Sign on Letter on Honduras Declassification id XAA13378; Mon, 29 Sep 1997 23:40:40 -0400 Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit Sep 25, 1997 by gaph@taurus.oac.uci.edu Grupo de Apoyo Popular de Honduras (GAPH) Honduras Popular Support Group GAPH@UCI.EDU http:/orion.uci.edu/~cweber/h.html ____________________________________________________ September 26, 1997 President Bill Clinton The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., NW Washington, D.C. 20500 Dear Mr. President, You have stated many times that democracy, human rights and respect for the rule of law are central to United States policy in Latin America. We are encouraged by one critical aspect of that policy: your commitment to open secret files on human rights abuses in Latin America for public scrutiny. Your administration has done more than any other to help clarify the past by declassifying critical U.S. records on human rights in countries such as El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. Mr. President, we urge you to broaden this important effort. Human rights information should not be shielded by the system of secrecy inherited from the cold war. Such information is often a critical component to a country's struggle to promote the rule of law, end impunity and bolster reconciliation in formerly conflicted societies. As newly-democratic nations in Latin America confront their legacies of violence, your administration can strengthen its commitment to human rights by declassifying United States files on human rights abuses in the region and releasing them to the public. To that end, many of us wrote you in April of this year urging you to announce a new human rights initiative in connection with your trip to Latin America. Since then, two requests have become even more demanding of your immediate attention: First, the United Nations Clarification Commission in Guatemala, which began work on July 31, 1997, requested information and documentation from the United States. The Clarification Commission is a product of the peace agreement which ended more than three decades of armed conflict in Guatemala and is charged with establishing an historical record of the massive human rights violations that characterized the period. While U.S. agencies have declassified some records on Guatemala in connection with the Intelligence Oversight Board investigation that you ordered, those records focused mainly on human rights violations against U.S. citizens. The Clarification Commission is now seeking additional information from the United States, which is essential for its work. Second, a top priority review should be ordered, and completed, in response to the request already received from the Human Rights Commissioner of Honduras. You have made an important commitment to respond to the commissioner's petition--first submitted in 1993--in support of his human rights investigations into the Honduran army's role in the disappearances of the early 1980s. You most recently reiterated this commitment in a June 13 letter to members of Congress. Although the State Department has completed its release of documents in response to the Honduran request, neither the CIA nor the Defense Department has honored the commitments that you made. When those agencies have released documents, they have not adequately responded to the request made by the commissioner. The CIA Inspector General has completed a classified report drawing on extensive internal documentation of human rights abuses in Honduras--material absolutely critical to the commissioner's work. But neither the report nor the documents it is based on have been reviewed for declassification and released. In conducting the declassification review of the requested information, the standards used should be more forthcoming than are presently available under the Freedom of Information Act. Specifically, agencies should review such documents for declassification on an expedited schedule, to be completed in the next few months so that they will be available in time to be useful to the Guatemalan Clarification Commission and the Honduran Human Rights Commissioner. In addition, such review should apply declassification standards which recognize both the foreign policy and the public interests in disclosing the information. Your administration properly recognized such interests in the earlier declassification of documents on human rights abuses in El Salvador as well as the IOB report on Guatemala. Finally, an independent review process should be established to ensure that agencies follow your directive. Mr. President, your administration has already taken unprecedented actions to guarantee public access to information on human rights in the hemisphere. We greatly appreciate those steps. We urge you now to continue your commitment to human rights by moving to open U.S. human rights records on Latin America. Respectfully, Felix Aguilar Co-director ____________________________________________________ El Grupo de Apoyo Popular es una organizacion basada en California, EEUU, que apoya a las organizaciones populares de Honduras. Honduras Popular Support Group is a California-based organizacion that supports the popular organizations in Honduras. ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytcamer-09.29.97-23:40:40-3011