capitalism’s crises, which are growing as we speak.

This is the essence of the business cycle – boom and bust; bust and boom. Wars in defense of corporate greed and industrial acquisition.

More for the millionaires and billionaires – nothing for the many.

What social condition could be better for our purposes?

What more is needed to show that the present status quo is a recipe for more failure?

This is a great opportunity that may not come again for generations – let us not waste it.

Let us organize our movements with an eye towards the seriousness of the hour.

For we live in an hour not seen since the 1930s, in a time when politicians owe their offices to the very forces of speculative capitalism that wrought this epic disaster, and thus are loath to go against their paymasters, even in a time of crisis.

The epicenters of this economic earthquake are in New York and London, where the mortgage-trading scams originated and matured into new ways of creating great wealth.

And in the capitals of both economic empires, the elected leaders, American President Barack Obama, and British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, fear the claim that they are socialists, and are thus hesitant to exert more than symbolic dominance over the banks that have demonstrated their inability to manage their own assets, not to mention the wealth of nations.

Now is the time to organize, to expand our movements, to protest in our strength and our diversity, for if history teaches us anything, if the left fails to organize, the right will do so.

I don’t say this lightly, but as a result of my reading of a set of lectures delivered by the brilliant Marxist historian and revolutionary organizer, C.L.R. James, in Trinidad, during the summer of 1960. These were collected years later in Modern Politics (1973). James, speaking to Trinidad Public Library’s Adult Education Program, discussed the pivotal turning point facing Germany in 1931-32. It was a period, he explained, in which the future of Europe would be decided. Here now, a direct quote from James:
The German Communists got instruction from
Moscow to let Hitler come into power. These things
are very difficult to say to an audience that is not
familiar with the material and cannot go to town
tomorrow morning and buy books. I have brought
here my own book, written in 1937. I have 52 pages
(the Chairman will corroborate) on Germany in those
days, and the title of the chapter is, “After Hitler
Our Turn.” That was the slogan of the German
Communist Party in Germany from 1930 -1931 right
up to the time that Hitler came into power in 1933.
Let him come in. He will be a failure, and then we will
make the revolution.
They were the specific instructions of Stalin [p.58]

My point here?
If the Left fails to organize, the Right will do so.

We are all at a critical turning point in American and world history.

What happens next may depend on our efforts.

Thank You!

Ona Move! Long Live John Africa!

From Death Row, this is Mumia Abu-Jamal

************************************************
The U.S. Supreme Court recently rejected Mumia Abu-Jamal’s appeal for a new trial based on racism in jury selection. The U.S Supreme Court has not yet decided whether it will further consider the Philadelphia DA’s appeal of the 2001/2008 rulings of two lower courts, which ruled that Abu-Jamal deserves a new sentencing hearing if the death penalty is to be re-instated. If the U.S. Supreme Court rules in favor of the DA, Abu-Jamal could be executed without a new sentencing hearing.
In response, Abu-Jamal’s lead attorney Robert R. Bryan will be filing a “petition for re-hearing” at the U.S. Supreme Court. Emergency meetings have been held in several cities to coordinate grassroots response, and over 3,000 people have signed an online petition in an effort coordinated by anti-death penalty activists.
On Friday April 24 and 25, 2009 events were held in more than a dozen cities to organize and to celebrate the release of Mumia’s new book with City Lights, JAILHOUSE LAWYERS. More info here:www.citylights.com
Watch Angela Y. Davis speaking at the Oakland event on April 24, 2009
http://www.zmag.org/zvideo/3128
Listen to Mumia’s response to the Supreme Court decision in an interview with Noelle Hanrahan of Prison Radio.
http://www.prisonradio.org/mumia_interview_4_6_09.htm
Contact the White House to protest the unjust ruling
www.whitehouse.gov/CONTACT
Emergency Rally | 4pm, Friday May 8th | 163 W. 125th St. in Harlem
http://www.freemumia.com/may8.html
Ongoing updates:
http://www.freemumia.com/
DEMAND A NEW TRIAL | FREE MUMIA!
http://www.zmag.org/zspace/commentaries/3851

by Kristin Bricker

San Cristóbal de las Casas,

Chiapas, México

To members of the other campaign both national and international

To the alternative national and international media

Sisters and brothers in national and international resistance movements

Cordial greetings! We are writing you today to ask for your strong and committed support in action and solidarity in the search for justice for 8 activists unjustly and illegally imprisoned, tortured, badly treated, stigmatized by the media, and now awaiting possible incarceration for false accusations. Presently these activists, Jerónimo Gómez Saragos, Antonio Gómez Saragos, Miguel Demeza Jiménez, Sebastián Demeza Deara, Pedro Demeza Deara y Jerónimo Moreno Deara, members of the Other Campaign and residents of Ejido San Sebastián Bachajón, in the municipality of Chilón, detained on April 13th, 2009; as well as Alfredo Gómez Moreno y Miguel Vázquez Moreno, who is a a member of the Zapatistas, and was detained on the 17the and18th of April in the prison “El Amate” CERESS 14 in Cintalapa, Chiapas, Mexico. In the course of the next 4 days, ending on Friday, May 8th, the state will decide whether these activists are innocent and free from the crimes which they are falsely accused or whether they will be incorporated in the corruption of this government and imprisoned.

These activists, members of the Other Campaign and the Zapatistas, among the most active of those working for social change, are part of the first dignified voices to proclaim themselves against the new highway project that will connect the cities of Ocosingo and Palenque. These projects will initiate the basic infrastructure for a series of massive projects proposed by the government and multinational corporations. These projects engage in the theft of the abundant natural resources in the region and the implementation of a large scale tourism business that will destroy the surrounding environment.

If we allow this process to continue in silence, we, the national and international community will leave open the possibility for this government to continue their crimes; allowing repressions to continue against social activists; giving permission to torture, intimidate, and detain anyone that defends their legitimate right to live without fear and demand their basic human rights; we will allow them to continue to develop massive projects that will lead to the destruction of a dignified life for any human being.

Now is an important and urgent moment to act in every way possible to achieve liberty for these activists. In the next few days any type of political act in your city or country that will call attention to the unjust detention of these activists and support this struggle for basic human rights will help. We need to pressure the state government and administration of Juan Sabines Guerrero to liberate these political prisoners. Any act is useful whether it be in group or individual; marches, letters to the government of Chiapas and the federal government of Mexico, signed petitions, calls and letters to the press…will all bring attention to these injustices.

Sincerely,

Adherents to the sixth declaration of the Lacandon jungle, San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, México.

Addresses for sending letters:

Lic. Juan José Sabines Guerrero
Gobernador Constitucional del Estado de Chiapas
Gobernatura del Estado de Chiapas
Palacio de Gobierno del Estado de Chiapas
Av. Central y Primera Oriente, Colonia Centro, C.P. 29009
Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Chiapas, México
Correo-electrónico: secparticular@chiapas.gob.mx
Fax: +52 (961) 61 88088 +52 (961) 6188056

Dr. Noé Castañòn León
Secretario General de Gobierno del Estado de Chiapas
Secretaría General de Gobierno
Palacio de Gobierno, 2o. piso, Colonia Centro
Tuxtla, Gutiérrez, Chiapas, México
C.P. 29000 Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Chiapas.
Fax: +52 (961) 61 20663
Conmutador: + 52 (961) 61 2-90-47, 61 8-74-60

Lic. Juan Gabriel Coutiño Gómez
Tribunal Superior de Justicia
Magistrado Presidente Juan Gabriel Coutiño Gómez
Palacio de Justicia
Libramiento Norte Oriente No.2100
Fraccionamiento El Bosque
C.P. 20047
Tuxtla Gutierrez, Chiapas
Tel-Fax : (52+)(961) 6178700
(52+)(961) 6165350
Contacto: administrator@mail.scjn.gob.mx

Lic. Carlos Alberto Bello Avendaño
Juez Segundo de Penal del Distrito Judicial de Tuxtla Gutiérrez
Carretera Tuxtla Gutiérrez ?Cintalapa
Tel- Fax: (52+) (968) 36 46 84
52+)(961) 6178700
Contacto: cbelloa@poderjudicialchiapas.gob.mx

RPTE. DE LA OFICINA DEL ALTO COMISIONADO PARA LOS DERECHOS HUMANOS EN MEXICO
Dirección : Alejandro Dumas #165
Col. Polanco Delegación Miguel Hidalgo
C.P 11560 México D.F
Tel: + 52 (01 55) 5061-6350 Fax: 5061-6358
e-mail: oacnudh@ohchr.org

Please send a copy to:

Centro de Derechos Humanos Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas, A.C.
Calle Brasil 14, Barrio Méxicanos, 29240 San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas, México
Tel: 967 6787395, 967 6787396, Fax: 967 6783548
Correo: accionurgente@frayba.org.mx

For more information about this case:

Centro de Derechos Humanos Fray Bartolomé de las Casas

Bulletins

CIEPAC

Videos and Bulletins

Enlace Zapatista

Denouncements

Denouncements
—
“That is why we think no, no more, enough of this dying useless deaths, it would be better to fight for change. If we die now, we will not die with shame, but with the dignity of our ancestors. Another 150,000 of us are ready to die if that is what is needed to waken our people from their deceit-induced stupor”.

Zapatista Communique

—
“That is why we think no, no more, enough of this dying useless deaths, it would be better to fight for change. If we die now, we will not die with shame, but with the dignity of our ancestors. Another 150,000 of us are ready to die if that is what is needed to waken our people from their deceit-induced stupor”.

Zapatista Communique

(Submitted by Michelle Cook)

By Casmir Igbokwe (cigbokwe2001@yahoo.com)

THIS is a season of flu. Currently, there is swine flu in Mexico and some other parts of the world. In Nigeria and some other African countries, the flu is political. And it is malignant, life-threatening and deadly.

In Kenya, for instance, over 1,000 people died in post-election violence in 2008. The coalition government formed in the wake of that violence is currently shaky. Relations between President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga are said to be frosty. Women have gone on sex strike to protest this development.

In Ekiti, women have also come out in full force to protest the political logjam in that state. Last Wednesday, thousands of women protesters trooped to the major streets of Ado-Ekiti to vent their anger on the stalemated governorship rerun election in the state. Old women marched half naked. Their younger counterparts were part of the protest, but could not bare their breasts.

I think the protest could have attracted more attention and made more impact if the younger women had defied shyness to toe the line of their older colleagues. Yes, the situation in Ekiti warrants even much more than that. It demands total nakedness if that will force our do-or-die politicians to retrace their steps.

Or how do we explain that we cannot conduct a free-and-fair election in 63 wards or 10 local government areas? How do we reconcile the fact that 10,000 policemen could not guarantee peace and security on the day of the election? How can the Independent National Electoral Commission and some other gladiators feed us lies with impunity? How can a senator of the Federal Republic of Nigeria conduct himself as Senator Ayo Arise allegedly did on Election Day and still remain a free man?

In Nigeria, there are more questions than answers. Better, the more you look, the less you see. What happened in Ekiti penultimate Saturday was expected. It was more than an election. It was a supremacy battle between the ruling Peoples Democratic Party and the Action Congress for the soul of the South-West.

And so it was not surprising when Governor Olagunsoye Oyinlola of Osun State boasted in a rally in Ekiti on April 4, 2009 that the PDP would win the rerun election by all means. There were allegations too that the ruling party planned to deploy soldiers to the state. Perhaps, the hue and cry that trailed the alleged plan to deploy soldiers put a check to that plot.

But the desperadoes would not relent. They brought in thugs and armed them with charms and ammunition to terrorise the citizenry. Empowered and emboldened, the thugs went to work on the Election Day. They killed. They maimed. They rigged. Not even journalists and observers were spared. Our photojournalist, Segun Bakare, whose pictures of the thuggery came out the following day in SUNDAY PUNCH, became the butt of attacks by female thugs. How primitive can we be?
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By Benjamin Dangl

Workers and activists gathered in the central plaza of Asunción, Paraguay on May 1st to commemorate International Workers Day. Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo marked the day by raising the minimum wage by 5%, half of what many of the unions present were demanding. But another piece of news set the tone for this annual gathering: the return to Paraguay of an ex-minister from the dictatorship who orchestrated the murder and torture of thousands of political dissidents.
In the early hours of May 1st, Sabino Augusto Montanaro, the Interior Minister in Paraguay during the repressive Alfredo Stroessner dictatorship (1954-1989), returned to his country after 20 years in Honduras. Doctors say 86 year old Montanaro is suffering from senility and Parkinson’s disease. Montanaro’s lawyer Luis Troche said his client returned to the country not to apologize for his crimes or face justice, but because, “according to Paraguayan law, he is too old to go to jail.”

Montanaro served as a minister under Stroessner from 1966 to the end of the dictatorship, and played a key role in the regime’s repression, directing the abduction, torture and murder of political opponents of Stroessner. Now, upon his return to Paraguay, he faces various criminal charges, and thousands of angry citizens, many of whom greeted his return to the country with protests, and calls for the ex-minister’s imprisonment.

Martin Almada, a human rights lawyer and former political prisoner, discovered documents which prove that Montanaro played a key role in Operation Condor, a unified, cross-border network of repression coordinated by military dictatorships in the region throughout the 1970 and ‘80s.

In 2006, Stroessner died at age 93 in Brasilia without facing justice for the repression that took place under his watch, including the disappearance of some 400 people and the torture of 18,000, according to a Truth and Justice Commission.
Paraguayan Bishop Mario Melanio Medina told the ABC Color newspaper that Montanaro was Stroessner’s “right hand man” and “number one [in command] after Stroessner.”

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