Human Rights Watch today welcomed the judicial order of detention issued against former Paraguayan strongman Alfredo Stroessner. The detention order, issued on Saturday by a judge in Paraguay, calls for General Stroessner's arrest and extradition from Brazil, as well as the arrest and extradition from Honduras of a former high official in Stroessner's government. Stroessner's thirty-five years of authoritarian rule in Paraguay were characterized by routine and horrific human rights abuse, including killings and forced "disappearances."
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This effort to prosecute Stroessner and Montanaro, although it comes years after the crimes for which they are being sought, is nonetheless a timely one.
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"This effort to prosecute Stroessner and Montanaro, although it comes years after the crimes for which they are being sought, is nonetheless a timely one," said José Miguel Vivanco, Executive Director of the Americas Division of Human Rights Watch. "Like the Pinochet prosecution, it is proof of the growing international consensus that those responsible for gross human rights abuses should not escape punishment." He called on the Brazilian government to cooperate with Paraguay and allow the extradition process to go forward.
Stroessner was overthrown in a military coup in February 1989 and subsequently obtained political asylum in Brazil. But Vivanco rejected the notion that Stroessner had any legitimate claim to asylum protection. "It is an abuse of the institution of political asylum to use it to protect human rights violators from justice," said Vivanco. "The whole point of asylum is to protect victims from further harm, not to grant impunity to perpetrators of abuse."
Vivanco noted that granting refuge to a public official credibly alleged to have committed grave violations of human rights contravenes basic principles of asylum law, which expressly refuse the right of asylum to human rights violators. Indeed, under the Convention against Torture, to which Brazil is a party, rather than extend its protection to such persons, the country is required to prosecute or extradite torturers found on its territory.
