U.S.S.R.
a military force specifically designed to intervene abroad in defence of imperialist interests.
The the RDF are the Middl and the Central America and Caribbean region. Already the RDF has carried out practice invasions of both areas. The By Ana Maria Hernandez in El Salvador DOMINGO Garcia years old. He comes from a little village in the La Paz region in the centre of El Salvador. In October his village was occupied by the army, with the help of members the para-military organisation, ORDEN.
Domingo's father and many others were killed, but most of the inhabitants managed to escape up into the moun tains. But not Domingo. He was left alone in the village.
When they found me they took hold of me. One held me firm and the other hit me with his machete, here, and here.' Machete Domingo points out where he was hit. Both of his wrists are scarred and swollen forming terrible around this small boy's arms. He showed me the right side of his neck, where a lone scar aiso swollen. no cares where he was hit by the machete. He explains at the same time why he has to carry his head bent to the left all the time He takes off his cap and shows me a large bald patch right in the middle of his head. I thought I was almost going to die,' he says The army tried to kill him. But he didn't die. He lay there for two days where the soldiers had thrown him unconscious, with the blood drying on his body and the flies buzzing around the open machete wounds.
'He looked dead, says his sister When we came back to the village and found him, we were sure that he was dead. But he wasn't. Thank god that he is here with us now. there.... the boy just lay there swollen up, completely still. We were sure that he was dead. But here he is, here he is...
Domingo's sister pulls him closer to her, but she doesn't start to cry. lifts his scarred arms and says: how they tried to cut the boy's hands off. Look at them. What did they think could have done?' 'That is what I ask myself. What do they think he could have done?' She doesn't cry. her either; she appears calm and collected Domingo and his sister are together with 4000 others in one of the eleven refugee camps in San Salvador, the capital. Almost all the people in these camps are women, children and elderly people.
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there is no fury in rather now the dead. National Guard motorcyclist all the newspapers, radio and television, carried out an agressive lie campaign against anyone who objected to the junta in even the mildest The starting point for this propaganda is that the armed rebel groups were totally defeated in the January offenThose who are left, say the junta foreign mercenaries and armed The government is using systematic lies to spread this falsification of reality One of the lawyers who works for church legal rights organisation, the only institution since the Commission for Human Rights was forced underground a few weeks ago to record what is the real state of politica and human rights, shows an example of how the propaganda works.
He shows me a special feature article from one of the morning papers, where the rebels are accused of blowing up a bus and causing the deaths of 20 people. The paper includes a list of In reality, explains the lawyer, three of the names belong to people that are known to have been killed a week ago by a uniformed army patrol who stop ped their car. A fourth passenger who was in the car succeeded in escaping.
"Now I ask myself, he continues 'where they killed all the others who The campaign in the press is constant, vicious, inflammatory and menacdares to say anything Circulars from the Church human rights organisation, the Human Commission and the politica organisations don't reach many people.
What will be the effects of the press Won't people finally believe what they write? Will they come to believe that Napoleon Duarte is corthat the refugee camps are nests of subversion? Won't they believe that the armed groups are responsible for all they are accused of?
No, not yet. Too many people have seen too much in El Salvador. I'm stil surprised that almost everyone I mee against the official version. Someone says: "Today it is not enough to just speak against them, we have to act. But to act is the same as risking your life."
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