RIGHTS-PARAGUAY: President Apologises to Victims of Dictatorship
By David Vargas
ASUNCIÓN, Aug 28 (IPS) - Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo apologised Thursday in the name of the state to the victims of human rights violations committed by the 1954-1989 dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner.
The testimony of thousands of victims was compiled in the final report of the Truth and Justice Commission, the result of four years of work, which was presented Thursday in Asunción.
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The report puts the number of direct and indirect victims of the dictatorship at 128,076, including victims of forced disappearance, extrajudicial execution, detention, torture, rape and political exile.
Of that total, 19,682 were the victims of illegal detention, 59 were the victims of extrajudicial execution, and 337 were "disappeared."
The Commission estimates that 3,470 people were forced to flee into exile for political reasons, although it acknowledges that this figure "falls short of the reality of this painful human rights violation."
An estimated 95 percent of the political prisoners were tortured, and at least half received death threats, according to the report.
Torture included electric shock to different parts of the body, near suffocation with plastic bags or in tubs filled with filthy liquids, being burned or cut, and being forced to watch the torture of other people.
Torture was "the main instrument of social control used by the military regime," and mainly affected members of political parties and social movements, especially peasant farmers, says the report.
"We want to specifically underscore the sexual violence that was used as a repressive strategy, aimed at demonstrating the aggressors’ power and dominance over their victims," said Bishop Mario Medina, the chairman of the Truth and Justice Commission.
The largest number of cases documented by the report involve sexual abuse of girls between the ages of 12 and 15 at the hands of members of the military and the police and civilian agents of the dictatorship.
It states that many women suffered human rights abuses because they were the relatives of the victims of political persecution, belonged to communities that suffered attacks, or were leaders or members of civil society groups.
Bishop Medina, a leading figure in the struggle against the dictatorship, said that although the figures "fail to reflect the pain of the Paraguayan people in its full dimension," they "give us a sense of the magnitude."
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