Against amnesia, and in support of Judge Garzón. We recommend reading this editorial in Le Monde
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He is known and respected worldwide for its investigations of crimes of various dictatorships, especially in Latin America, under the concept of universal justice, which he is a pioneer. However, Judge Baltasar Garzon will soon sit in the dock of a Madrid court. His fault? Trying to open for the first time in Spain, the record of atrocities committed by the Nationalists during the civil war, then under the dictatorship of Francisco Franco.
These crimes were granted amnesty in 1977 to allow a convalescent democracy to rebuild the famous "pact of forgetting" . By modifying the disappearances of tens of thousands of Republican crimes against humanity, and therefore inalienable, that judge atypical played with the boundaries of English law for the purposes of the case. This procedural difference to his being suspended from duty pending his trial. At 54, he faces a sentence of twelve to twenty years' disqualification: his career was over.
The case raises two embarrassing questions Garzon for Spain today. The obvious fury of some of the judiciary to get rid of a free electron inconvenient reflects a disturbing institutional dysfunction. For wanting to build in response to Franco, democratic Spain has given birth to their politicization of sick institutions, foremost among them justice.
importantly, the strategy of forgetting did not work. More than the defense of a judge's personality and methods controversial the mobilization of tens of thousands of people in recent weeks in Madrid and elsewhere was "impunity of Franco" . The demonstrators demanded "truth, justice, reparation and solidarity with the victims' , waving black and white photos of a grandfather or great uncle buried somewhere in the many mass graves of civil war.
These Spaniards live evil that wants to punish the only magistrate who, against all odds, has tried to help. Starting to open pits in the early 2000s, they inspired the Zapatero government legislation "on memory historic , intended to "close, honorably for all, a tragic chapter of history". Not a chance: the case of Garzon indicates the persistence of two inherited from the English Civil War. There is neither "red" or "national" but a right and left ready to fight for everything.
In 1998, ordering the arrest of Augusto Pinochet, Baltasar Garzon had embarrassed the government of Mr. Aznar, who advocated among Latin American democracies the example of the English transition, based on a voluntary amnesia. Today, the Conservatives refuse to be reopened "wounds old ", while advocacy groups for human rights, labor unions and lawyers who support Baltasar Garzon interview: " The victims of Franco worth less than Pinochet? "
Article published in the Publishing 16.05.10
