[Cispes-update] FMLN Kicks off 26th Anniversary with Presentation of Alternative Proposal on Crime Prevention

[CISPES National Office]

FMLN Kicks off 26th Anniversary with Presentation of Alternative Proposal on
Crime Prevention

CISPES Update

October 10, 2006

 

Tens of thousands of people from across El Salvador converged at the
Cuscatlán stadium this past Saturday to participate in the FMLN’s “Festival
for Peace, Security and Social Justice” as the start to the week-long
celebration of the guerilla organization-turned-political party’s 26th
anniversary.  The enthusiastic crowds listened to bands from across the
Americas play new and historic revolutionary music and heard speeches by
prominent FMLN leaders.  The centerpiece of the festival was the
presentation of the party’s alternative proposal to address the levels of
crime in El Salvador, which are now the highest in all of Latin America.
While all of ARENA’s “Iron Fist” approach to fighting crime has led to
increased repression, the FMLN’s proposal centers around crime prevention
and an overall policy that addresses all levels of government functioning. 

 

Medardo Gonzalez, the FMLN General Coordinator, called on everyone to be
active in the effort to make communities safer.  “We all need to come
together in this effort to lift this country out of the insecurity that the
governments of ARENA have submitted it to.  Municipal governments, Congress
people, and all FMLN officials from their positions should work to create
jobs and preventive security.  Communities need to organize to overcome this
crisis,” he said.  The FMLN proposal is based on the respect for human
rights, the defense of the constitution, and the promotion of democracy as
established in the 1992 Peace Accords.  It addresses violence and crime
through an integral approach, taking into consideration its structural
causes like unemployment, marginalization, lack of opportunities (especially
for youth), family disintegration and institutional inefficiency.  

 

At the local level, the proposal aims to transform municipalities into what
the FMLN is calling “safe cities” by creating municipal committees to plan
and implement crime prevention, citizen education and training, and sports
and recreational programs for youth.  Simultaneously, the proposal
recommends re-directing the work of institutions like the Attorney General’s
Office, the Judicial System, and the National Civilian Police to end
impunity and focus on social reinsertion, and simultaneously seeks to
strengthen them by allocating adequate resources to these institutions.  The
FMLN’s proposal also includes gun control, an issue ARENA has been unwilling
to touch because of its party members’ profits from the arms importing
business.

 

US pushes for further militarization of public security at hemispheric
Defense Ministerial

 

The Seventh Western Hemisphere Defense Ministerial was held last week in
Managua, Nicaragua, which brought together the Defense Ministers of over 30
Latin American nations to discuss issues of security and proposals for
cooperation.  U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld again used the occasion
to push the U.S.’s agenda for creating a regional security strategy and
coordinating military and security efforts in fighting drug-trafficking,
terrorism gang violence, and other “threats” to the region.  Venezuela has
been critical of the U.S.’s military interventionist history, and has put
forward a counter-proposal for regional integration led by Latin American
nations, not by the U.S.

 

The Ministerial took place in Managua just one month before the country’s
contested presidential elections scheduled for November 5th.  This is the
first time a Central American country hosts the Ministerial, since its
inception in 1994.  In light of recent US attempts to influence the
Nicaraguan elections, holding the Ministerial in Nicaragua is seen as a
backing to the current right-wing government.  Opposition political parties
in Nicaragua have also pointed to ARENA election official’s presence in
Nicaragua right before the elections, and their technical support to the
right-wing party, as illegal intervention in the elections.  Opposition
candidates say they suspect that ARENA officials are helping the Nicaraguan
right-wing prepare election fraud, based on their experience in El Salvador.

 

Major mobilizing in preparation for October 17th protests against water
privatization

 

Preparations are underway for next week’s anti-water privatization protest.
The “National Forum for the Defense of the Sustainability and the Right to
Water,” an alliance made up of 37 different social organizations, will make
its first public statement that same day against water privatization as a
showing of national unity around the issue.  October 17th was chosen as the
day for action because it is also the National Day of ANDA (National Water
Administration) Workers.  CISPES plans on publishing an open letter to
President Saca in El Salvador’s major newspaper that day to accompany the
action and back organizing against privatization in the face of an
increasingly repressive government.  The letter calls on Saca to respect the
right to organize and to show the government’s commitment to human rights by
investigating recent threats and attacks on unionists and other social
movement leaders.  

 

To review the letter and sign on, see www.cispes.org

 

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