76
Paraguay
During an Amnesty International mission to Paraguay in May 1974, Dr Horst Woesner, Judge of the Supreme Court of the Federal Republic of Germany, raised with President Alfredo Stroessner, the Minister of the Interior and the Paraguayan Supreme Court the problems relating to long-term political prisoners and the lack of legal process for alleged political offences. The authorities claim- ed that the state of siege, declared every three months as a matter of routine, gives the President the right to maintain political suspects in indefinite preven- tive detention without any form of judicial process. Dr Woesner stressed every detainee's right to a fair trial whereby his guilt or innocence could be established.
This situation, which is anachronistic in today's Latin America, caused the Latin American Parliament, meeting in Caracas in February 1975, to call for the release of the political prisoners in Paraguay.
Besides the continuing long-term detentions (now reaching 17 years for three detainees), there are often waves of short-term arrests of political dissenters, usually including brutal treatment. During the past year, waves of arrests have been almost unprecedented, both in numbers and brutality. The first, in November 1974, hit several hundred members of the Christian-oriented agrarian cooperative movement, the Ligas Agrarias.
The second attack on the Ligas Agrarias came in February 1975 when many peasant communities were raided by military personnel, and peasants, priests and village teachers were arrested in circumstances of great brutality. Several peasants were reported to have been shot during the raid, and one priest was seriously wounded. The raid took place the same day that representatives of the Catholic Relief Service were inspecting the village communities. They and other foreign priests were later released after intervention from their embassies.
Thanks to the full support given to these communities by the Paraguayan Roman Catholic Church hierarchy, it was possible to establish the facts of the event more quickly than usual. The International Secretariat approached the United States State Department and the various governments whose citizens had been arrested in the same circumstances, requesting their help also for the Paraguayan citizens involved. All prisoners whose names it has been possible to obtain have been taken up by AI, each Al group being responsible for all arrested peasants from the same village community.
The arrests of the Ligas Agrarias illustrate a mainly socio-economical cause for political imprisonment, whereas the large-scale arrests that took place to- wards the end of 1974 were a clampdown on a wide range of political opposition, including prominent political personalities close to the President himself. The event that initiated the repression was an alleged conspiracy against President Stroessner's life.
The complete secrecy surrounding the interrogations gave cause for the most serious concern for the physical safety of the prisoners; at least one person died as a result of torture. Secretary General Martin Ennals wrote to President Stroessner in January 1975, stressing the need for legal safeguards, access to legal counsel and the right of habeas corpus. AI also issued a news release about these violations of human and legal rights and published an article which describ- ed the events.