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Insights Magazine
Fri, 26th Apr 2024
El Salvadoran president officially apologises for 1981 massacre
On the 20th anniversary of the end of theEl Salvadorcivil war, President Mauricio Funes issued an emotional public apology for an infamous 1981 massacre of civilians by army troops.
Speaking January 16 in El Mozote, about 200 kilometers (120 miles) from the capital of San Salvador, Mr Funes said, “For this massacre, for the abhorrent violations of human rights and the abuses perpetrated in the name of the Salvadoran state, I ask forgiveness of the families of the victims.”
Soldiers from the now-disbanded Atlacatl battalion entered El Mozote December 11, 1981, looking for left-wing rebels and sympathisers. In two days, they slaughtered nearly 1,000 men, women and children. Bodies were tossed inside a church which was set on fire. It was the bloodiest single episode ofEl Salvador’s 12-year civil war that left some 75,000 dead. Twelve thousand more disappeared during the conflict.
“I ask forgiveness of the mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, brothers and sisters of those who still today do not know the whereabouts of their loved ones. I ask forgiveness from the people ofEl Salvador, who suffered an atrocious and unacceptable violence,” Funes said in a speech in front of thousands of farmers at the massacre site, the Associated Press reported.
Under its program Communication for Peace, the Toronto-based World Association for Christian Communication (WACC) has supported several film documentary projects and workshops inEl Salvadorin the past few years to gain public acceptance of the need to come to terms with the country’s violent past, according to a recent news release.
One of the documentaries, Colima, focused on a mother whose daughter disappeared during the civil war and on the family’s search for truth. The 2008 film was screened in cinemas throughoutEl Salvador and at festivals abroad and “facilitated the beginning of a judicial process of exhumation of the victims, their identification and the return of the bodies to their families,” according to the WACC news release.
However, Msgr. Gregorio Rosa Chavez, the assistant bishop ofSan Salvador, observed “there is still a lot to do,” even with the peace accords. “We have a lot of ground to make up in human rights,” Mr Chavez told the AP, “as there is in the economic situation of the poor, the poorest part of the population continues to be the poorest.”
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