GRAŻYNA BARANOWSKA - The right to truth denied
Appeals to the
European Court of Human Rights to enforce the ‘right to truth’ in connection
with the Franco regime and the Katyń massacre have been refused on procedural
grounds. A long history of delayed justice has become a permanent case of
justice denied, argues human rights lawyer Grażyna Baranowska.
In recent decades, the
jurisprudence of international human rights tribunals has aimed at
crystallising the ‘right to the
truth’. This concept was developed in the context of enforced
disappearances in South American countries but has also been invoked in dealing
with the past in Europe, for instance in the case of accounting for the crimes
of the Franco regime. Similarly, attempts were made to apply this concept in
the context of the Katyń massacre. History knows many
cases of enforced disappearances, for example, the practices of Nazi
Germany or the Soviet Union. However, this phenomenon was named only
in the 1960s, when the regimes in South American countries carried it out on a
wide scale. The original Spanish term desapariciones forzadas was
translated into English as ‘enforced disappearances’ and denotes the human
rights violation of the imprisonment of a person by state officials or groups
acting in collaboration with the state, while information regarding the fate of
this person is purposefully kept secret.
Enforced
disappearances not only violate the human rights of the missing persons but
also of their family members. The latter, uncertain about the fate of their
relatives, spend decades searching for their loved ones, often involving
subsequent generations in these activities as well. The efforts by the families of
the disappeared to discover the truth about these disappearances were
the impulse for developing the concept of the ‘right
to the truth’. According to the International
Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearances,
which entered into force in 2010, the right to the truth applies to all who
suffered as a result of the enforced disappearance (thus, also to the
disappeared persons’ family) and relates to the fate of the missing person, the
circumstances of their disappearance, and the results of the conducted
investigation. In this context, the ‘right to the truth’ denotes the obligation
of the state to provide information about the circumstances of such serious
human rights violations, not limited to present day but also encompassing
events in the (distant) past. While reliance on the right to the truth is
increasingly more frequent, uncertainties remain as to the scope
of this term and the possibilities of enforcing it.
Enforced
disappearances during the Spanish Civil War and the Franco Regime
Many enforced
disappearances occurred during the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) as
well as the Franco regime (1939–1975), but there is no official list of missing
people. Victim organizations estimate the disappearance of around 114,266
people between 1936 and 1951, but this figure does not include the 30,960
children forcibly taken away from Republican families. For political reasons,
the fate of the person disappeared by the Franco forces and regime remains
unknown. The vast majority of bodies have not been exhumed or identified; there
were no investigations nor any trials of those responsible for the
disappearances; and no system of compensations was ever established. On the
other hand, the investigation of enforced disappearances attributed to the
Republicans began as early as 1940, shortly after the end of the Civil War.
The families of the disappeared made the
first attempts to exhume Franco’s victims shortly after the death of the
dictator in 1975, with subsequent efforts in 2000. According to the Historical
Memory Law, adopted in Spain in 2007, the government is not required to
search for disappeared persons, but only to cooperate with and provide
information to persons seeking their disappeared relatives. Moreover, the
autonomous communities of Spain, responsible for implementing this law, have
adopted various approaches. For instance, Andalusiaaccepted
complete responsibility for exhuming victims, while other regions have not
taken any action to that effect... read more:
https://www.eurozine.com/right-truth-denied/See also
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