(SPP/IFEX) – The following is an abridged version of a 15 November 2006 SPP statement: Using fascistic methods, the government is feigning ignorance about Enrique Galeano’s disappearance On 4 February 2006, Enrique Galeano was kidnapped and disappeared. Six weeks prior to his disappearance, he was under police protection at his residence, ordered by Congress representative […]
(SPP/IFEX) – The following is an abridged version of a 15 November 2006 SPP statement:
Using fascistic methods, the government is feigning ignorance about Enrique Galeano’s disappearance
On 4 February 2006, Enrique Galeano was kidnapped and disappeared. Six weeks prior to his disappearance, he was under police protection at his residence, ordered by Congress representative Magdaleno Silva and police chief Osvaldo Núñez. Nevertheless, the police closed his case, claiming he had “fled”, and the Office of the Prosecutor General of the Nation (Fiscalía General del Estado) has neither investigated nor brought to justice the police chief and other police agents, who deny the facts, nor Silva.
On 6 October, President Duarte Frutos made a commitment to pay special attention to the case, and Interior Minister Rogelio Benítez recognized irregularities in the police’s guarding of Galeano and cast doubt on the police records of their performance.
Galeano’s disappearance occurred in a context dominated by organised crime and state terrorism, which has already killed 50 people and resulted in the disappearance of four others in Yby Yaú alone.
Nevertheless, to the request of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) to be informed of the whereabouts of the disappeared journalist, the government and state bodies gave no real response. In its reply to the IACHR, the government turned over documentation from the Supreme Court (Corte Suprema de Justicia), the Attorney General’s Office (Procuraduría General de la República), the Prosecutor General’s Office (Fiscalía General del Estado), and the national police commander’s office (Comandancia de la Policía Nacional).
Attorney General Nelson Mora stated that his office’s report has discarded the possibility that the case involved a forced disappearance, saying that the main clue now is an email allegedly signed by Galeano indicating that he is in Argentina, and he concluded that “there has been no real verification of a punishable offence, therefore the accusation of forced disappearance (. . . ) is factually unsubstantiated.”
The principal argument proffered by the government is based on a “psychological profile” of Galeano, fabricated on the basis of just one interview, conducted years ago by a non-governmental organization, obtained without a warrant by the Solicitor General’s Office (Ministerio Público).
The so-called “psychological profile” tendentiously concludes that Galeano may have “a systematic and stable behavioural pattern of: a) fleeing and disappearing; b) engaging in illegal activities; c) feelings of depression, anger and indignation; d) a marked identification with the life and culture of the street . . . “
This document is not only discriminatory and degrading of the victim, it also reveals the fascist methods and thinking behind the Attorney General’s Office’s attempt to present as criminal the victim’s poverty – thinking which is totally contrary to humanitarian and democratic concepts.
It is Attorney General Mora who has transgressed all limits in his report, by ignoring completely and omitting to mention the incidents of threats, acts of intimidation, the irregularity of the police guarding that was witnessed, and the fact that Galeano was found to be at risk, at the epicenter of a region dominated by organised crime.
The government’s hypothesis that Galeano allegedly “took the decision to flee the country,” abandoning his family of four for whom he is the breadwinner, because of a “tendency to disappear,” is so serious that it generates an alarming suspicion about the government’s real intentions as regards clarifying the journalist’s disappearance.
To sum up, the government has not provided an explanation to the IACHR about Galeano’s disappearance; it fabricated a tendentious “psychological profile”, omitted to analyse the real situation of danger Galeano was in at the time of his disappearance, and its report sharply contradicts declarations by President Frutos and Interior Minister Benítez.
Given the gravity of the government’s response, the SPP has decided to:
– make Attorney General Mora’s report public;
– forward to the Human Rights Commissions of both the Senate and the Chamber of Representatives the government’s response, asking that the Commissions request an explanation from the officials involved in writing the report;
– condemn the government’s report presented by Attorney General Mora as misleading, outrageous, and an attack on fundamental rights such as the right to freedom, safety and life;
– ratify that our colleague Galeano’s case is indeed a case of forced disappearance, thus the state has an obligation to search for him until he is found;
– continue to demand an investigation until the case is solved, and the trial and punishment of those responsible for this crime against humanity;
– deplore the attempt by state bodies and the government to cover up for those guilty and to leave this crime in impunity;
– express our strongest repudiation of the fascistic methods and thinking by various ministries and the police, which has entrenched state terrorism in our country.
Board of directors
Sindicato de Periodista del Paraguay (SPP)
