The publication is reproduced in full below:
DISAPPEARED OF EL SALVADOR
______
HON. JAMES P. McGOVERN
of massachusetts
in the house of representatives
Friday, August 27, 2021
Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, August 30th has been designated by the United Nations as The International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearance. I rise today to talk about the history of forced disappearance and its impact on individuals, families; communities, and all of society in one country, El Salvador.
Madam Speaker, I fell in love with El Salvador and the Salvadoran people during very dark days. As a young aide to our former colleague, Congressman Joe Moakley of Boston, my first trip to El Salvador was in 1983, and I have returned more than 30 times.
During the civil war and afterwards, I have had the privilege to meet with so many Salvadoran families throughout the country. I've often met with nuns and local priests, listened to them describe the daily lives of their communities. They would introduce me to the people of their parish who had lost loved ones. The disappeared have always been with us. For decades they have haunted El Salvador. You can hear their voices in every corner of the country.
Yet in all these meetings with individuals and families who have suffered such great loss--and who still suffer--what has struck me most is their generosity of spirit, their courage and resilience, their ability to embrace mercy and forgiveness, seek reconciliation and demand truth.
Next year, El Salvador will celebrate the 30th Anniversary of the Peace Accords--a very important milestone in El Salvador's history--and reason for celebration, reflection and recommitment. But as we all know, peace does not come with the signing of accords. The work of building peace, of creating peace, of strengthening democratic institutions, of promoting reconciliation, truth and justice--all of that hard work begins the day the peace accords are signed.
Much has been accomplished by the Salvadoran people over these past three decades--but so very much is left to do. Among the work left unfinished is an accounting for the disappeared.
The past is never simply the past--it lives in the present, it echoes in the daily lives of thousands of Salvadorans whose family members, loved ones, friends; neighbors and colleagues disappeared during the civil war. There is nothing abstract about the suffering endured by these sons and daughters, these mothers and fathers, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters. They are haunted by memories and questions about their relatives: Where are they? What happened to them? Where are their remains? Will I ever be able to bury them with dignity and love? Will I ever know the truth? For thousands of Salvadorans and Salvadoran-Americans, the effects of the war are still felt in very real ways.
It is no secret that the United States bears part of the responsibility to help find answers to these questions. Billions of dollars in U.S. military and economic aid was poured into the Salvadoran war. And during the twelve years of the war, the U.S. government tolerated terrible human rights abuses.
We share accountability for its consequences, and we share the responsibility to help bind up the wounds that remain so long after the accords were signed. This is why I and so many of my colleagues in the U.S. Congress were so moved when we were approached in 2016 by American citizens who are the sons and daughters of Salvadorans who disappeared during the war. They asked us to help them in their quest to find out the truth about what happened to their parents.
Working together, we asked the U.S. and Salvadoran governments to release all remaining documents that U.S. agencies have kept classified on the Salvadoran civil war. On the U.S. side, the good news is that most U.S. documents were declassified and released during the presidency of Bill Clinton and have long been available to human rights researchers. But some documents still remain classified, mainly those of U.S. defense and intelligence agencies. There's still more that could be released, and I and many of my congressional colleagues continue to press for further declassification.
In 2010, El Salvador established a National Commission for the Search of Children Disappeared during the Armed Conflict--or the CNB. The CNB seeks to investigate and determine the whereabouts and situation for disappeared children, including finding children alive and promoting their reunion with their families of origin. The CNB also formally institutionalized decades of work to find missing children and help reunite them with their Salvadoran families and relatives carried out by my dear friend Father Jon Cortina at the University of Central America (UCA) Jose Simeon Canas.
Equally as important, in 2017, the Salvadoran government established the National Commission for the Search of Disappeared Adults in the Context of the Armed Conflict in El Salvador, known as Conabusqueda. Its mandate is to investigate, locate, exhume, identify, and return the bodily remains of persons disappeared at the hands of the State during the armed conflict. I am grateful that President Bukele has continued support for the work of each of these two critical commissions.
Forced disappearance is a crime of long-lasting pain and harm. Not only for the victim who so abruptly disappears, deprived of liberty and often made to suffer torture, beatings, rape, and other brutality before being killed and disposed of--but also because it affects the lives of their relatives and communities. Family members and those close to the victim always harbor the hope that someday they will meet the disappeared person again. They keep questions about what happened to them. Often faced by the denial of official authorities and society, the need to discover the truth and find closure means that the search for the missing is passed from grandparents to parents, to their children and grandchildren for generations until the events surrounding a disappearance are clarified.
Last year, in August 2020, Conabusqueda released a seminal study on the disappeared of El Salvador: Forced disappearance in the context of the armed conflict in El Salvador: a first approach to the phenomenon. The report described how forced disappearance was a repressive practice used systematically by the State from the 1970s onward. The report also made clear is that forced disappearance is not something that happened several decades in the past, it is a painful reality of the present that continues to affect thousands of families throughout El Salvador.
Many people continue to disappear as part of the violence ripping apart El Salvador's communities and families. According to the January 2021 Human Rights Watch Worldwide Report covering the events of 2020, from January 2014 to October 2019, ``the Salvadoran police registered over 11,900 disappearance victims, including more than 400 children.'' This exceeds the estimated 8,000 to 10,000 disappeared during the civil war (1979-1992). Today's disappearances are committed by a range of actors, including gangs and the police. Few cases are investigated. As in the past, they remain in impunity.
How can we hope to stand up for these latest victims and their families if we fail to confront and resolve the issue of the past disappeared? The denial of past disappearance, the lack of cooperation by authorities to clarify the circumstances surrounding the forced disappearances of thousands of victims in the past, and the failure to pursue legal action perpetuates the crime and the impunity that has always surrounded it.
In both El Salvador and the United States, we must do more to support efforts to advance the search for the disappeared and provide thousands of families the closure and healing they have been so long denied. It is the right thing to do; it is the moral thing to do; and it is the humane thing to do.
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SOURCE: Congressional Record Vol. 167, No. 151
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