Wednesday, November 9, 2005

Second Annual Herbert Anaya Congress
On Friday, November 4 the Second Herbert Anaya Sanabria International Congress on Human Rights was held at the National University of El Salvador. Organized by law students and members of the Anaya Perla family, the congress aims to honor Herbert Anaya’s life’s work as a human rights activist and former president of the Non-governmental Human Rights Commission of El Salvador by addressing current human rights issues. Herbert was murdered in the parking lot outside his home on October 26, 1987.

Invited speakers touched on the topics of the state of constitutional law, the role of the media against common crime, white collar crime, the case of the disappearance of the Serrano sisters, how corruption violates and limits human rights and the criminal investigative practices of the Attorney General’s office and the National Civilian Police.

Herbert’s oldest daughter Rosa read a reflection that she wrote this year on the anniversary of his death, emphasizing the importance of remembering the past and the continuing effects of impunity for human rights offenders on Salvadoran society:

“Forgive and forget, they repeat endlessly, and so I continue to cry tirelessly. Forgive yes, forget never. I hear talk of the base on which a democratic country must be built, they talk of the rule of law, they even dare to speak of human rights, of justice…as if they were commodities that can be given and taken away upon discretion or sold to the highest bidder. And I ask myself what these words mean beyond an academic definition.

There are those who conveniently prefer to forget that justice cannot be built on rotten bones, when from the Salvadoran scales of justice drops of blood flow from the fresh wounds of the dead and tortured. When I say fresh, it is because today there is an average of 12 homicides a day and many are tortured outside and inside of prisons and no one is angered by this because they have taught us to differentiate between those who deserve to have human rights and those who do not.”

The event concluded with awarding Father Jon Cortina the Herbert Anaya Sanabria National Human Rights Award for his work with Pro-Búsqueda. Pro-Búsqueda is an organization dedicated to searching for children disappeared during the Salvadoran armed conflict, promoting family and social reintegration, recuperating the victims right to identity and promoting moral and material reparations. The Anaya Perla family has given this award to individuals committed to defending human rights since 1994.