IHR&CRC students helped pen a letter to the President of El Salvador Calling on him to stop a new amnesty bill that would ensure impunity for perpetrators of torture.

Dear President Bukele,

My name is Neris Amanda Gonzalez. I was eight months pregnant in December of 1979 when I was abducted, detained, tortured, and raped by members of the Salvadoran National Guard. I lost my baby boy soon thereafter. This December will mark the 40^th year since that fateful day when I was abducted. And still, the perpetrators responsible for my torture have not been brought to justice in El Salvador. For many years, they were protected by a blanket amnesty that was determined to be in violation of El Salvador’s human rights obligations by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and only recently declared unconstitutional by the Constitutional Chamber of our Supreme Court. And yet, just as justice appears possible, our legislature is threatening to reinstate the amnesty again. I write to beg you to do what you can to stop this new amnesty bill from being enacted.

For years after my abduction, I suffered tremendously and continued to fight for justice. My efforts were thwarted again and again. The greatest impediment was the amnesty law, enacted in March of 1993 by former President Alfredo Cristiani and the Salvadoran legislature, which prevented any civil or criminal redress in El Salvador against individuals like those who had tortured me. In 2012, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights found this amnesty law to be incompatible with El Salvador’s international obligations, but to no avail. The law stayed on the books and the men who oversaw my torture and rape continued to enjoy impunity.

With my efforts to seek healing, reconciliation, and justice in my home country’s court’s system continuously thwarted, I filed suit along with two other victims, Juan Romagoza Arce and Carlos Mauricio, in May of 1999 in a United States court against former Defense Minister General José Guillermo García and the former Director General of the Salvadoran National Guard, General Carlos Eugenio Vides Casanova. Both men held leadership positions when I was abducted that December.

A federal jury, made up of ordinary United States citizens, decided the case in our favor and awarded us reparations. Unfortunately, because the defendants had few assets within reach, we have not received the compensation we were awarded. However, on the strength of this verdict, the U.S. government subsequently deported the two former generals to El Salvador, where they now walk freely among us.

In 2016, the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court of El Salvador ruled that the amnesty provisions that had protected the former generals for all these years are unconstitutional. For survivors like me, that ruling – and your public support, President Bukele, of that ruling – gave great hope. I commissioned my lawyers to provide to the prosecutor’s office copies of the judgement that had been rendered by the U.S. court and all of the evidence and testimony that had been collected on my behalf.

However, the new amnesty law working its way through the legislature is threatening justice once again. Instead of resourcing our country’s prosecutors to seek justice on behalf of survivors, this law threatens to impede our access to justice altogether – once again.

I write with one voice on behalf of many: please stop this law from being enacted. Justice for victims like me is integral to helping our country move forward from the most painful, humiliating, and oppressive periods of our past.

Neris Amanda Gonzalez

(featured Imagine: IHR&CRC Student Chris Bello & Benjamín Cuéllar in front of “La Fiscalia”)

Read Full Letter here (en español)