wfn.org | WCC release on Impunity

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World Council of Churches
Press Release
For Immediate Use
26 August 1996

                   "HALT IMPUNITY!" INSISTS WCC AT UN

Impunity -- the situation in which those accused of gross and
systematic human rights violations or crimes against humanity are
not charged, tried or punished, whether because of an amnesty or
pardon or deliberate lack of action -- is presently increasing,
according to Genevi?ve Jacques from the World Council of Churches
Commission of the Churches on International Affairs (CCIA). So
for many people in the ecumenical movement, says Jacques, joining
the fight to halt impunity has become an integral part of the
defence of human rights.

In an oral intervention on the afternoon of Friday 23 August to
the 48th session (Geneva, August 1996) of the United Nations
Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of
Minorities, Jacques suggested that it is not only civil and
military authorities who infringe civil and political rights who
benefit from impunity, but also economic powers "intent solely on
unbounded profit" who massively violate economic, social and
cultural rights.

"The recognition and affirmation of the indivisible nature of
human rights must be translated by a firm determination... not to
permit any serious violations of these rights to go unpunished,"
Jacques declared.

Jacques expressed the WCC's "wholehearted agreement" with a UN
Special Rapporteur on impunity in his emphasis on the fundamental
right of victims to know the truth, to justice and to reparation.
"Human community," she said, "can only be built upon restored
human relations based on justice and truth, not untruth;
productive memory, not forgetfulness; forgiveness granted by the
victims and sincere repentance by the guilty". As evidence of
"the disastrous consequences for individuals and for society if a
'culture of impunity' is allowed to endure" she mentioned
massacres of landless peasants in Brazil and the thirst for
vengeance in the Great Lakes region of Africa or in the former
Yugoslavia.

The WCC's commitment to fighting impunity was illustrated, in
mid-July, by a visit to the town in Para, Brazil, where military
police killed and wounded landless peasants in April 1996.
Representing the Council in an international delegation, the
president of the International Service on Human Rights in Geneva,
Andr? Jacques, reported that no one in the military had yet been
charged, and that the latter were insisting that the matter be
dealt with in its own courts rather than the civilian judiciary.
"People do not believe this will bring justice and nor do we," he
said. "It is one more example of how impunity for crimes against
the poor exists in Brazil." He added that "impunity needs silence
to succeed, so the WCC, with others, must make known what is
going on."

Under the title Impunity: An ethical perspective the Council has
just published a collection of six case studies from Latin
America written by people directly involved in the defence of
human rights between the mid-1960s and the end of the 1980s -- a
period when military and military-controlled governments
perpetrated institutionalized violence in no fewer than 19 Latin
American countries.

In her concluding remarks to the UN Sub-Commission, Genevi?ve
Jacques suggested that states must define and enforce legal
norms, but that the fight against impunity should not be limited
to the legal domain. Civil society, and churches in particular,
must "contribute through education and practical witness in
real-life situations to the building of a culture of truth,
justice and peace." Jacques also pledged that the WCC would
support "to the best of its ability" the work of the
Sub-Commission and the fight against impunity.

The full text of the WCC's oral intervention to the 48th session
of the UN Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and
Protection of Minorities (Friday 23 August, Point 10) is
available on request.

                                                                      

The World Council of Churches is a fellowship of churches, now
330, in more than 100 countries in all continents from virtually
all Christian traditions.  The Roman Catholic Church is not a
member church but works cooperatively with the WCC.  The highest
governing body is the Assembly, which meets approximately every
seven years.  The WCC was formally inaugurated in 1948 in
Amsterdam, Netherlands.  Its staff is headed by general secretary
Konrad Raiser from the Evangelical Church in Germany.

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