II. A pattern of arbitrary executions

Peasants participating in protests and demonstrations during the present democracy have suffered violent repression by the State’s security agencies, as well as the outlawing of their means of expression. In addition to imprisonment for the crime of “invading the property of others”, forced eviction, and the destruction of dwellings, cultivated areas and installations for raising farm animals, the acts of repression carried out by the State and private landowners implied the arbitrary execution of activists. Such repression, which began to be manifested in rural zones, was undertaken by State agents and armed civilians, organised by the large scale landlords.

The Human Rights Coordinating Committee of Paraguay (Coordinadora de Derechos Humanos del Paraguay - CODEHUPY) denounced that in this context at least 75 arbitrary executions and two cases of forced disappearance of leaders and members of organisations of rural workers took place in the period between February 3, 1989 and June 26, 2005.

These grave violations of the right to life occurred in response to a plan directed towards detaining the spiralling protests, with the intention of frightening communities, settlements and peasant organisations and thereby discouraging the occupations. The arbitrary executions and forced disappearance are concentrated in the geographical areas of the country where the chief focal points of land conflicts have been located. These actions have affected the poor and landless peasants whose organisations strive against large rural landholdings and act in favour of the agrarian reform.

Deeds such as these are incompatible with a democratic society. These acts clearly constitute breaches and infringements of the Paraguayan penal code and are prosecutable by the Public Ministry as its own legal duty, as they are fl agrant violations of the right to life, recognised and ensured by the Paraguayan Constitution of 1992 (Article 4), the American Convention on Human Rights (Article 4, ratified by Paraguayan Law 1/89), and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (Article 6, ratified by Paraguayan Law 5/92. These are legal instruments that are fully in force, the infringement of which gives rise to the international responsibility of the state.