Latin America: Ignoring human rights

Abstract

The following is an extract from the ‘Sean MacBride’ Human Rights lecture delivered by Dr Luis Reque at the annual conference of Amnesty International at Strasbourg in September 1976 Dr Reque is the former Executive Secretary of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, an organ of the Organisation of American States. The main theme of Dr Reque's lecture was the situation of human rights in Latin America, with particular reference to countries ‘which by their repudiation and flagrant and systematic violation of human rights have come to constitute a cancerous cell, destroying freedom within the continent’. He gave evidence to show how human rights are constantly being violated (and the various inter-American pledges on this subject ignored) in Chile, Cuba, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay, with further examples from Haiti, Nicaragua and Guatemala. Dr Reque listed many cases of people who have died as a result of torture, with journalists, writers, artists, university lecturers and students figuring prominently on his list. But the problem is not simply one of the torture and in many instances death of political prisoners; often those arrested just disappear, the authorities denying the arrest despite denunciations by the families of the individuals concerned. One of the most disturbing aspects of Dr Reque's lecture is his account of the difficulties encountered by the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights (CIDH) in its attempts to promote and protect human rights in this area. We print here the part of Dr Reque's speech in which he refers to the obstacles placed in the path of the Commission by various governments in Latin America.